Vat

“ The presses are calculated to weigh so much. Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede to half a press a vat, or even less. Cold wet weather reduces the produce. Warm sunny weather will send it up again. Short stunted plant from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the loading vat. ”

“ At times the temperature in the foregoing is lowered to 34° F., but not frequently.
Vessels. —Formerly tierces were used almost entirely, but the trend has been toward the use of vats or casks, uniform so far as possible in capacity, since it tends to better standardization. The vats can be taken out for airing, washing and sunlight, which is a prime requisite.
Dimensions of a standard vat are about as follows: For 1,500 pounds capacity, 42 inches high, 42 inches in diameter at the head, 48 inches in diameter at the bilge or center of vat. Thickness of stave one inch. ”

“ See generally Kleine 3, figure 1. " 'The logic or rationale of the [VAT] rests squarely on the benefits received principle of taxation-government services are essential to the operation of any business enterprise . . . and a part of these public service costs should properly be included in the cost of doing business.' " Id., at 4 (citation omitted) .
The SBT Analysis, at 20-21, provides us with the following simplified example of how value added is determined. Assume a bakery's sole revenue comes from the sale of bread. ”

“ On the table behind him lie the medicines which have been prescribed for him, certain pills labelled "Petitions against the property tax," and a huge bolus ticketed "economy," "to be taken immediately." On the same subject a month later on is a sketch by an amateur, etched by the artist, bearing the title of Economical Humbug of 1816, or Saving at the Spiggot and Letting Out at the Bunghole. From a series of small vats, "Assessed taxes," "Property tax," "Customs," "Excise," and other streams of "supply," are pouring into a huge vat labelled "The Treasury of J. Bull's Vital Spirits." ”

“ We see thus that every pound of the raw material sent to England is returned. The cultivator receives for it one penny, and when it returns to him in the form of cloth, he pays for it from one to two shillings, the whole difference being absorbed in the payment of the numerous brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, men, women, and children, that have thus been interposed between the producer and the consumer. ”

“ The produce of a tax levied in the former way will vary only according to the variations in the real produce of the land, according to the improvement or neglect of cultivation. The produce of a tax levied in the latter way will vary, not only according to the variations in the produce of the land, but according both to those in the value of the precious metals, and those in the quantity of those metals which is at different times contained in coin of the same denomination. The produce of the former will always bear the same proportion to the value of the real produce of the land. ”

“ That every person, firm, corporation, or company carrying on or doing the business of refining petroleum, or refining sugar, or owning or controlling any pipe line for transporting oil or other products, whose gross annual receipts exceed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, shall be subject to pay annually a special excise tax equivalent to one quarter of one per centum on the gross amount of all receipts of such persons, firms, corporations, and companies in their respective business in excess of said sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. ”

“ Another class of considerations is opened, if we suppose that this impartiality is not maintained, and that the tax is imposed, not on the commodity, but on some particular mode of obtaining it.
Suppose that a commodity is capable of being made by two different processes; as a manufactured commodity may be produced either by hand or by steam-power; sugar may be made either from the sugar-cane or from beet-root, cattle fattened either on hay and green crops, or on oil-cake and the refuse of breweries. ”

“ Population regulates itself by the funds which are to employ it, and therefore always increases or diminishes with the increase or diminution of capital. Every reduction of capital is therefore necessarily followed by a less effective demand for corn, by a fall of price, and by diminished cultivation. ”

“ The barrel of flour of which my bread is made has been brought to me a thousand miles at a charge of 50 cents or less, of which 30 cents may represent the cost of the service and 20 cents the possible net revenue of the railway to be applied to the payment of interest on bonds or dividends on the stock. That barrel of flour, making 280 pounds of bread, divided into 50 cents, charge for railway transportation, makes the cost of that part of the railway distribution of the loaf less than two tenths of a cent per pound of bread. ”

“ Broadly speaking, they fall into two main divisions: the ‘subsidies’, otherwise known as tonnage and poundage; and the ‘customs’. The subsidies were a set of variable duties, granted to the king for life at the beginning of his reign, and consisting of tonnage, or import duty per tun of wine; poundage, a duty per pound sterling value on most other goods exported or imported; and wool duties, levied on exported wool. ”

“ If on these two branches of industry a tax be imposed of five per cent ad valorem, the last will be charged only with 25l., the first with 55l.; leaving to the one 75l. profit, to the other only 40l. To equalize, therefore, their expectation of profit, the one commodity must rise in price, or the other must fall, or both: commodities made chiefly by immediate labour must rise in value, as compared with those which are chiefly made by machinery. ”

“ The reason why the consumer pays a tax upon any manufactured commodity, or an advance in the price of any of its component parts, is because, if he cannot or will not pay this advance of price, the commodity will not be supplied in the same quantity as before ”

“ Taxes on particular commodities fall on the consumer. A tax on any one commodity, whether laid on its production, its importation, its carriage from place to place, or its sale, and whether the tax be a fixed sum of money for a given quantity of the commodity, or an ad valorem duty, will, as a general rule, raise the value and price of the commodity by at least the amount of the tax. ”

“ Materials used in getting ready or seasoning the raw material, i.e., auxiliary material, such as paint, putty, etc., the quantity of which used on each piece of product cannot be measured with exactitude and must therefore be spread over the entire product—these and similar items constitute manufacturing supplies. They are usually treated as a part of factory expense rather than as belonging to prime cost. ”

