It will be observed that there is a remarkable lack of correlation between the income tax and the death duty assessments. The former have grown most satisfactorily. The latter grew in the first few years of the operation of the Harcourt revised Death Duties and then became, for practical purposes, stationary. There can be no doubt that the explanation is to be found in the increase of gifts made inter vivos to avoid the payment of death duty, and that the estates reviewed in 1908-9 should have been nearer £400,000,000 than £300,000,000.

Parliament has tried to meet this avoidance by enacting (Finance Act of 1909, which was passed into law in 1910 after rejection by the Peers in 1909) that gifts inter vivos shall not be exempted from death duty unless made more than three years prior to the death of the giver.

The apparent discrepancy between the £8,376,000,000 arrived at on page 75 and the £13,700,000,000 arrived at on page 65 is therefore not an inaccuracy, but an accurate consequence of the facts referred to.

As it stands, then, the table on pages 74-75 represents the greater part, but not the whole, of the property of the persons to whom it relates. Nevertheless, it gives us as accurate an idea of the manner of distribution as though it dealt with the whole.