Natural Taxation

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Direct Taxation. I. Direct taxation practicable. Nature having made it perfectly clear that indirect taxation is not natural, by making the collection of such taxes impossible without gross inequality, fraud, hindrance to production, and general demoralization, it is absolutely necessary for...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Direct Taxation. I. Direct taxation practicable. Nature having made it perfectly clear that indirect taxation is not natural, by making the collection of such taxes impossible without gross inequality, fraud, hindrance to production, and general demoralization, it is absolutely necessary for those who care for justice, equality, and good morals, to select some form of direct taxation. The principal objection raised against direct taxation is the alleged unwillingness of the people to pay such taxes, and the consequent difficulty and expense of collecting them. So strongly is this objection felt, that many persons, who favor direct taxation for old-established communities, assume as an indisputable fact that, in new and thinly settled countries, it would be impossible to raise an adequate revenue by direct taxes. As invariably happens, in cases where economic laws are thrust aside by practical men, on the plea that they are sound in theory, but will not work in practice, all human experience contradicts this assumption. The newest and most thinly settled communities invariably do raise their public revenue by direct taxation; and indirect taxation is impossible, until they have obtained a considerable degree of growth and an advanced social organization. Can any society be more new or anycountry be more sparsely settled than were all the different territories of the United States, when first opened for settlement ? Yet was there a single village or school district in them all, which raised its first revenues by indirect taxes? It may be said that this was only because the United States Constitution prohibited them from surrounding themselves with a tariff. But the history of mankind may be searched in vain for any absolutely new community, which raised i...