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AUSTRALIAN TRAINERS AND INCOME TAX. Several Sydney trainers were- fined for neglecting to furnish income-tax returns for 1913, and some are deserving of sympathy. The general plea was ignorance of the law, and there is no doubt such was absolutely the position. They knew they had not made a taxable income during 1913. and, therefore, reckoned there was no necessity to supply a return. Horse-training is far from being the profitable business, many people believe, and it often puzzles me how some trainers manage to make iilds meet. The man with eight or nine horses has a fairlv large team, as things go in Australia, and vet, assuming he is getting 2.50 for each he will m not profit greatly unless he wins a fair share of xaecs. and receives ten per cent of the value of stakes won, that being an understood thing between some owners and trainers, though far from ail. After feeding a horse and the boy that looks after it, as well as paying wages to the latter, there is not a great deal left of 2.50, and there are owners who get it done for less. I believe the magistrate who heard the cases pooh-poohed the idea of it costing 55 a week to properly feed a race horse, and expressed to the effect thnt a draught horse, which would require more to eat. could be fed for that. Probably so, but there is such a thing as quality as well as quantity, and though a filling meal is obtainable in Sydney at twelve cents, it is questionable whether the magis-: trate who reckoned that what would satisfy a draught horse should be quite good enough for a race horse would care altout patronizing auy restaurant catering at the figure mentioned. The late I. Larnshaw, who went thoroughly into such matters, reckoned it used to cost him slightly over a week for each of his horses, and as he always had a large team in training the expense would be proportionately less for him than the man with only a few in his stable. Therefore, a week is far from an exaggerated estimate, despite magisterial opinion to the contrary. Pilot in Sydney Referee.
