New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-01-28
TAX REFORM AND CANAL IMPROVEMENT


The recommendations of the State Committee
on Canals leave the State Committee on Taxa
ton in a sorry plight. The canals cannot be i'm
proved without spelling utterly the new plan for
leyying State taxes. The chief virtue claimed
by the Taxation Committee for their bill is that
II divorces State from local taxation They were
ordered TO devise a comprehensive scheme of
systematic reform. but instead of undertaking
that task they cOntented themselves with Dlan-
ming some arbitrary taxes for the purpose pri-
marlly OF III ling new source from which to
draw the State revenues now raised by the
general property tax, and only secondarily of
finding a scientific basis either for general tax
alton or for the particular levies determined
upon.
II has been reported that Senator Stranahan
the chairman of the committee when urged to
make the bank tax lower than per cent on
the ground that the Pennsylvania tax was less
than half that rate replied that the committee
could not yield 10 arguments that some other
rate was more just, because they had the i'm
perative task before them of raising 100000
from the properties they had marked out for
State taxation, and the rates had TO be fixed TO
produce the needed sum- OF course they could
not, when the problem was simply raising so
much money from certain predetermined proper
ties. The same point of view is shown in the
committees report when ii is said: I'm fixing
'the rate to be paid on mortgage debts we have
"heen controlled mainly by the amount Of reve-
niue which the State needs" Thus it is evident
that no pretence is made of reaching a scientific
system of taxation even for State purposes,
much less for the abolition of the chief tax evils,
which are local. The committee are perfectly
honest and frank about this. Whatever the
shortcomings of their work, they ask that it be
accepted as giving what they think the most
imperatively needed and practical reform in our
tax laws. That is abolshing the general prop
erty tax for State purposes and with ii the
always troublesome equalization of assessments
between the several counties.
But what shall be thought of this great tax
reform If It fails TO do the very thing to the
accomplishment of which every other considera-
ton was made subsidiary? Yet even before this
method of raising State revenue is adopted the
people are face 10 face with the fact that 1t is
not adequate 10 the prospective expenses of the
State, and that no new enterprises can be IN
dertaken without resorting to the general prop
erty tax and the Equalization Board which the
committees bin processes 10 abolish. General
Greene reports that the annual interest and
sinking fund charge for the proposed canal i'm
provement viii be a little over S4,500.O00. The
plan is TO levy this on the canal counties, but
whether charged 10 them or TO the whole State
IL could be collected only by a general property
tax on the area selected and a continuation of
the equalizing system, which, we are told, must
be done away with, even IL all the other evils of
unjust and unequal taxation remain
1t may be thought that the general property
owners Of the State will not so much feel the
burden Of new $4,jOOOO0 tax If S1OO00OOO
now paid directly 10y them is secured from
banks and mortgages, even if in the end IL still
comes out Of their pockets. That is all well |