Imposture

“ Of raising, depressing, or embasing of Money.
SOmetimes it hath hapned, that States (I know not by what raw advice) have raised or embased their money, hoping thereby, as it were, to multiply it, and make it pass for more then it did before; that is, to purchase more commodity or labour with it: All which indeed and in truth, amounts to no more then a Tax, upon such People unto whom the State is indebted, or a defalkation of what is due; as also the like burthen upon all that live upon Pensions, established Rents, Annuities, Fees, Gratuities, &c. ”

“ Rational people could have hoped for little from this their tax in the disguise of a benevolence,—tax weak, ineffective, and unequal,—a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity, and public spirit,—a tax of regulation upon virtue. ”

“ The deficiency thus created was to be met by a “succession-duty,” or application of the legacy-duty to real property; by an increase of the duty on spirits; and by the extension of the income-tax, at 5d. in the pound, to all incomes between £100 and £150. The speech in which these proposals were introduced held the House spellbound. Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and post-horses. ”

“ Thus land-rents, annuities, interest of money, emoluments of offices, salaries, even wages of servants, in short, every fixed income, I range in this first article, which I call annual income, produced from a capital already formed, either real or supposed.
This may be laid under taxation by a pound-rate, or otherwise, and forms that kind of tax which I call cumulative and arbitrary; because a man who has any sort of visible revenue, comes under this general rate, let him have ever so many necessary deductions out of it, ever so many debts and incumbrances. ”

“ Why should a man, whose income, perhaps derived from land or funded property below £150, pay nothing, while a hard working clerk, attorney, or country surgeon, who makes £155, and is not worth a tenth part of the other's realised capital, pays income-tax? ”

“ There is now, but one tax, and each man is made to pay according to the value of his property, or his business, or his labour. A land-holder, a stock-holder and the one who has houses and bonds and mortgages, pays so much per cent, on the advance of his property, and for his annual receipts—the merchant, with a fluctuating capital, pays so much on his book account of sales—the mechanic and labourer, so much on their yearly receipts, for we have no sales on credit now—that demoralizing practice has been abolished for upwards of a century. ”

“ HUMBLY SHOWETH—That this kingdom is in a state of unparalleled distress and misery, and that the principal immediate cause of this calamity, which has fallen upon all classes of persons (except that class which derive their incomes from the taxes) , is that enormous load of taxation which has taken, and which still takes, from the farmer, the manufacturer, and the tradesman, the means of maintaining their families, and of paying their debts, and of affording, in the shape of wages, a sufficiency to employ and support their labourers and journeymen. ”

“ It is a right that is recognized and openly acted upon in the world of business and of property, that has to be considered and taken into account by financiers and statesmen in the collection of revenue and the imposition of taxes. It is the general exercise of this right that makes the incidence of taxation a study for experts. Roughly its result is, the weakest pays. ”

“ Any man can pay three or four pence a day, though no poor man can, at the end of a year, pay six pounds. Take my advice, every man of you, and you will hardly feel your taxes.
But further, a tender law is the devil. When I trust a man a sum of money, I expect he will return the full value. That Legislature which says my debtor may pay me with one third of the value he received, commits a deliberate act of villany ”

“ The gross income of a given year includes rents, dividends, wages, and salaries, profits from the transaction of business or sale of property and all other gains, profits, or income derived from any source except such as are specifically exempted. In ascertaining taxable income each tax payer is entitled to deduct from gross receipts wages, salaries, and other expenses of conducting a business, occupation, or profession, depreciation, also cost of property sold. ”

“ The Income Tax, as it now exists, is an instrument of extraordinary clumsiness and complexity. An intelligent foreigner, coming freshly to the examination of its curious provisions, would be driven to the conclusion that a junta of bureaucrats, intent upon hiding the mysteries of statecraft from the knowledge of the vulgar, had of set purpose wrapped its machinery and intention in every device of obscurement which perverted ingenuity could suggest. ”

“ I have an Income of but about eighty Pounds Sterling a Year, including my own Hands Labour, nevertheless I am freely willing to pay one quarter Part of it in Taxes till my Public Debts are paid. Others that have Two hundred a Year, can with Ease pay one half of it in Taxes, if need be. Pay thy Debts; Owe no man anything is Law, Divine and Moral. Immoral Men are in the road that leads to Hell ”

“ You took that old sideboard for a debt—yes, a debt at 18 per cent. interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing psalms and wear out your trousers on the platform at the prayer-meeting, and then loan out the church's money on worthless securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. You read a penny newspaper and take books out of a circulating library. ”

“ Is it the tendency of levies and taxes to increase or decrease national income? or do government levies and taxes merely divert the existing income of the kingdom from its natural channels into forced channels? ”

“ Other taxes are principally felt by the higher and middling classes; but this most odious, this most galling tax, is felt even in the cottage of the labourer, who cannot return to refresh himself after his day of toil with his favourite beverage without paying twice its value out of his hard-earned pittance, to swell the dividend of the Company, and support these pruriencies of noble blood. ”

“ Shares that had depreciated in value and were likely to depreciate more, a lawsuit in the egg over some lands in California, a suit to upset the will, which was frantically absurd, yet irritating; interests everywhere that had to be looked after and papers in legions that had to be signed, including American income-tax papers, the most appalling documents ever devised by the wit of man for man’s distraction. ”

