Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/73

 expense. A man whose income is a minus quantity and lives in a house on which he pays a rent of £100 a year is not a satisfactory subject of taxation.

You may say that he ought not to be living in such a house, and he will quite agree, but will point out that when he signed a contract by which he became its tenant for seven years he was making a good income which he did not expect to disappear; that he would be delighted to sub-let if he could find someone who would take the house, but that owing to bad times and the fact of the high rates charged by the municipality it is impossible for him to do so. A big shop or a great factory employing large numbers of workers and having to pay rates based on the value of the premises, whether it is earning nothing, little or a fortune in the way of net profit, is also evidently being taxed on a wholly unscientific basis, which lays a devastating burden, in bad times, on production and commerce.

It may be said, as a rough generalization not to be examined too critically, that the Government taxes us according to our assets, and the local authorities according to our liabilities. From such a system there is danger of evil consequences for the rate-payer and for the municipality and so ultimately for the investor who