Tax money

“ They may levy, assess, and collect an annual tax to defray the current expenses of their local government, but such tax shall never exceed for any one year one-fourth of one per cent., and shall be collectible only in current money. And all license and occupation tax levied, and all fines, forfeitures, penalties, and other dues accruing to cities and towns, shall be collectible only in current money. ”

“ When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. ”

“ The tax was not eo nomine on the notes, but was expressed to be on 'credits, money loaned, bills receivable,' etc., and its amount was ascertained by computing the sum of the face value of all the notes held by the company at the time of the assessment.
The purpose of the taxing law was said to be to lay the burden of taxation equally upon those who do business within the state. ”

“ It is inconsistent with the genius of popular government that any species of private property should be exempt from bearing its proper share of the public burdens. Government bonds and money should be taxed precisely as other property, and a graduated income tax should be levied for the support of the government and the payment of its debts. ”

“ If money be not taxed, and therefore be permitted to preserve its value, whilst every thing else is taxed, and is raised in value, the hatter, the farmer, and clothier, each employing the same capitals, and obtaining the same profits, will pay the same amount of tax. If the tax be 100l., the hats, the cloth, and the corn, will each be increased in value 100l. ”

“ A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood. ”

“ It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected. ”

“ The great diversity in the qualities of land would not suffer them to listen to an estimated valuation, or to a tax by the quantity, agreeably to the idea in your late report to Congress. That there shall be also a tariff of all personal property, to be also taxed at so much in the pound; that there shall be a specific tax on carriages, clocks, watches, and other similar articles of luxury; that money, at usury, shall be taxed at a fixed rate in the pound, excluding that which is loaned to the public; that houses, in all towns, shall be taxed at a certain proportion of the annual rent ”

“ The introduction of a substantial government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States. ”

“ To provide that taxation shall fall entirely on income, and not at all on capital, is beyond the power of any system of fiscal arrangements. There is no tax which is not partly paid from what would otherwise have been saved; no tax, the amount of which, if remitted, would be wholly employed in increased expenditure, and no part whatever laid by as an addition to capital. All taxes, therefore, are in some sense partly paid out of capital; and in a poor country it is impossible to impose any tax which will not impede the increase of the national wealth. ”

“ Those who wished to traffic on the public property were in fact laying a tax on that public, for they were diminishing, by so much as they forced States' Notes out of circulation, the public revenue, for if the States, in consequence of a diminished revenue by the effect of Bank paper, have to make loans, those loans must in the end be repaid by the public—which would be a taxing of the public for the benefit of private individuals. ”

“ It was clear that the Government must have a revenue, and that revenue could only be raised by direct or indirect taxation; and he preferred, under the circumstances of the country, indirect taxes, which the people did not feel, and were not compelled to pay unless they liked; for the poor were not compelled to buy foreign imports, but if they bought them they must pay a tax to government. ”

“ Congress evidently intended by that act, as appears by the one hundred and sixteenth, and the six following sections, to tax all the annual gains, profits, and income of every person residing here, and of every citizen residing abroad, whether derived from any kind of property, rents, interests, dividends, salaries, or from any profession, trade, employment, or vocation, or from any other source whatever, except as therein mentioned, if such annual gains, profits, or income exceed six hundred dollars. ”

“ It is one of the open secrets of finance that in almost every system of taxation the indirect overcrow the direct taxes by many millions, and have a knack for levying on the small resources of insignificant persons which direct taxes have never learned. They know how to coax pennies out of poor people whose names have never been on the tax-collector’s books. ”

“ It is to be feared, therefore, that the fairness which belongs to the principle of an income-tax can not be made to attach to it in practice. This consideration would lead us to concur in the opinion which, until of late, has usually prevailed—that direct taxes on income should be reserved as an extraordinary resource for great national emergencies, in which the necessity of a large additional revenue overrules all objections. ”

“ If our country taxes certain goods, it must tax them everywhere—not for one man and not for the next. If there is a tax of one cent on every bale of a certain commodity, each man should pay one cent for every bale he owns. If there is a tax of one cent on every dollar, each man should pay one cent for every dollar he owns.
Is this the case in the United States?
If the Government gives certain privileges to a few men, it should give the same to all. ”

“ But taxation is not so much concerned with the refinements of title as it is with actual command over the property taxed-the actual benefit for which the tax is paid. If a man directed his bank to pay over income as received to a servant or friend, until further orders, no one would doubt that he could be taxed upon the amounts so paid. ”