“ The same thing exchanges for a great quantity of some commodities, and for a very small quantity of others. A suit of clothes exchanges for a great quantity of bread, and for a very small quantity of precious stones. The value of a thing in exchange for some commodities may be rising, for others falling. A coat may exchange for less bread this year than last, if the harvest has been bad, but for more glass or iron, if a tax has been taken off those commodities, or an improvement made in their manufacture. ”

“ Of taxes on contracts, the most important are those on the transfer of property; chiefly on purchases and sales. Taxes on the sale of consumable commodities are simply taxes on those commodities. If they affect only some particular commodities, they raise the prices of those commodities, and are paid by the consumer. ”

“ A Tax on all commodities would fall on Profits. By taxes on commodities are commonly meant those which are levied either on the producers, or on the carriers or dealers who intervene between them and the final purchasers for consumption ”

“ Every valve, pipe, cock, gauge, pump, lock or other apparatus, utensil, appliance or arrangement for securing, gauging, ascertaining, testing or proving the quantity or strength of any spirit, wash or worts manufactured or distilled, or for preventing the undue abstraction of any such spirits, wash or worts,—shall be constructed, arranged and applied at the cost of the Distiller, in accordance with such plans, designs, drawings, and regulations, and of such materials as may be from time to time approved by the Department of Inland Revenue ”

“ Now, indirect taxes are such as are levied beforehand upon all necessaries, as salt, corn, beer, meat, fuel, or, still more, upon what we need for our protection—the expenses of the administration of justice, stamped paper, etc. Generally, in making a purchase, the buyer pays the tax, without perceiving that it is that which increases the price. ”

“ If it does not raise it in comparison with other commodities, where is the injury to the home consumer, beyond the inconvenience of paying the tax? If the manufacturer pays a greater price for his corn, he is compensated by the greater price at which he sells his commodity, with which his corn is ultimately purchased. ”

“ But we also annually import, aside from sugar and molasses, $40,000,000 worth of the most necessary articles of food; and $130,000,000 worth of articles in a crude or partly manufactured condition which are absolutely necessary in the processes of our domestic industry, on which we impose duties or taxes amounting to about $50,000,000 a year. To that extent our workmen are placed at a disadvantage as compared with the workmen of other manufacturing countries in which most of these articles are admitted free. ”

“ Where such taxes, therefore, are properly assessed, and upon proper commodities, they are paid with less grumbling than any other. When they are advanced by the merchant or manufacturer, the consumer, who finally pays them, soon comes to confound them with the price of the commodities, and almost forgets that he pays any tax. ”

“ Taxes imposed directly on the consumers of particular commodities, such as a house-tax, or the tax in this country on horses and carriages, might be called taxes on commodities, but are not; the phrase being, by custom, confined to indirect taxes those which are advanced by one person, to be, as is expected and intended, reimbursed by another. Taxes on commodities are either on production within the country, or on importation into it, or on conveyance or sale within it ”

“ If the farmer is necessarily compelled to purchase articles for consumption of foreign importation, he will contribute through the merchant to that branch of revenue — the merchant having added the duty to the price of the article sold. The merchant will receive the produce of the farmer in exchange for his goods, whereas, otherwise, the farmer would pay cash into the treasury for his direct taxes, where, of course, nothing could be receivable but money. ”

“ Nearly every industrial product was taxed. Cotton was taxed at the rate of two cents per pound; salt, six cents per hundred pounds; tobacco, from fifteen to thirty-five cents per pound; cigars, from three to forty dollars per thousand; sugar, from two to three cents and a half per pound. ”

“ If the average spot market price plus freight to destination shall allow the buyer a margin of less than 5 1/2¢ per gallon below the service station price posted by defendant Standard of Indiana, then the buyer and the seller shall share equally in the deficit below a 5 1/2¢ margin. ”

“ You must pay, too, for the tax upon the salt, upon the soap, and upon the candles which those workmen consume while employed in your service, and for the tax upon the leather which the salt-maker, the soap-maker, and the candle-maker consume while employed in their service. ”

“ The percentage of commodities received from normal rural sources of supply within the specified distances shall be determined by weight, volume or other physical unit of measure, except that dollar value shall be used if different commodities received in the establishment are customarily measured in physical units that are not comparable. ”

“ When each country has precisely the quantity of money which it ought to have, money will not indeed be of the same value in each, for with respect to many commodities it may differ 5, 10, or even 20 per cent., but the exchange will be at par. One hundred pounds in England, or the silver which is in 100l.,181 will purchase a bill of 100l., or an equal quantity of silver in France, Spain, or Holland. ”

“ Very much as liquid measures have gradually shrunk until it takes five quart bottles to hold a gallon, so there has been a shrinkage of valuations until it has become common to tax a man for only three fourths or perhaps two thirds of what his property is worth in the market. ”

“ We shall import as much, and export as much; the whole of the tax will be paid out of our own pockets.
“But the imposition of a tax on a commodity almost always diminishes the demand more or less; and it can never, or scarcely ever, increase the demand. ”

“ C.—If in any calendar month either party shall do more than its said percentage of business in either the exterior export department or the seaboard export department, it shall pay to the other party twenty-five (25) cents per barrel upon the quantity so exported in excess of its said percentage. ”