Story: Taxes

‘Tightwad’ gets hit hard in the pocket by a shell knocking out his roll of pound notes in this 1915 cover of the New Zealand Observer. In the decades before the First World War the top rate of income tax had crept up to 6.65%, then in three years it rose to 37.5%. The increase was largely to fund the war effort. Income tax revenue rose eleven-fold over the four years of the war, surpassing customs duties as the single most important tax.