Sir Edward Benthall replied :
“It is a direct tax on an agricultural product and it therefore has the same incidence as land revenue. It undoubtedly falls on the producer.”
“When it was first imposed in 1916, it was imposed as a war measure and with the high prices obtaining then, it probably fell on the consumer, but today it undoubtedly falls on the producer, and mainly on the ryots of Bengal, and this incidence is actually in the neighbourhood of eighteen per cent.“