“In this world,” said Benjamin Franklin, “nothing is certain but death and taxes”, a remark with which all taxpayers, and not least those responsible for the management of life offices, will feel at the present time in cordial agreement. The great increase in the last few years in the rate of income tax undoubtedly presses very hardly upon the tax-paying community, and it is probably, in part, owing to this increase that there have recently been several cases before the Courts on the subject of the tax, which are not without interest to those engaged in the business of life assurance. To some of these I propose to direct your attention to-night.

In considering the various methods of graduation open to us, we were impressed, having regard to the large number of series to be dealt with, by the great facility and rapidity with which formulæ of summation can be applied with the certainty that the results obtained will conform closely to the unadjusted facts. For the Sickness Tables the summation method is especially suitable, since the average number of weeks (or rate) of sickness at any age is necessarily separable for practical purposes into “periods of attack”, e.g., in the case of the Manchester Unity Experience, 1893–97, “First 3 Months”, “Second 3 Months”, “Second 6 Months”, “Second 12 Months,” and “After 2 years”, the successive values of each of which must form a regular series, whilst the sum of any two sections forming a “period of attack” in general use (e.g., First 6 Months = First 3 Months + Second 3 Months) must be equally regular in progression. It is obvious that if a summation method be adopted, and the same formula be used throughout, a combination of any two or more of the graduated series will be itself a graduated series, and will, indeed, be identical with the result of an independent graduation of the combined unadjusted rates.

When an investor buys a life interest, or an annual charge upon a life interest, the income does not reach him until tax has been deducted from the whole amount, and yet the purchaser has to pay away a material portion of the income in life assurance premiums, on which he is unable to recover the tax.

Part II of Dr. Tatham's decennial supplement to the 55th report of the Registrar-General, published in 1897, contained extremely valuable statistics relating to the relative death-rates and what are known as the “comparative mortality figures” of men engaged in different occupations. These statistics dealt not only with deaths from all causes in conjunction, but also from certain diseases; and the latter figures throw important light upon the influence of occupation on the mortality, for instance, from tuberculosis and cancer.