Licences for Vehicles to Replace Impressed Ones.
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It has been hard on owners to have to pay 1914 licence charges twice over. That is what, has happened and is still happening as one of the incidental consequences of the impressment of commercial motors by the military authorities of the country. Any such double payment is more of a hardship upon owners of motorbuses and chars-ii-bancs than upon owners of goods-carrying vehicles, because the charges are heavier, either by two guineas or three guineas per annum, in respect of hackney carriages. We should have thought that the local licensing authorities might havei,found the means to permit the transfer of the licences and registrations to the vehicles which were bought in substitution of others that had been commandeered, but we have had cases put before. us where this concession has not been granted. In the hurry of complying with the orders of the impressment officers, it appears that both number plates and licences went off to France in a few instances, and the absence of documents may then have caused the harsh construction of the law. We believe, that it is not asking too much to insist that sufficient elasticity should be forthwith imported into the administration of this section of the Inland Revenue Department, to the end that licence charges for any new vehicle, which is bought in place of one that was taken for the war, should be reduced proportionally to the actual periods during which the owner has been without the original vehicle.