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Revenue 1917–18

Volume 105: debated on Monday 22 April 1918

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Now I come to the Revenue side of our account for last year. The House will see from the Blue Paper that there has been an excess under every head of taxation. There has been an excess in the amount received from the Excess Profits Duty of £20.000.000. and I may add that, of the total receipts from that duly, upwards of £30,000,000 came from the controlled firms. The other excesses of large amount have come from the Income Tax and the Super-tax, which together showed an excess of £15,500,000. I shall not go over the other items, which will all be detailed in a White Paper, some copies of which will be available in the Library as soon as I have finished, while copies will be in the hands of every Member to-morrow morning. I may say, in passing, that the Entertainments Tax has yielded £5,000,000 sterling, or nearly £500,000 more than the Estimate, in spite of the fact that the increased duty was put in force three months later than was intended, and that some reduction was made in the scale when the Finance Bill was passing through the House. I should also like to call attention to another item of Revenue, and I do this because of something I shall have to say in a later portion of my speech. The revenue from tobacco shows a virtual increase over the Estimate of last year of no less than £1,700.000. Perhaps the Committee may notice, in looking at the Blue Paper, that there is an excess in miscellaneous items of £25,000,000. That is accounted for entirely by the fact that the Government of India undertook to provide, as a war contribution, by loan or obligation, £100,000.000. It was estimated that only something like £10,000,000 could be raised in India by loan, whereas, as a matter of fact, the large sum of £35,000,000 was raised in India. It is gratifying to find that there has been this excess in revenue—an excess which has characterised every Budget Estimate since the beginning of the War. It is, of course, satisfactory as showing the prosperity for the time being of our trade and industry, but I do not wish the House to attach too much importance to it, for I have said more than once in this House that so long as money is being raised by borrowing, to whatever extent it may be, there must be at least apparent prosperity, and the real test of our financial position will come when this borrowing ceases and we have to fall back on ordinary methods.