3.
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increases of duty under the Stamp Ordinance and in the ammual fees for motor licences) I am satisfied that the limit to remunerative enhancement of taxes has been all but reached, and that any appreciable reduction of next year's foreseen deficit must be engineered on the expenditure and not on the revenue side.
5.
As regards an income tax I am fully convinced that even a mere suggestion of the idea at the present juncture would be a mistake of the first magnitude; it would not only provoke universal opposition but would at once dry up the fount of philanthropy which at present feeds the Tung Yah liospitals, the Po Leung Kuk, the District Watch Force, St. John's Ambulance Brigade and other indispensable institutions and social services which Hong Kong is fortunate in having financed by private subscription instead of from public funds.
6.
I am glad to say that the balance on our loan funds will be sufficient to meet in great part one urgent and unforeseen liability. The present Central Market, completed in 1895, has recently had to be shored up in order to postpone temporarily (while plans for a new one are being got out) an imminent collapse that cannot be economically averted, The replacement is likely to cost something between half and three quarters of
a million dollars, but I will address you separately in the matter when a properly calculated estimate can be given. Although this liability has fallen upon the Colony at a most untoward juncture it need not be too greatly deplored, as the doomed building is dark, dirty and cramped in its accommodation and would anyhow have had to be pulled down in the interests of
hygiene at a not far distant date.
7.
But even after setting a new Central Market against
Loan Account and after a radical combing and pruning of departmental proposals I find myself faced with an estimated revenue of roughly twenty-eight and three-quarter million