Revenue

“ The revenue involves not only the supply of the treasury with money, but the question of protection to manufactures. On these connected subjects, therefore, Gentlemen, as I have promised to keep nothing back, I will state my opinions plainly, but very shortly.
I am in favor of such a revenue as shall be equal to all the just and reasonable wants of the government; and I am decidedly opposed to all collection or accumulation of revenue beyond this point. An extravagant government expenditure, and unnecessary accumulation in the treasury, are both, of all things, to be most studiously avoided. ”

“ The wealth of the state consists in the fortune of its members. The actual revenue of the state is that share of every private fortune, which the public has been accustomed to demand for national purposes. This revenue cannot be always proportioned to what may be supposed redundant in the private estate, but to what is, in some measure, thought so by the owner; and to what he may be made to spare, without intrenching on his manner of living, and without suspending his projects of expense, or of commerce. ”

“ In computing either the gross or the net revenue of any society, we must always, from their whole annual circulation of money and goods, deduct the whole value of the money, of which not a single farthing can ever make any part of either. ”

“ It is a conceded point that our Government must by some means or other have revenue. The greatest statesmen and patriots of this country have united, I believe, in considering commerce as our most fruitful source of revenue and riches. It presents a mode of fiscal exaction, the most in union with the spirit and feelings as well as the interests of the American people—that of indirect taxation. ”

“ The public revenue is derived from the custom duties, direct taxes on property, licenses to trade houses, stamped paper, stamps, import and export duties, port dues, municipal duties in the capital and in the departments, duties on indirect inheritance, trade patents, cattle marks, etc. ”

“ And on the same principle a note given for a wager on the future amount of a branch of the public revenue is declared void; because it interests an individual in diminishing the production of the revenue. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and forever, by the clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds. ”

“ The chief sources of revenue are direct taxes, indirect taxes, customs duties, post and telegraph and post-office savings banks receipts, railway receipts, and profits or royalties on forests, domains and mining. ”

“ When, by different taxes upon the necessaries and conveniencies of life, the owners and employers of capital stock find, that whatever revenue they derive from it, will not, in a particular country, purchase the same quantity of those necessaries and conveniencies which an equal revenue would in almost any other, they will be disposed to remove to some other. ”

“ In revenue, it has, since the year 1789, yielded one hundred and ninety-one millions of dollars. During the first four years after the commencement of the present government, the revenue averaged only about two millions annually; during a subsequent period, of four years, it rose to an average of fifteen millions, annually, or became equivalent to a capital of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, at an interest of six per centum per annum. And if our commerce is reëstablished, it will, in the course of time, net a sum for which we are scarcely furnished with figures, in arithmetic. ”

“ Fourteen millions, in taxes, and in the advanced prices which must follow, are one eighth of 112 millions revenue, which, by the necessary rise in the price of every thing, is carried to 126 millions. ”

“ The revenue of a state is largely made up of taxation, and the general principles of taxes are discussed in Taxation and Finance. In some countries the public or state domain may contribute substantially to the revenue, as do the crown forests in Russia, while in other countries important contributions are made from the state railways, post and telegraph services, &c. For the historical development of the English revenue see English Finance, and for other countries see the sections on nuance in the articles dealing with the various countries. ”

“ The earliest forms of public revenue are those obtained from the property of the chief or ruler. Land, cattle and slaves are the principal kinds of wealth, and they are all constituents of the king’s revenue; enforced work contributed by members of the community, and the furnishing commodities on requisition, further aid in the maintenance of the primitive state. Financial organization makes its earliest appearance in the great Eastern monarchies, in which tribute was regularly collected and the oldest and most general form of taxation—that levied on the produce of land—was established. ”

“ That portion which he annually saves, as, for the sake of the profit, it is immediately employed as a capital, is consumed in the same manner, and nearly in the same time too, but by a different set of people: by labourers, manufacturers, and artificers, who reproduce, with a profit, the value of their annual consumption. His revenue, we shall suppose, is paid him in money. ”

“ A high revenue, raised on the large production and consumption of weak cloth and strong liquor, does not show the material prosperity of the country. Suppose you were to tax the production of good pictures, good books, good houses, or honest men, where would your revenue be? ”

