Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-01-05
Editor of The Evening Star:

| Neither the District Commissioners nor
| The Star, judging from late publications.
seem to have arrived at any conclusion
how to apply the tax on bicycles after it
shall have been levied. Usually taxes are
laid as the need for them arises, but in
this case the tax is levied first and the
need hunted up afterward. Now the fact
is that the District already collects more
money in taxes than Congress permits it
to spend If there is any rational ground
on which a tax on bicycles can be based
1t has not yet been shown. A tax on
vehicles moved by horses and in fact on
wagons and horses both would have some
show of reason, as the wear and tear of our
streets, which annually take hundreds of
thousands of dollars to replace, is caused
entirely by wagons, and the sweeping of
the streets, which cost many thousands
of dollars annually to remove, come nearly
all from draft animals. The bicycle wears
out no pavement and leaves no dirt on the
street, yet no one proposes to make the
owners of private horses or wagons pay
special tax, and such a tax would be log
ically and legally as unjust a tax
| bicycles. Bicycles. like horses and wagons,
are persona. property, and are taxed as
such already under the general law, and
it is very doubtful whether such a tax
would hold in law; it would certainly be un-
just to tax them a second time. And the
fact that special policemen are detailed to
arrest offending bicycle riders or to recover
stolen wheels, no more iustifes the special
taxing of the owners of wheels than the
fact that school houses have to be built
and teachers hired to educate children JUS
titles a special tax being levied on parents
or guardians whose children use the
schools. The Star, in a late editorial, puts
the value of bicycles a $50. and concludes
that tax of 81 per wheel, being , per cent,
comes as near as practicable TO the present
rate of the personal tax. Now, the fact is,
that half the bicycles in use would
not bring so under the hammer, fully one
third not 81; brand new, wheel. best
make can be bought for $40 On the INSTALL
ment plan and a deduction can generally
be had for cash payment. The proposed
tax of 81 per wheel comes nearer > per cent
than = per cent on the poorer wheels. and
the poorest wheels are owned by the
poor the poor pay the highest tax. There
is, however, danger that the lawmakers
on the hill who, unlike our Commissioners.
depend on popular suffrage for their polit-
zeal existence, will set the example at the
national capital of taxing bicycles and thus
excite the opposition of their wheeling con-
stituency, who are well organized and
have on more than one occasion made or
marred the political aspirations of candi-
dates This probably accounts for the lack
of interest shown by our local wheelmen in
the recommendations of the Commission
ers, who evidently get their IDEAS of tax
alton from the large cities in Europe,
where not only wheels, but private horses
and carriages, windows, &c, within these
cities, and all produce about to enter the
municipal tax. We have not yet arrived al
this pass in this country, and it is not likely
that we ever shall.
January 4, 1893 G. r. kEEF Elk.