An Important Exemption from the Death Duties.

According to Sir Arthur Hobhouse ("The Dead Hand"—Chatto and Windus), the number of charitable foundations in the United Kingdom can only be guessed at, and their income baffles calculation. Mr. Gladstone, in 1863, placed the latter at £3,000,000 per annum, varying from a few shillings up to £55,000 a year, but none of it subject to ordinary taxation. Lord Brougham's Commission reported on 29,000 endowed charities discovered by them, but an immense number escaped the commission. Sir A. Hobhouse puts the present number at not less than 40,000 foundations.

The so-called Statute of Mortmain, passed in 1736, did not apply to many classes of institutions or to all property. It dealt with a single abuse, the re-endowment of religious bodies with the lands of the kingdom which had been stripped from them in 1535-1540. In the former year it is somewhat significant that the first Poor Law was found necessary, though Hallam denies that the Dissolution of Monasteries and the enactment of Poor Laws stood in the relation of cause and effect. Bequests for merely religious uses were forbidden, but anything that could call itself charity seems to have been favoured, not only then but all along by the judges of the land.

Abstract of Parliamentary Return (1882) of all Real Property held in Mortmain, or for Charitable, Public, or Perpetual Uses, or in any such way that no Succession Duty is payable thereon.

Scotland.

	A.	R.	£	s.
Aberdeen	31,621	0	121,832	17
Argyll	3,474	2	14,756	0
Ayr	2,803	2	48,895	18
Banft	8,831	1	9,517	1
Berwick	3,042	0	7,028	18
Bute	419	3	7,801	11
Caithness	798	0	7,381	7
Clackmannan	60	0	5,268	3
Cromarty	65	0	233	0
Dumbarton	923	0	18,199	3
Dumfries	3,230	0	15,256	0
Edinburgh	2,890	3	194,003	10
Elgin	1,702	2	9,543	1
File	9,618	3	69,177	18
Forfar	3,543	3	118,246	9
Haddington	1,534	0	10,332	11
Inverness	11,593	0	18,402	10
Kincardine	11,092	3	21,576	14
Kinross	110	0	1,056	10
Kirkcudbright	4,341	2	12,265	10
Lanark	4,469	3	287,953	19
Linlithgow	1,352	0	8,880	4
Nairn	378	0	1,294	12
Orkney	2,541	0	4,634	1page 180
Peebles	226	0	2,666	1
Perth	5,007	1	34,791	0
Renfrew	1,741	2	140,661	16
Ross	3,846	3	4,876	0
Roxburgh	5,040	1	14,593	8
Selkirk	55	0	4,530	0
Stirling	1,191	2	36,400	1
Sutherland	2,114	0	1,303	0
Wigtown	1,732	2	7,566	19
Zetland	3,160	0	2,118	4
Totals	129,550	2	£1,263,043	16

The only means by which the Inland Revenue Department could furnish the above Return was by examining the last Assessments under Schedule A of the Income Tax Acts, and extracting therefrom the particulars of all real property in each district apparently held in mortmain, or for charitable, public, or perpetual uses by corporations, trustees, and other such persons.

It does not follow that the full annual value is in all cases the sum payable for rent to the owners, inasmuch as the assessment may include the value of beneficial occupation by the tenant.

The "estimated extent" of land has been inserted as a part of the description in cases where such information is available, but some Poor Rate assessments do not contain the quantities of land, which could not therefore be given in this Return. The value stated is not the value of the lands only, but includes the annual value of buildings, if any, upon the lands.

Glebe lands and parsonage houses are included in the Return, but not tithe rentcharges, neither are cathedrals, churches, chapels, and places of public worship, which are not rated.

Leasehold properties belonging to public bodies and corporations, but rated and charged in the Income Tax assessments in the names of the lessees, are not included in the Return, as the assessments do not contain the means of identifying such properties, and the value of their ground rents, &c., is not known.

By successive Royal Commissions, on Charities, on Poor Laws (1834), and on Education (1861), these endowed Charities have been denounced as a public evil, but it is characteristic of our semi-aristocratic Parliaments and Governments that nothing efficient has yet been done to stop or even check their wide-spreading mischiefs. Meanwhile, not only do vast sums of money run to waste that might be applied to educational and other beneficent purposes, but masses of people and entire districts are pauperized by the compulsory doles of dead and gone fanatics. These Charity Trusts should be taxed, nationalized and removed from what Hobhouse calls the "sport of 40,000 chance-medley wills," and their property finally declared to be "not the property of the dead but of the living." To quote Lord Bacon, "Gifts and foundations are like sacrifices without salt, but the painted sepulchres of alms which soon will putrefy and corrupt inwardly. Defer not charities until death, for he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than his own."

Other Loopholes and Defects in the Income Tax.

With reference to the table at foot of last page it is pointed out by that valuable work "Burdett's Official Intelligence," that the large decreases shown in the assessments, some of which are undoubtedly due to a bonâ fide diminution in the amount of Foreign Stocks held by residents of this country, are probably due in other cases to evasions of the tax. That authority further remarks that incomes (of over £3 a week) if received weekly, although clearly chargeable under Schedule D, are not attempted to be included by the revenue authorities, so that whilst a clerk at £200 a year is assessed, his fellow-employé at £4 a week or upwards is exempt.

Stocks are exempt if standing in the names of Her Majesty, or any foreign Ambassador here resident, also of Friendly, Industrial, or Provident Societies, Savings' Banks, Charities, and Trusts for the repair of places of worship.

Out of a population exceeding 36 millions, less than a quarter of a million persons now come under Schedule D, as will be seen by a previous table. The serious character of the exemptions below £150, and partial exemptions between that and £400 is evidenced by such a fact, as also by the further statement that only about 1 in 5 of the present payers would come under assessment if incomes below £400 were entirely (instead of partially) made exempt.

According to the Inland Revenue Commissioners some 240,000 persons were relieved by Sir S. North-cote in raising the level in 1876 from £100 to £150 of non-liability. It is fair to assume that in ten years their numbers have reached 300,000. Let us suppose only £100 of net assessment for each (=£30,000,000). Then there is an amount of Revenue thrown away that would have over sufficed to free Coffee, Cocoa, and Dried Fruits from taxation. The latter reform would have affected millions of taxpayers of all classes most favourably; but the Cabinet of 1876 were truthfully caricatured as fishing for the votes of the few.

Similarly a handful of individuals were benefited by the same government's grant of £40 additional abatement in certain cases: and the House Duty has all along been weighted with mischievous and sweeping exemptions (as elsewhere shown).

If instead of playing to the gallery with such grants of exemption, our rulers had possessed sufficient wisdom, courage, and honesty to maintain the old level of £100 Income Tax liability (with £80 abatement up to £300), or to apply the House Duty below £20 rental, they could nave far more really and generally reduced taxation by abolishing the customs duty on tea; as we believe it was Mr. Gladstone's original intention to do. Better trade and more constant employment (to say nothing of improved profits in commerce) would have resulted, and the exchequer would have richly shared this general improvement. But whilst free trade is hated by one of the great parties in the State, and only half understood or believed in by many leaders of the other, everybody loses, and the majority thus far appear content to lose, unnumbered benefits.