Revenuer

“ 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. ”

“ Devoting one's time and energies to the affairs of a corporation is not of itself, and without more, a trade or business of the person so engaged. Though such activities may produce income, profit or gain in the form of dividends or enhancement in the value of an investment, this return is distinctive to the process of investing and is generated by the successful operation of the corporation's business as distinguished from the trade or business of the taxpayer himself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gross revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country comprehends the whole annual produce of their land and labour; the neat revenue, what remains free to them, after deducting the expense of maintaining first, their fixed, and, secondly, their circulating capital, or what, without encroaching upon their capital, they can place in their stock reserved for immediate consumption, or spend upon their subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements. Their real wealth, too, is in proportion, not to their gross, but to their neat revenue. ”

“ It is common to speak of two kinds of revenue. That which we have mentioned,—the profits of capital,—is called neat revenue; while the name of gross revenue is given to the whole return made to the capitalist; that is, his reproduced capital and his profits together make his gross revenue, and his profits alone make his neat revenue. ”

“ He slowly patrolled the bank below the broad, thin, crystal sheet, seeing naught but its rainbow hovering elusively in the sun, and its green and white skein-like draperies pendulous before the great dark arch over which the cataract fell. The log caught among the rocks in the spray at the base was still there, seeming always to rise while the restless water seemed motionless.
No trace that human beings had ever invaded these solitudes could he discover. No vague, faint suggestion of the well-hidden lair of the moonshiners did the wild covert show forth. “The revenuers war smarter'n me ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ When the farm begins to produce you are to have all you and your family—this is an illustration, you know—can consume for your own use. The balance is to be sold, and one-third of the proceeds is to be paid into the treasury of the company and credited on your purchase of shares. When you have paid for all your shares in this way you will have no further payments to make, except such levy as may be made by the company for running expenses. You, as a shareholder of the company, will have a voice with the other shareholders in determining what that levy shall be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a word, what the company says is income shall be income, and what it says is capital shall be capital.' 'In most if not in all cases, the inquiry as to the time when the profits were earned by the company is an immaterial one as between the tenant for life and remainder-man. ”

“ Complaint is made that the master finds that the companies are entitled to a net return of 7 per cent per annum upon the respective values of their properties devoted to this public use. The character of the business in which an investment is made, the locality in which it is placed, the returns secured in that locality from other investments of a similar nature, the uniformity and certainty of the return, and the risks to which the principal and the income from it are subjected, condition the measure of a fair return upon capital invested. ”

“ In a monarchy the providing of revenues for the king's household, and the expenditure of those revenues in the support of the household, may approximate very closely to the character of private economics, as when the chief source of revenue is the royal demesne, or to public economics when the chief source of revenue is taxation, and the king is regarded merely as a public official to be supported as other public officials are. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Five per cent is all the owner of the money is entitled to, while if the business returns more than that amount, it will be due to my management. I, and those associated with me, are entitled to all that is made above five per cent. ”

“ Speaker, is a precious mockery:—a preamble without an act,—taxes granted in order to be repealed,—and the reason of the grant carefully kept up! This is raising a revenue in America! This is preserving dignity in England!
7. Never did a people suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble. It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive (but too comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance—a preambulary tax. ”

“ At the beginning of any year take the amount of real wealth in the hands of the non-producers. During the year the governments continue, the taxes are gathered and the expenses are paid: your debts, your expenses and all; the producers have continued to labour as usual, and at the end of the year find themselves just where they were at its beginning; but the property of the wealthy classes has increased about three per cent. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ He hath a vast revenue constantly arising from the hearth of the Householder, the sweat of the Labourer, the rent of the Farmer, the industry of the Merchant, and consequently out of the estate of the Gentleman: a large competence to defray the ordinary expense of the Crown, and maintain its lustre. ”

“ The lowest rate, he tells us, at which advances used to be obtained from capitalists, even upon the land-tax, which seems to have been considered the surest part of the national revenue, was eight per cent., although repayment was made within the year, and premiums were generally granted to the subscribers. On anticipations of other taxes, counting premiums, discount, and interest, the public had sometimes to pay twenty, thirty, and even forty per cent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The only considerable branch of the public revenue which yet remains unmortgaged, is thus regularly spent before it comes in. Like an improvident spendthrift, whose pressing occasions will not allow him to wait for the regular payment of his revenue, the state is in the constant practice of borrowing of its own factors and agents, and of paying interest for the use of its own money. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent of the property, nor the amount of the revenue therefrom, nor what is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even the simplest fact about these matters has been baffled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Digest the whole, public and private, Dutch, French and Spanish, into a table, showing the sum of interest due every year, and the portions of principal payable the same year. Take the most certain branch of revenue, and one which shall suffice to pay the interest, and leave such a surplus as may accomplish all the payments of the capital, at terms somewhat short of those at which they will become due. Let the surplusses of those years, in which no reimbursement of principal falls, be applied to buy up our paper on the exchange of Amsterdam, and thus anticipate the demands of principal. ”