Tax Day is Isaac's annual reminder to dip into the works of the underappreciated British author, playwright, humorist, campaigner, and parliamentarian A.P. Herbert (1890-1971), for whom the Inland Revenue (Britain's version of the Internal Revenue Service) provided endless inspiration. Today's reading comes from Herbert's story "Wear and Tear," framed in the manner of a decision of a court. (He wrote more than 100 of these fictitious cases to illustrate absurdities in the common law.) His protagonist Albert P. Haddock, a writer, has appealed to the High Court from a decision of the Tax Court that he could not write off certain expenses that he claimed were necessary for his business, and that he could not take a depreciation deduction for wear and tear on his means of production. Mr. Justice Radish speaks:
Mr. Haddock asks for a declaration that he is, and has been for some years, entitled to certain allowances or deductions for income-tax purposes under the heading of (a) Expenses and (b) Wear and Tear of Machinery and Plant; and on the assumption that he is right be claims that a considerable sum is owing to him in respect of past years in which the Commissioners have refused to grant him such allowances.
Mr. Haddock appears on behalf of the whole body of authors, artists, and composers, and the position of a large number of creative brain-workers will be affected by our decision.
What expenses did the Inland Revenue disallow as deductions? As the court says, "they have allowed him nothing for hospitality, entertainment, or travel, and they have invariably deleted from his list of professional expenses such items as champagne, Monte Carlo, night-club subscriptions, first-nights, Deauville, and hire of yacht at Cowes." Haddock argued that those items were not luxuries or personal extravagances, but necessities for the diligent writer. "How can a man write about Monte Carlo or Cowes unless he goes to Monte Carlo or Cowes? How is he to study and depict the gilded life of Society without constant visits to the Saveloy Grill Room, to Covent Garden, to the Riviera, and other places where Society is to be found?"
As for depreciation, Haddock argued that "the author's machinery and plant are his brain and his physique, his fund of inventiveness, his creative powers. These are not inexhaustible. And if it is proper for the soap-manufacturer to be relieved in respect of the wear and tear of his machinery and the renewal thereof (which money can easily buy), how much more consideration is owing to the delicate and irreplaceable mechanism of the writer!"
Mr. Justice Radish allowed both the deductions for travel and experiences, and a deduction for expenses to keep the author in good health. The writers of today might endorse Mr. Justice Radish's reasoning, but as he was the product of A.P. Herbert's imagination they should not emulate his line of thought and create their own fictions on their tax returns.
We will return tomorrow to our usual jovial support of the welfare state.