I move amendment No. 3:—
Before sub-section (2) to insert a new sub-section as follows:—
A rebate at the rate of five pence a gallon shall be allowed on all hydro-carbon light oil, imported into Eire, on and after the 11th day of May, 1939, on which the said customs duty is charged and which is shown to the satisfaction of the Revenue Commissioners to have been used by a clergyman or a medical practitioner in the ordinary course of his duties.
This particular amendment might have been associated with the last amendment but they were separated after full consideration on account of the very peculiar position in which the Dublin taxi-men found themselves, owing to the big combines coming in to swallow up their business. This amendment, relating, as it does, to clergymen and doctors—in other words, to people whose means of livelihood is gained by looking after either the bodily or spiritual welfare of the people—was placed separately.
In this country, people have grown accustomed to paying a tax on their income and they are rapidly or gradually getting accustomed—whether they are reconciled or not is another matter —to paying a tax on every commodity they buy out of that income. A tax of this kind, in addition, places a tax on the source of the income. The particular classes referred to in this amendment earn their livelihood through the medium of the motor car, roughly in proportion to the miles they cover; and I doubt if anybody ever pauses to think of the amount of State taxation imposed on a person who makes his livelihood sitting in a motor car.
If you take the mileage covered by any busy clergyman or medical practitioner, it is giving a fairly long life to a car to say that its life is three years—three efficient, working years. The cost of every new car purchased in this country priced in or about £260 or £300, is approximately £75 to £100 more than the purchaser in Newry or Belfast would pay for his car. Assuming that the working life of the car in its first ownership is three years, that is equivalent to an annual tax of £25 to £30. There is then the tax on the car—its road tax—dependent on the horse-power; but it could be taken at the average figure of about £15 a year. There is then a compulsory insurance of £15, £16 or £17 a year. With a petrol tax at the rate of 10d. per gallon, assuming that the average man covers thirty miles a day — that is a tax of ½d. a mile covered — you have another tax of about 10/- a week or £25 a year. In all, in respect of that car the worker pays £80 a year on, as it were, the raw materials of his industry. If he is doing well at his business, income-tax— which has a habit of increasing—comes down on top of him as well. I think the whole idea is wrong.
It is popular in this country to regard the British Government in the Ireland of the past as a Government that had nothing in common with the people and that had no sympathy with the people, and yet, at the height of a world war, when the British Government found it necessary to impose a tax on petrol, it is within the recollection of anyone who was in practice at that time that that petrol tax in its application to priests and doctors only applied to a fifty per cent. degree. Priests and doctors were exempted from half the petrol tax.
The Minister stated here to-day that one reason why an abatement in this tax could not be made in respect of taxi-drivers was owing to the difficulty, or the impossibility, of administering it. I suppose there are 20 agents or officers or civil servants of one kind or another at the present time in this country to every one the British Government had here when they were administering that rebate. That may be an exaggeration: I have not the figures available; but I do not think it is a very big exaggeration. We are only administering three-quarters of the country, yet with a very considerable less number of agents and officers of one kind or another the British Government were able to carry out that remission which the Irish Government it appears pretends is impossible.
It was done in a very, very simple way, it was done in a harmonious way, and it was done out of a spirit of consideration, in order to mete out justice to the people engaged in humanitarian work. We have a Government now in this country more ruthless in its outlook and showing very much less consideration than the British Government which it is popular to denounce. The machinery of administration was that the particular person kept the receipts and the local excise officer remitted half the tax. It was done either daily or weekly or quarterly, or at whatever time one went all the local excise officer. We were all alive at that time and I do not think any of us ever heard any suggestion of abuse, or ever had any practical experience of abuse, by the individual buying the petrol getting a remission of half the tax, and passing the petrol on to a neighbour. The Minister seems to have a very low opinion of the taxi-drivers, at all events. He seems to think that they have no trade esprit de corps, and no sense of either honour or honesty. I do not know where he gained that particular insight into the character of the taximen, but, certainly, when certain trades and professions were exempted in the past by the British Government in this country, there was never any suggestion of abuse, or any suggestion of dishonesty, and I never heard that it was anybody's experience that there was that type of dishonesty which the Minister seems to fear.
The Minister may argue that the people I refer to, namely, priests and doctors, get their working expenses allowed when their income-tax is being reckoned. Let us take one class by itself. Take clergymen first. A very small percentage of clergymen have an income sufficiently high to pay income-tax at all. Much the same applies to doctors. Perhaps a higher percentage of doctors pay income-tax, but surely the percentage that do pay income-tax are hit heavily enough if they have to pay £80 a year tax of one kind or another on their cars, a quarter of their income by way of income-tax and a further taxation on practically every article they buy, without having to pay an extra ½d. or ¾d. on every mile they travel to visit a sick person. There are ways, and obvious ways, in which an imposition of this kind can be met. Remember that, talking particularly of rural Ireland, threequarters of the mileage covered by any general practitioner is covered without a fee at the end of it. It is not the type of case he is compelled to visit by virtue of the fact that there exists a red ticket and he is a dispensary doctor, but at least threequarters of the work done by any general practitioner, and by most of the specialists in this country is work, at the end of which there is no fee.
It would be well for everybody to appreciate that fact, because there are enough people anxious to kick the medical profession, and if there was a general understanding of the profession and the work of the profession, they would have more defenders than they have at the moment. The big bulk of the doctor's practice is the type of case who is neither a paying patient, nor a dispensary patient, but he has to pay a new tax or an increased tax now on that kind of charitable work, and the fact that so much of it is charitable work is to get no consideration from an Irish Government where it got it from the British Government. Are we proud of that, or is the State so "hipped" and up against it that it cannot do without that extra little bit of revenue?
To get back to the doctors who pay income-tax, it may be argued by the Minister that allowance is made for all these kinds of things in working out income-tax. In theory, that may be so, but, in practice, the Minister knows that it is not so. A reasonable allowance is made for the use of a car, but that allowance does not go up or down with fluctuations in petrol or oil prices, and does not every extra 1d. or 2d. put on the gallon of petrol lower the amount which the doctor paying income-tax, or any other person paying income-tax, is allowed towards a reduction in his income for income-tax purposes? I urge the Minister to consider this amendment in the light of the existence of the precedent established by an alien Government in this country, experience of which at that time shows that its working was easy and simple, and that there was no dishonesty associated with it through those years. Surely an Irish Deputy in an Irish Parliament is not asking for anything exceptional, or anything unreasonable, when he asks that the same consideration be shown towards facilitating those who are working amongst, and on behalf of, the poor in this country as was shown by the British administration in this country.