Abstract
THIS subject has attracted some notice since Sir Henry Roscoe put a question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night in the House of Commons, as to whether his attention had been called to the fact that, owing to the present faulty system of charging the duty on spirits, a loss to the Revenue of from £60,000 to £80,000 per annum did not occur, without any corresponding benefit to the trader, and whether he would appoint a Departmental Committee to inquire into an improved system of estimating the percentage of spirit, as proposed by Dr. Derham. To this the Chancellor replied that the above estimated loss was based on an erroneous assumption, and that the introduction of the suggested system would be attended with difficulties comparable with those which would accrue to the substitution of the decimal for the present system of coinage. The grounds of these objections could not of course be given in answer to a question, and therefore the public are not yet in a position to judge how far the Revenue Departments can make them good. The statements of Dr. Derham are, however, perfectly plain, and demand plain answers.
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The Revenue Method of Estimating and Charging the Duty on Spirits . Nature 37, 481–482 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/037481a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/037481a0