The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1891-02-04
Savings Bank Exemptions.

Savings Bank Exemptions.
To the Editor Of tie Wdtchman:-In your
issue of January 81 notice your editorial
remarks on the great fraud practced by
tax-dodgers by making deposits in savings
banks just before the 1st of April, so as to
evade taxes, and after that to draw out and
place at better rate Of interest. You seem
to throw all the responsibility upon the list
ers who allow this to be done. Now, /
would ask how are the listers going to pre-
when man shall make deposits or when
he may draw them out. Listers can not
know what mans intent is when they
gather in the inventories and find certain
deposits mentioned in them. Then how
are they to know whether the deposits are
made to evade taxes or not? The listers do
not make laws but execute them.
There never was law made by the legis-
lature of this state that openly encouraged
rascality as the fifteen hundred dollar ex-
emptior provision does, and everybody
knows it that has taken any means to in
vestigate the true inwardness of the law.
You do not seem to take much stock in de-.
posts being made of 81 800 to different
members of family by the same person,
in different banks, to evade taxes. think
it would not be hard job to prove conclu-
sively that it is so, and the only remedy is
in our legislature. 1t was a great mistake
that the law was not amended last fall so
that the exemption should not exceed $780,
That is what will equalize taxes as much as
any one thing. 1 tell you, it must come, if
it takes political cyclone equal to the one
in the Western States last fall to bring it
about. 1t is the poor taxpayer that is op.
pressed, he who has no money to deposit,
or only the small savings of hard labor, that
he may have something to fall back upon in
case of sickness. J.C.G.
The answer to j. c. G's inquiries is
made easy by his emphatic declaration
that everybody who has taken any
means to investigate the true inward.
ness of the law" knows that it openly
encourages rascality, and, further on,
that /" it would not be a hard job to
prove conclusively that the particular
phase of rascality" charged is prac-
ticed. If the right men are chosen for
listers, men of long residence in town,
acquainted with its people and having
that knowledge of the affairs of their
fellow-citizens that comes from ac-
quaintance and business enterprise,
men of careful judgment, of moral
courage, fair detective qualities and
"ugly honesty"-if such men are
chosen listers there is inquisitorial
power" enough in the law to wiring
from the most unwilling the substan-
tial facts of his taxable property. 1t
is true that the listers do not make
the laws" and if it were half as true
that they execute them "-those that
they swear they will execute-there
would be infinitely less successful tax
lodging and fewer evasions of the hon.
est requirements of the tax laws. We
are not quite sure that we would throw
all the responsibility" for the abuses
of which our correspondent writes upon
the listers. The responsibility is pri-
marily with the voters. If majority
desire an honest enforcement of the
law, in its letter and spirit, and this
desire is something more than mega
tive kind of sentiment, languid i'm
pulse, they will elect for listers men
with a good head and good spinal
column-the chief ingredients of an
efficient public servant in any capacity
and such men will find all the advan-
tage of the law on their side. If they
are convinced that taxpayer is
" lodging" or evading the law, their
duty is defined in section II of the
Acts of 1882. We say if this desire of
the majority is something more than
listless sentiment, if it is an aggressive
purpose, because one difficulty in many
towns is that few, for selfish reasons,
do not want the law rigidly and hon
estly enforced, and in the absence of
an alert public opinion will jump on to
the board of listers, men with brains
enough, perhaps, but with backbone
of eristle, and without conscience or
an honest purpose.