"ASSIGNED REVENUES" 107 



This grant is important from another point of view, as it 

 inaugurated the principle of assigned revenues.* 



The meaning of the term is that the whole (or part) of the 

 proceeds of a certain tax is given (assigned) as a grant in aid 

 to local authorities. The difference between an " assigned 

 revenue " and a " grant " of fixed amount is important to 

 ratepayers, for assigned revenues increase year by year with 

 the prosperity of the country, while a fixed grant remains, of 

 course, a stationary figure. As the expenditure of local 

 authorities also increases yearly, mainly as a consequence of 

 the new duties successively imposed upon them by the 

 Government, it would seem only fail that the revenues granted 

 by Government should similarly increase. As Chancellor of 

 the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George has lost no opportunity 

 of reversing the policy of his predecessors by gradually getting 

 rid of the system of assigned revenues, and giving in their 

 place annual grants on an average of the amount raised under 

 the head of the particular revenue under review for two or 

 three years. Thus in the Revenue Act of 1911 (Section 17) 

 he substituted a fixed sum for the Customs and Excise Duties 

 which had previously been paid to the Local Taxation Account 

 under the Finance Act of 1907, the amount being arrived at 

 on the basis of the proceeds of those Duties in 1909. The 

 Committee of the Chambers used every effort to prevent this 

 robbery of the exchequers of local authorities, but fruitlessly, 

 for Mr. George had to rob local authorities under many heads 

 in order to provide funds to carry out his social policy, and 

 at the same time show a surplus in his annual Budgets. 



The question of the soundness of the financial policy of 

 giving assigned revenues in place of fixed grants was dealt 

 with at great length in a Minority Report of the Royal Com- 

 mission on Local Taxation (1901) by Sir Edward Hamilton 

 (Assistant-Secretary to the Treasury) and Sir George Murray. 

 But in reading this Report it should not be forgotten that the 

 views of Treasury officials must almost inevitably be biassed. 



* This principle was recommended in Mr. Grey's resolution carried 

 as an amendment to Mr. Pell's motion in the House of Commons, on 

 17th April, 1883. 