“ Nor is it only our revenue from duties that would be increased to an extent sufficient of itself, in a few years, to pay the principal and interest of the debt incurred in the construction of these works, but our internal revenue, also, would be prodigiously augmented. ”

“ Thus may any Gentleman, with very little trouble, apportion his Income:—and as no two Gentlemen live exactly alike, this Table will shew, by inspection only, what branch of Expense may best be curtailed, so as to afford an addition to any other branch, and still keep his whole Expenses short of his actual Revenue. ”

“ It is my wish that the collection of the revenue should be organised on a strictly business basis, with the same guarantees for efficiency and fidelity in the selection of the chief and subordinate officers that would be required by a prudent merchant. ”

“ No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital. ”

“ The revenue which pays for the produce of the land, exists already in the hands of those who purchase that produce; and, if the price of subsistence were lower, it would still remain in their hands, where it would be just as available for taxation as when, by a higher price, it is transferred to the landed proprietor. ”

“ Another source of revenue in British imperial finance is that from fees in courts of justice, patent stamps and the like, which is usually classified, like the income of the post office, as revenue derived from other sources than taxes. ”

“ In that rude state of society which precedes the extension of commerce and the improvement of manufactures; when those expensive luxuries, which commerce and manufactures can alone introduce, are altogether unknown; the person who possesses a large revenue, I have endeavoured to show in the third book of this Inquiry, can spend or enjoy that revenue in no other way than by maintaining nearly as many people as it can maintain. ”

“ A revenue, Charlie, is the income or yearly sum of money of a State, raised from taxes on the people or their property, from duties on foreign merchandise imported into the country, and from the sale of public lands and other sources, to meet the expenses of the government. A remonstrance, Bryce, is a setting-forth in strong terms, either by writing or by word of mouth, the facts and reasons against something complained of or opposed, as unjust, unwise, or unadvisable. ”

“ The price paid to the farmer for his wool is the compound of the several revenues of the cultivator, the shepherd and the landlord. Although the farmer reckons as net produce only the surplus remaining after payment of his landlord and his servants in husbandry, yet to them these payments are items of revenue—rent to the one and wages to the other—to the one, the revenue of the land, to the other, the revenue of his industry. ”

“ The source of revenue to Dens shall be the initiation fees, fines, and a per capita tax, whenever the Grand Cyclops shall deem such tax necessary and indispensable to the interests and objects of the Order.
Sec. 7. All the revenue obtained in the manner aforesaid, shall be for the exclusive benefit of the Order, and shall be appropriated to the dissemination of the same and to the creation of a fund to meet any disbursement that it may become necessary to make to accomplish the objects of the Order and to secure the protection of the same. ”

“ The proper business of finance, I take it, ought to be to consider of the means to improve the revenue, and introducing economy into the expenditures; to recommend general systems of finance, without having any thing to do with the actual administration of them, because, if he engages in the executive business, we shall be deprived of his talents in more important concerns. ”

“ He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. ”

“ The fact that its measure is gross revenue is consistent with a tax on the privilege of doing a volume of business which would yield that revenue, just as the Legislature indicated. But we have declined to regard mere gross receipts as a sound measure of going-concern value in a practical world of commerce, where values depend on profitableness of a business, not merely its volume. ”

“ Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects; first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and, secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. ”

“ It must be observed, that our revenues are raised almost wholly on imported goods. Suppose prize goods enough should be brought in to supply our whole consumption. According to their construction we are to lose our whole revenue. ”

“ Now a proposition to tax the revenues of the rich in a progressive proportion of one per cent for every fortune of a thousand francs, two for every two thousand, fifty for every fifty thousand, "and so on progressively,"—without stating, however, whether those who possess a revenue of a hundred thousand francs are to pay a hundred per cent, or what is to become of those who possess two hundred thousand. ”

“ Of the Funds or Sources of Revenue which may peculiarly belong to the Sovereign or Commonwealth The funds or sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or commonwealth must consist either in stock or in land. ”

“ The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase without it. ”

“ If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. ”

“ Our taxes of course will be diminished, and a considerable portion of revenue may then be expended in great public improvements; in encouraging the arts and sciences; in patronising the operations of industry; in fostering the inventions of genius, and in diffusing the blessings of knowledge. ”