This blog posts extracts from E J Rudsdale's diaries of life on the home front in Britain during the Second World War.
Each extract was posted exactly 70 years after it was first written, marking the 70th anniversary of the Second World War between 2009-2015.
23rd April 1940
A Budget was announced today, with Income Tax at 7/6 in the pound. Who cares at £3 per week?
Eric was earning £3 a week as an Assistant Curator at Colchester Castle Museum - slightly under the average working man's wage of £3-9s in 1939.
3 comments:
Barbara Butler
said...
Presumably at £3 a week Eric did not qualify for income tax. It depends at what level of wage the 7/6 in the £ kicked in. It was very high. 7/6 in the £ is the equivalent of 37.5 pence.My mother worked for the Post Office in London in 1940 and had a higher wage than her fiance (my father) who was in the army and stationed at GHQ.
Thanks for your helpful insight on this, it certainly puts the wartime income tax burden into context! I suspect Eric did not qualify for income tax and clearly the armed forces were not very highly paid either. CP
George Orwell's wartime diaries provide further context on the increased levels of income tax levied on higher wage earners - see his entry for 9 August 1940 at: www.orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2010/08/ Peter Davison's accompanying notes on Orwell's Diaries confirm that income tax was levied on only the top 20% of earners in 1939 and clearly Eric Rudsdale did not fall into this category on only £3 a week. CP
3 comments:
Presumably at £3 a week Eric did not qualify for income tax. It depends at what level of wage the 7/6 in the £ kicked in. It was very high. 7/6 in the £ is the equivalent of 37.5 pence.My mother worked for the Post Office in London in 1940 and had a higher wage than her fiance (my father) who was in the army and stationed at GHQ.
Thanks for your helpful insight on this, it certainly puts the wartime income tax burden into context! I suspect Eric did not qualify for income tax and clearly the armed forces were not very highly paid either. CP
George Orwell's wartime diaries provide further context on the increased levels of income tax levied on higher wage earners - see his entry for 9 August 1940 at: www.orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2010/08/
Peter Davison's accompanying notes on Orwell's Diaries confirm that income tax was levied on only the top 20% of earners in 1939 and clearly Eric Rudsdale did not fall into this category on only £3 a week. CP
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