The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1893-03-11
TAX REFORM DEPARTMENT.
LOGICAL REFLECTIONS.
From "who Pays Your Taxes."


From ssWho Pays Your Taxess"
The imposition of all taxes upon real
estate is the best system OF taxation;
because the real payers of taxes would
have conscious and direct pecuniary
interest In honest and cheap govern
ment; because it relieves capital from
taxation, and thus removes discour-
agement to its reproductive use, and
because taxes upon real estate are cas-
lily, cheaply and certainly collected and
bear least heavily on the farmer and
the worker.
Farmers as rule are skeptical OF any
benefit to come to them from transfer.
ing all taxes to real estate. They want
1t proved.
1t is notorious that In many, perhaps
in most, parts of the country farm
lands have for the last ten years been
decreasing in value, while suburban
lands have steadily increased in value.
But most of the farms are assessed just
as high as ever, while the increase in
value of suburban lands has failed to
greatly increase the assessments The
consequence is that farm lands are pay.
ing a higher tax in proportion to their
real value than arc suburban lands.
We should insist upon fair assessment
of all real estate. Again, the farmers
are now assessed, not only upon their
land and houses, but also on their
stock, their farm implements, and upon
other personal property. We should
remove all these taxes upon per-
sonal property. Thus, the farmers
stock and tools of trade. things
with which he makes his living, would
at once be relieved from burdens now
discouraging to industry. 1t is worth
noting also that the farmers personal
property is generally of character not
easily concealed and therefore open to
assessment, while the personal prop
erty of many other persons may be cas-
lily spirited out of sight when the as
SCISSOR comes around, and no law that
can be made can prevent it. If all per-
sonal property were relieved from tax
alton this source of injustice would dis
appear.
Some of the farmers are strongly OPP
posed to the idea that mortgages and
incomes should be exempt. They in
sist that the holder of the mortgage is
practically the part owner of the land
upon which the mortgage rests, and
that to tax the land and exempt the
mortgage is unjust. But, experience
shows that to tax the mortgage and ex-
empt the land is simply to tax the land
in another way, and a harder way.
The effect of taxing mortgages is to in
crease the rate at which money loans,
and to make it more difficult for Dor
rowers to get money. In other words,
the result of taxing capital in any form,
is to drive that form of capital away
from the jurisdiction in which such a
system of taxation prevails If the
attempt is made to counterfeit this
tendency of taxes upon mortgages to
raise the rate of interest by penal laws
limiting the rate, two things follow:
Lenders of money, as far as possible,
avoid placing mortgages within dis
trict subject to such tax laws, and such
as do venture their capital, defy the
laws and charge an additional rate for
the additional risk.
The idea of taxing incomes has al
ways been a seductive one to many adj
vocates of direct taxation. An income
tax, however. begins with the design of
exempting by far the larger part of the
community from taxation; for all in
come tax laws name a minimum income
that is not to be taxed; and as rule
that minimum is much larger than the
income of at least three-fourths of the
community. That is not fair; and,
besides, though man may be poor he
does not want to take charity from the
government by having some one else
pay his taxes. Ut those whose incomes
fall within the provisions of an income
tax many are able to conceal the true
amount of their incomes, SO that as a
general rule the honest man of moder-
ate means and the salaried man whose
income is easily ascertainable, whether
he will or no, pay more than their
share of the taxes.