“ The second practical problem encountered is when we attempt to apply the faculty principle in practice; how is ability to be measured? Three measures have been suggested: expenditure, income, and property. Expenditure is open to the objection that it would place an unduly large proportion of the tax burdens on the poor, whose expenditures are larger in proportion to their means than those of other classes of society. Property is objected to [Pg 156] because large classes of society, including professional men with large incomes, would then escape taxation largely or altogether. ”

“ The national banks and trust companies in their returns to the federal government and to the state under the 12 1/2 per cent. income tax law are allowed certain deductions of income from specified types of securities in addition to the expense of conducting their business, bad debts, losses, etc. ”

“ It forbids the State legislature or local authorities to incur debts beyond a certain limit, taxes uncultivated land equally with cultivated, makes sums due on mortgage taxable in the district where the mortgaged property lies, authorizes an income tax, and directs a highly inquisitorial scrutiny of everybody's property for the purposes of taxation.
3. It forbids the 'watering of stock,' declares that the State has power to prevent corporations from conducting their business so as to 'infringe the general well-being of the State' ”

“ Wherever you find an article, a product, a trade, a profession, a sale, or a source of income, tax it! And so an edict went forth to this effect, and the people cheerfully submitted. Incomes under five thousand dollars were taxed five per cent, with an exemption of five hundred dollars and house rent actually paid. Incomes in excess of five thousand dollars and not in excess of ten thousand dollars were taxed two and a half per cent in addition, and incomes over ten thousand dollars, five per cent additional, without any allowance or exemptions whatever. ”

“ I would ask, by way of finishing the picture which our friend from Carolina so happily commenced, and in order to settle the question of reckless expenditure, on which you all seem to exhaust your eloquence, how many of those that belong to our fashionable society can afford its expenses without impairing their estates?—how many of them would be able to continue them without the assistance of credit?—and how many of them, if their estates were to be settled to-morrow, would be able to pay fifty cents in a dollar? ”

“ Under the present system of taxation taxes are shifted from the landlord to the tenant, from the creditor to the debtor, from the manufacturer to the consumer, from the corporations to their patrons—in a word, from capital to labor.
The second proposition, that the rich create their wealth, is equally untenable. Manipulation and production are totally different. ”

“ Under the income-tax laws which prevailed in the past for many years, and which covered every conceivable source of income,-rentals from real estate,-and everything else, vast sums were collected from the people of the United States. ”

“ The towns, no less than the peasantry, were indignant at the rapacity and insolence of the minions of this potentate. First, an income-tax was imposed without the concurrence of the estates, which should have been consulted. ”

“ The king's taxes must be paid. That can suffer no obstruction. What do you think about that?
Sir, this year's rent must be forgiven. I am fallen into great poverty.
Stop, all these things now. What have you done for this payment?
I cannot pay my rent.
A peon [bailiff] must be set over you for the rent, otherwise you will not pay it.
I am not able, Sir, to pay my rent: where should I get the daily allowance to a peon.
The taxes must be paid in on the tenth of the month. Go and make your money sure. ”

“ The difficulties of a fair income tax have elicited a proposition for a direct tax of so much per cent, not on income but on expenditure; the aggregate amount of each person's expenditure being ascertained, as the amount of income now is, from statements furnished by the contributors themselves. ”

“ It has been the practice to define income of individuals, and, in separate sections, under the heading 'Estates and Trusts', to provide that the tax imposed upon individuals shall apply to the income of estates or of any kind of property held in trust. ”

“ Serious financial difficulties of the States stimulated efforts to find new sources of taxation, andthe widespread belief that property was bearing an unfair burden of taxes also substantially contributed to the levying of these new taxes. ”

“ They will collect all duties until indemnity has been paid.'
"And you, you blockheads and asses, whose grandmothers were geese—do you know what this means?" the merchant went on. "It means that the United States will collect a huge sum of money—that they will collect it once. But it means also that the scoundrel Alfaro will use this condition—which he himself has brought about—as an excuse for collecting it a dozen times, as he has done before. As an excuse for more taxes, and yet more. It is you who will pay! Will pay while your wives and little ones starve, as others have starved." ”

“ Just the thing I have so often thought,” answered the syndic. “Because if they were to take off the income-tax, that sum would remain in the treasury; but it cannot remain there, because the funds have to be turned to account; and for doing this labour is needed, and labour being needed it has to be paid for, and being paid for, why, there you are. Then people have something to eat! ”

“ It could not, I think, be seriously contended that a professional man, say a Senator or a Congressman, who attends a convention to read a paper or conduct a seminar with all expenses paid has received 'income' within the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code. Nor would it matter, I assume, that he took his wife and that her expenses were also paid. Income has the connotation of something other than the mere payment of expenses. ”

“ There the people heard the list of fines levied in the courts; of tolls in the market, or taxes taken at the gates or in the harbour; of the “maltodes,” or sums paid on commodities for sale; of the “scot” levied on the property of individuals; of the “lyvelode” or livelihood, an income tax on rates or profits earned. They learned what means the corporation had taken of increasing the common revenue ”

“ More than one-half of the houses, all of those belonging to the poor or straitened, are thus relieved, while the other half, since the tax is an impost, not a quota, but an apportionment, is overcharged as much. ”

“ I. I divide taxes into proportional, which affect consumption, or, more properly, what may be called expence; cumulative, which affect property; and personal, which consist in personal service. These I explain by giving examples of each.
Chap. II. Proportional taxes may be so imposed as to affect almost every expence of living; and as all expence should arise from income, not from stock, the first principle of taxation, is, to confine all impositions to income only: whatever affects a capital is oppressive and unjust. ”