The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-10-14
PARTY FEAR
SPO|LS TAX
BILL ACTION
Adoption of Senator Smoot's
Sales Tax is Certain Sooner
or Later-Has Put Hard
Work into Measure.
SENATORS LACK nerve.
BY MARK SULLIVAN

F." "AofflNGlON, IL. u, OCT. II
Sooner or later Senator Shoots sales
tax will be adopted: And when that
happens he will take the position
which belongs to him as the one Re
publican leader who has put hard work
and sound thought into the considera-
ton of tax revision.
The man who dominates the writing
OF the first permanent peace-time tax
bill next year may well make a place
in our history like that of John Sher-
man, or some of the other statesmen
who gave leadership to the countrys
fiscal affairs after the civil war. Sen
ator Smoot has believed in the sales
tax from the beginning of the year.
Most of the other Republican leaders
have believed in it also, but have re-
Trained from expressing their belief
because they did not believe it was
popular and did not think it would be
possible to put it over just now.
Much of the moral and intellectual
paralysis which has marked the Re
publican party's management of the
tax bill has been due to the very fact
that so many leaders believed in a
form of taxation which they did not
have the courage to advocate, and
have been advocating a kind of tax in
which they do not believe, nothing
could be SO fatal to good legislative
work as this kind of moral and intel
lectual timidity.
Afraid Of Phrase.
One thing the Republicans are
afraid of in connection with the sales
tax is the phrase consumption tax"
At least. they are afraid of direct
and frank and economical consumption
tax, but take cowardly comfort in the
camouflage of an indirect consumption
tax which is cumbersome aud waste
full and really takes more out of the
consumer in the long run.
The Republicans know that it is a
cardinal principle of the Democratic
party TO lay no direct taxes on articles
of food, fuel, clothing, or housing, and
they are afraid that if they pass
sales tax the Democrats may use that
slogan in the campaign next year.
It Is true that a few of the Repub-
lican leaders who believe in the sales
tax have refrained from advocating it
this year, not so much because of
cowardice as because of honest ex-i
pediency. The thought of these be-
levers in the sales tax who have been
honest but silent is that there is not
mental change in the mechanism for
bringing in the money.
Machinery Working
We now have a machinery for col
lecting taxes which is in working or
der and which will bring in the nee
essary funds. To attempt to switch
over to another form of tax in so
short time might leave us without
Nf
this argument will not apply.
OF these radical members of con-
gress and the senate who oppose the
sales tax many do so on familiar rad
ical grounds. They regard the tax
measure not primarily as system of
bringing in enough revenue to run
the government with the least injury
TO private business, but rather as a
means for what they regard as social
reform. Their primary consideration
about the tax measure is not the
amount of money to be collected and
the means of collecting it, but rather
the bringing about of a more even
distribution of wealth in the country.
To this is added a certain amount of
fear of what the Democrats will do.
Fear Party Issue
that if they reduce the rate of taxa
ton on the very rich without making
corresponding reduction in the rates
on moderate incomes, the Democrats
will take advantage of that fact in the
campaign next year. They foresee The
Democrats making a campaign issue
of the fact that men with incomes of
upward 100000 year have had their
taxes reduced, while men with smaller
incomes have not benefited by the
reduction.
AS one Republican expressed It.:
I'VE will get the 100000 a year vote,
but we may lose lot of other votes"
Persons who look at taxation in this
way are not moved by the hard fact
upon which the secretary of the treas
ury and his tax experts agree, namely
that the high rates on very large in.
comes do not really penalize the rich
because they adopt the device of TAX
ing their money out of ordinary in
vestments and putting it into free in.
come bonds.
What might have been expected rea.
sonable from a Republican party with
an immense majority in both the
house and senate would be a sound
business-like point of view towards
the subject of taxation, without regard
to political capital that can be made
out of false interpretations of what is
economically bound-Copyright 1921
by the New York Evening Post, Inc