The Opelousas courier., 1895-09-14
SPEECH OF THOMAS G. SHEAR.
MAN.
All Parties in Favor of Home Rule in Tax
alton.
INEQUALITY OF TAXATION.

All fart1es In Favor of Home Rule in Tax.
alton.
INEQUALITY OF TAXATION.
Every M will admit that UNEQUAL
and irregular taxation is a curse to any
state or city. Where the same amount
OF property of any particular kind is
held in equal shares by a thousand cit
liens, OF whom 100 are taxed up to the
full value OF that property, zoe are
taxed up to only half it's value, 200 up
to only one-tenth of it's value, and the
other 500 not taxed at all, it is mani
fest that such taxation isso shockingly
unjust as to be little better than rob-
berry of the small number who pay in
full. Such a system of taxation ought
not to be endured for a single day, I'M
less, indeed, it is absolutely impossible
to devise any more equal and impartial
system.
TAXATION OF PERSONAL PROPERTY.
The taxation of personal property,
everywhere and under all circumstan-
ces, operates with precisely this injus-
tice and inequality. There is not now.
there never a and there never will
be, any method of taxing personal
property in use which does not work
with this abominable inequality and
oppression. The experiment has been
tried in all our forty-four states, and
in every county, city and town, and al
ways with the same general result.
Five Or six different Investigations
have been made in this state within the
last forty years, and in every instance
the commissioners have unanimously
reported that all methods of taxation
of personal property used in this state
are utter failures, resulting only in
an equal mixture of farce and
fraud. In every instance, with
n exception, the Investigators
have been warmly in favor of taxing
personal property, and have concluded
with recommending some more strin-
gent system for that purpose. But
they have all agreed upon the general
fact that the tax has never been i'm
partially. fairly, Or e%fectually collect
ed, either in this state or anywhere
else in the world, SO far as they have
been able to find out.
oHIo's SEVERE METHODS.
In the state of Ohio, where probably
the most rigid and severe methods of
taxing personal property are enforced,
where every citizen is required to
make detailed returns of his assets,
where the penalties for failure to make
such returns are very severe and the
penalties for false returns much
and where detectives and
spies are rewarded with a commission
of twenty per cent. on all they can
discover, a commission was appointed
last year to investigate the subject
and to devise some still stringent
method of collection. This commission
has just reported. showing that the
penalty and spy system of Ohio is,
if anything, a worse failure than the
more lenient system of u w state.
In Ohio the official spies succeeded
in reaching much more personal prop
erty than did the assessors Of New
York, but the only result is to make
the inequality between different classes
of citizens, and especially the inequaL
ity between the wealthy and compare
tive poor, very much greater than it is
in New York. The wealthy citizens
of Ohio pay a smaller proportion of
the personal property tax, as compared
with the rest Of the state, than do the
wealthy citizens Of New York; and the
unanimously reported that
in the large cities the taxation of person
al property is an utter failure. The spy
system, upon which SO much expecta-
ton was based, is reported to be the
deadest failure of all. the amount thus
collected being perfectly insignificant,
obtained at enormous cost, and result
ing in driving a vast amount of valu-
able property put of the state