Note 26 — Chapter IV

The full text of the Fabian suggestion is as follows:

“What is suggested is that, so far as incomes not exceeding £2,500 a year are concerned, whether earned or unearned, it should be open to any person assessed to ask that all the taxable receipts of all the members of his family, living in the same household with him and sharing in its expenses, or maintained elsewhere wholly or partially at his expense, should be aggregated for assessment as a Family Income; and that Family Incomes so arrived at should, for income tax purposes, be divided by the number of members of the family (husband, wife, children, stepchildren, father and mother, or grandparents only) actually maintained therefrom. There could then be allowed from the combined Family Income, in respect of each person maintained therefrom, whatever Abatement each portion of such income would justify if it were that of one person only.”—How to Pay for the War, pp. 237-8.

In order to prevent the suggested abatements and allowances from exempting too many people altogether from income tax, these writers suggest that “nothing in them should be allowed to reduce the tax actually payable below the minimum of, say, a penny in the pound on the income prior to the deduction of any abatement or allowance.”