Show Proposed French Tax on Servants Paris Aug 25 Liveried servants will perhaps go out of fashion since France is going to put a tax on them If the fashion Is discarded there we possibly may do the same since in America the custom of liveries is not indigenous but only a reflection of a European mode The French government proposes to take the tax off windows and doors and make up the deficit by a tax on house rents and one on servants The window and door tax bears hardest on the poor who have more windows in their houses than the rich They have taken a long time to find this out and the new law it is calculated will shift the burden on to shoulders better able to bear it The Idea is not to demand so much a head for each servant employed em-ployed which would cause inquisitions and evasions but when a tenant takes possession of a house the law asks Have you servants If the answer is affirmative the rent tax Is augmented aug-mented 40 per cent but if there is only one servant it is 20 per cent Evasion of this law will turn on the definition of a servant A servant is defined as in general any person exclusively ex-clusively and permanently in the service ser-vice of another exclusive of industrial commercial and agricultural work But the law does not consider as such a woman employed by the day to do general housework and it is by this exception that people of small means hiring one domestic will be able to creep out from the tax for it is very generally true in France that such women wo-men are married and have homes of their own to which they go at night and return in the morning and where it bappens that if they do not thelaw Is nqt likely to make a keen pursuit Thus the tax falls practically on liveries which are in very common usage in France Families of small means are likely now to discard them but it may be thought that their value should augment among the wealthy and it doubtless will for a time It frequently happens however that when a fashion becomes more desirable de-sirable because of enhanced cost it is so ostentatiously flaunted by the vulgar vul-gar rich as to bring on a reaction among the people of taste and it is the rich people of taste who fix definitely de-finitely the mode which is why I say that liveries may go out of fashion Moreover France grows more and more democratic in high circles and arbitrary distinctions tend to disappear disap-pear ADA BACHCONE |