As I sit in my poverty-stricken home wishing I could afford the price of a ham-sandwich and looking wistfully at the place where the canary’s cage used to be before I had to sell it to pay the last instalment on my income tax, I find myself in thoughtful mood.

Neighbours pop their heads in through the door and, withdrawing them softly, whisper to one another, “Don’t go in. I think he is sickening for something.”

But really it is simply that I am in thoughtful mood. A dark suspicion is stealing over me that I have been the victim of sharp practice.

It is the peculiar characteristic of the artist temperament that it will always disgorge automatically when asked to pay any sum ending with 11s. 3d., 13s. 4d., or 0s. 7½d., provided the demand is made on an official form.

Looking back over the past year, it seems to me that I have received and yielded to far more of these demands than I should have done. I name no names, but I am now convinced that there is somebody in the Inland Revenue Office who keeps saying, “Need some more of the stuff, do we? Then send good old Wodehouse another demand for £238 13s. 4d.”

And so, little by little and bit by bit, the thing goes on, until one day you see it announced in the papers that Mr. Churchill is £2,375,694 9s. 10d. in hand. And practically all of it out of my pocket.

Scarcely British, I think.

✣   ✣   ✣

And it is no use trying to get it back, either. It is only in America that you can do that. I knew a man in New York who found that he had overpaid the Federal Government $1.50. He wrote a civil letter, informing them of this, and received a civil reply, in which the Income Tax Authorities regretted the error and begged to enclose, as requested, cheque for $15.00.

My friend returned the cheque, saying that there had been a mistake, and the Authorities, more apologetic than ever, sent him another for $150. When he returned this cheque they almost grovelled and enclosed one for $1,500.

My friend was content at this point to take his profit and retire from the game, but I still think that if he had had the vision and enterprise to carry on he could have cleaned them out.

A little more of that generous and impulsive spirit is what we need in this country. Over here the Authorities would merely have written a curt reply to my friend’s first letter, noting that he acknowledged a debt of the sum mentioned and requesting him to remit cheque by early post. For of all the hard-boiled, stony-eyed, protruding-chinned descendants of Captain Kidd who ever took the orphan by the scruff of his neck and rubbed his nose in the mud, these Inland Revenue thugs are the . . .

But I must not allow myself to become bitter. Let me rather control myself with a visible effort and turn to the bright side of the Income Tax.

✣   ✣   ✣

For it has a bright side. Say what you will against it, the filling-up of Schedule D has given us all a delightful indoor game in which old and young can join with equal enjoyment.

See the family clustered round the table. There is Father, with his spectacles on, jotting down some notes on Amortisation. There is Mother, leaning over his shoulder and pointing out that by taking Sec. 6248 II and putting it on top of Sub-Sec. 9730 G he can claim immunity from the tax mentioned in Sec. 4587 M. And gathered about them are the children, sucking pencils and working out ways of doing down the super-tax.

“See, papa!” cries little Cyril gleefully. “I note that Gifts (not made as a consideration for service rendered) and money and property acquired under a will or inheritance (but the income derived from money or property received by gift, will, or inheritance) are, according to Sub-Sec. 2439, not subject to tax, and the way it looks to me is that you can knock off the price of the bullfinch’s birdseed.”

And so it goes on, each helping the other, all working together in that perfect harmony which, one had begun to think, would never again be seen in the home.

Nor is this all. Filling in the Income Tax forms has kindled again all the old spirit of love and family affection. How differently nowadays the head of the house regards his wife and children. Many a man who has spent years wondering why on earth he ever linked his lot with a woman whom he has disliked from the moment they stepped out of the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover and a gang of boys and girls who seemed to grow more repulsive every day gratefully revises his views as he scans Schedule D.

His wife may be a nuisance about the home, but she comes out strong when it is a question of Married Man’s Exemption. And the children! As the father looks at their hideous faces and reflects that he is entitled to knock off a nice little sum per gargoyle, the austerity of his demeanour softens, and he pats them on the head and talks vaguely about jam for tea.

There is no doubt that the Income Tax, whatever else it has done, has taught the British Father to value his nearest and, so to speak, dearest. It is the first practical step that has been taken against the evil of race-suicide.

✣   ✣   ✣

Of course, the system is by no means perfect yet. To lump all children together under a single head and have an iron-clad tariff is crude.

It is obviously unfair that the father of a son at whom he can look without wincing and who shows promise of developing into a slow left-hand bowler who can flight the ball and make it dip should be allowed the same compensation as the suffering parent of one of those spectacled boys with rabbit teeth and chronic colds who ask questions all the time in a squeaky, adenoidy voice. Photographs should be submitted and large bonuses granted.

I have seen photographs of myself in my youth which would infallibly have eased the situation considerably for my father, had such a system been in operation thirty-odd years ago. “Send this bird a cheque for £115 8s. 11d.,” the Authorities would have said, glancing at that one of me in the sailor suit and putting it back hastily in its envelope. “He needs it sorely.”

And a week later, after they had had time to think it over properly, my father would have received an additional £63 0s. 4½d. Conscience Money.