“ It is the foundation of its credit in the business community. The legislature well knew the peculiar system under which these institutions were incorporated, and the working of it; and, when providing for a tax on their capital at a valuation, they could not but have intended a tax upon the property in which the capital had been invested. We have seen that such is the practical effect of the tax, and we think it would be doing injustice to the intelligence of the legislature to hold that such was not their intent in the enactment of the law. ”

“ If a government were to command that its taxables should be listed at one-fourth their full value, and that a tax of $1 on the $100 should be levied on the values so listed, it would in substance have enacted a law for the taxation of its property, at full value, at 25 cents on each $100, and no amount of figuring can make out of it anything less or anything more. ”

“ Reverting to income, as distinguished from accumulated wealth, it is illuminating to note that only one person out of every 50 in the United States has a net income of sufficient size to require him to pay a tax upon it to the Federal Government. About 2,500,000 persons, or 2 per cent of the population, pay all that is collected under the Federal income tax ”

“ This brought me to the conclusion that, “when a reduction of taxation is about to take place, it is exceedingly important that great care and judgment should be exercised in the selection of the tax to be reduced, in order that the maximum of relief may be afforded to the public with the minimum of injury to the revenue.” ”

“ The estimated revenue from these sources was $877,500, affording a small excess over the sum which would be required to pay the interest on the assumed debt. The policy of the measure was discussed in a well-digested and able argument, detailing many motives, in addition to those assigned in his original report, for preferring the system now recommended to accumulated burdens on commerce or to a direct tax on lands.
A new tax is the certain rallying point for all those who are unfriendly to the administration or to the minister by whom it is proposed. ”

“ The adoption of the taxing act, as recommended by the commission, may therefore be taken, as appellant contends, to evidence a definite and specific legislative purpose to levy a new type of franchise tax, measured by corporate net income, including the tax exempt income from federal and state bonds. ”

“ Abolition of industrial trusts, those that exist because of tariff protection and those that exist because of freight discriminations whether by rebates, special rates or otherwise.
7. Taxation that will tax every man according to his accumulated wealth—tax property, not man; collect state and municipal taxes by direct tax on the accumulated wealth of society assessed at actual cash value; collect national taxes by a direct tax on the earnings of accumulated wealth, whether large or small. Have only direct taxes, for indirect taxes cover injustice and extravagance. ”

“ On the 25th of that month, the legislature passed an act providing that from the interest payable out of the treasury on bonds of the State, whether funded or unfunded, there should be retained a tax equal in amount to fifty cents on the one hundred dollars of their market value, on the first day in April of each year, and made it the duty of every officer of the Commonwealth, charged with the collection of taxes, to deduct from the matured coupons which might be tendered to him in payment of taxes, or other dues to the State, such tax as was then or might thereafter be imposed on the bonds. ”

“ Income taxes.—A favorite device in some countries, [pg 361] and often advocated in this, is a direct tax upon incomes above a certain amount, graduated so as to give a much larger rate upon large incomes than upon more moderate ones. The most obvious reason for such a distinction against the large incomes is the evident failure of our national system of taxation to distribute the burden according to ability. ”

“ 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' ”

“ It being beyond dispute, therefore, that the sum of taxation in this case was fixed almost exclusively by the gross earnings from interstate commerce, who, may I ask, can point out the distinction between taxing the gross earnings derived from interstate commerce and taxing a valuation based on such earnings? The elementary principle so often applied by the court, that a tax which may not be imposed directly cannot be levied indirectly, is decisive. ”

“ The only limitations imposed are that direct taxes, including the capitation tax, shall be apportioned; that duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform; and that no duties shall be imposed upon articles exported from any state. With these exceptions, the exercise of the power is, in all respects, unfettered.
'If a tax upon carriages, kept for his own use by the owner, is not a direct tax, we can see no ground upon which a tax upon the business of an insurance company can be held to belong to that class of revenue charges. ”

“ THE INCOME TAX.—All taxes ultimately come out of income, but when we speak of an income tax we refer to a direct levy upon income as it arises, chiefly in the form of wages, salaries, and profits. A Federal income tax was levied during the Civil War, but in the nineties the Supreme Court held that such a tax violated the constitutional provision that Congress shall not lay direct taxes except in proportion to the population of the states. ”

“ There is no illusion about the payment of a tax exaction. Each tax, according to a legislative plan, raises funds to carry on government. The purpose here is to tax earnings and profits less expenses and losses. ”

“ The equitable distribution of the costs of government through the medium of an income tax is a delicate and difficult task. In its performance experience has shown the importance of reasonable opportunity for the legislative body, in the revision of tax laws, to distribute increased costs of government among its taxpayers in the light of present need for revenue and with knowledge of the sources and amounts of the various classes of taxable income during the taxable period preceding revision. ”