Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/494

474 than in the case of property taxation. "Another peculiar feature of the Swiss taxes is that the progressive rate is applied separately to the income tax and the property tax. A taxpayer with twenty-five hundred francs income from property and twenty-five hundred francs from labor will be assessed separately for each, and will pay less than if he had five thousand francs income either from property alone or labor alone." (Seligman.)

There is, furthermore, no pretense of uniformity in the different Cantons in the practical application of the progressive system. In fact, it is stated that in no two Cantons are the rates of tax and the classification of the subjects of taxation identical. In the taxation of incomes the average rate does not generally exceed four or five per cent; but in some Cantons the rates rule as high as seven and even ten per cent. Where income exists without a corresponding capital, as from wages, earnings, and life annuities, an exemption is generally made of eighty dollars a head for each person dependent on the head of the family for support. Thus a bachelor earning one thousand dollars a year would pay about fifteen dollars, while a married man with the same income and twelve children would pay nothing.

Taxes on inheritances and successions in Switzerland—which are levied in most or all of the Cantons—are characterized by extreme variations on rates, ranging from a very small percentage in some cantons to twenty and even thirty per cent in others, in the cases of the remote, or non-relatives.

Apart from the federal and cantonal systems of taxation in Switzerland, there is a third system which is regarded as distinctive, and under the name of local embraces special and separate assessments for the purpose of defraying local or communal expenditures—i. e., police, preservation of forests, roads, schools, and the like. A leading characteristic of such taxes is, that they do not embrace the idea of progressive or graduated assessments; and in their chief incidence on local tangible property do not permit any material reduction of appraisements, or valuations on account of any incumbent indebtedness—mortgages and the like—as is the practice in the appraisements of like property for cantonal taxation. A household tax and a poll tax are also, to some extent, features of Swiss local taxation.

Of the varied subjects of taxation from which the Swiss Cantons mainly derive their revenue, the following classification and exhibit of those of the Canton of Vaud in 1887, the third largest canton in respect to population, though not in area, will serve as an illustration:

 1. Public lands, forests, and salt monopoly. 2. Licenses to retail tobacco, wine, and spirits. 3. Taxes on dogs, saddle horses, carriages, and billiard saloons.