Litchfield enquirer., 1880-01-08
Taxation.

An article in recent Tribune, followed by more detailed exhibits in subsequent pa- pers, shows the gross unfairness and inequality of taxation in New York city. The Tribune ayers that, out of $50, 556 people engaged in some gainfur occupation in that place, only 12, 806 are assessed on personal property at all. Near half of this number swear that they have no personal property subject to taxation so that probably not more than one in fifty of the persons who earn money in New York pays any tax on personal property; yet, against these few thousand people is assessed person. al property to the amount of near two hundred millions of dollars, and the tax laid on it is about five and half millions, or 3, 76 per. cent of it's assessed value.
 The Tribune estimates that more than four fifths of the personal property of the city es- capes assessment altogether; and the classes of property exempted would certainly indicate this. Some of these are foreign capital in the hands of New York agents; stock of corpora tions taxed on their capital; products of other states on sale III New York, if the proceeds are to be remitted to such states; bonds; mortgages; promissory notes; capital invested in other states on securities held by agents there shares in national banks; $1,5OO be- longing to any priest or minister.
 It will be observed that most of the above species of property would be liable to taxation under the laws of Connecticut but we doubt whether the Connecticut assessor really gets much over half of the peasonal property actu- ally liable to taxation into the assessment lists.
 In principle the fairest and most productive of all taxes is. the income tax. Then, real estate, now so heavily burdened with taxation, would only pay in proportion to it's produc- tiveness. Our older readers will recollect the time when Connecticut real estate paid taxes only upon three per cent of it's value; personal property, upon sic per cent. This was clum- sy attempt to equalize taxation In proportion to income, and continued if we are not mis- taken, till within the past thirty years Now the same result is reached indirectly, though illegally, by the common practice of assessing real estate at little more than half it's value
 The trouble with mixed income and prop erty tax is that it leads at once to double tax ation. A man owning a Connecticut farm probably pays what would be equal to twen- ty per cent. income tax on that property, already owning bank stock, he pays nearly in the same proportion. To add an income tax fov ho taxation of the most oppressive description. To be just and to be effective, the income tax should be the chief, if not the only tax levied.
 There are some very serious practical objec- tions, however, to the income tax. It is al- ways extremely unpopular; though that may very we'll be because it makes the wealthy contribute more largely to the support of the government that protects them than they can be compelled to do in any other way. It is inquisitorial, giving public officer the right to pry into the affairs of the citizen-an odious form of assessment with free people. It is apt to be unfair in practice, bearing hard on the honest man who frankly discloses the true condition of his affairs, and affording great op- portunities for deceit to the person who is dis posed to cheat the tax-gatherer.
 Indeed, the whole question of taxation is one of the most difficult problems remaining to be solved by some future statesman As the matter now stands, the poor seem to escape taxation but the burden of it is very apt to fall, indirectly it is true, but more heavily on them than on any other class. The very rich are, in reality, the class which escape with the lightest taxation Import duties which fall on the consumer in every grade of life, affect them less seriously than others since their con- sumption is smaller in proportion to income, than that of any other class. Taxes on per sonal property they escape, for the most part, and taxes on real estate are apt to come out of the pocket of the tenant rather than of the landlord. In short it comes back to the same old complaint: that law and taxation bear lightly on the millionaire; the former is for the poor, the latter for the middle classes.