asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how far it is the practice of the Inland Revenue to allow companies to charge, as a pre-taxation expense, any costs incurred in giving newspaper publicity to the annual statements of their chairmen.

Such expenditure is allowable as a deduction in computing trading profits for taxation proposes if it is incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade.

Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied with a position in which bank chairmen, in particular, buy for their generally highly sententious annual statements at least as much space as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is ever able to get for any speech of his own?

:Comparisons are proverbially odious, but each question is looked at by the tax authorities on its own facts, and in the event of a dispute there are tribunals to decide it.