Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1914 — Injustice of War Tax on Theatres is Very Plain. [ARTICLE]

Injustice of War Tax on Theatres is Very Plain.

The war tax seems inexcusably unfair in many particulars. Without regard to the amount of business a theatre does it is assessed on the seating capacity. Manager Ellis, for instance, fell for a SSO tax and he paid it right offvthe bat, but he has scarcely an average of one show a week in his theatre, while the tax is just the same as though his theatre was located in the heart of Chicago, where performances were held twice or three times a day, seven days in the week and 365 days a year. The same unfairness maintains in the cigar and tobacco business. A barbershop, where a few brands of cigars are kept as a convenience to customers, is required to pay $4.80 per year, while the biggest and best located store of the United Tobacco Company, doing a business that runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, pays just the same, $4.80. The framers of the law had about as correct an idea of equality as a hog has about Sunday.