ABSTRACT
§ 1. THE ‘levy upon capital’ usually advocated, as for instance in the able book of Mr Pethick Lawrence, 1 is not, however, confined to war-made capital. The proposal is to wipe out the whole, or a large part, of the war debt by a levy, single or in several yearly instalments, upon the whole body of accumulated wealth in this country. It is urged on general grounds of equality of sacrifice and of ‘ ability to pay/ as the only adequate alternative to a crippling income-tax. A levy confined to war-made wealth would, it is argued, involve a double valuation, prewar and post-war, very difficult to work, and could not easily or possibly be made to yield an amount of revenue sufficient to wipe out enough of the debt. It may be admitted that the latter objection is fatal to the restricted levy, if it be insisted that the object of the levy is the immediate or early extinction of the debt and not its mere reduction to a jevel with which the income-tax could cope. But, even if our suggestion of a levy of 3500 millions, so as to wipe out half the debt, were accepted, it is still arguable that the basis of the levy should be the whole volume of the national capital, a process which would utilize a wider ‘ ability to pay,’ and would be worked upon the simpler (though not too simple) plan of a single post-war valuation. It might be easier to gain the assent of the propertied and ruling classes to a lighter levy on the larger sum, and one capable of more graduation, than to a levy of at least 50 per cent, upon those forms of wealth alleged to be accumulated in war-time.
