Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/763

Rh, the consumer of any class can better afford to pay taxes on his tobacco—in the form of chewing, snuff, smoking, cigars, and cheroots—than he can on foods, fabrics, and the raw materials of his industry. Another point generally overlooked in this discussion, is that when a tax which is direct, as is the tax on tobacco and spirits, is shifted to a supplementary tax which is indirect, the consumer may feel certain that his burden of tax will be augmented very considerably, often to the extent of twenty-five and even fifty per cent, by payment of profits to merchants and other middle men.

—The instrumentality of stamps as a means of obtaining revenue, although attended with less friction and expense than almost any other methods, and which was advantageously incorporated in the war system of taxation, can hardly be said to have had a place in recent years in the internal revenue system of the Federal Government; the stamps used in connection with the taxation of distilled spirits, fermented liquors, and tobacco—which are peculiar to the United States and not in use for like purposes in any other country—being rather in the nature of nstrumentalities for facilitating the collection of taxes than independent sources of revenue. In fact, the only strictly revenue-producing stamp tax now existing is the tax of two cents per pack on playing-cards, the receipts from which declined from $382,403 in 1895 (the first year of its imposition) to 259,853 in 1896—a result that certainly warrants the modified application of an old proverb that, "under a free government, the rulers may propose taxes, but the people will dispose of them."

Under the fiscal system of the British Government (United Kingdom) the revenue which accrued in 1893-’94: from stamps was £12,799,000 ($62,244,000). The sources from which this aggregate of stamp revenue was obtained are numerous and of a character that are not in the main applicable to the fiscal system and Government of the United States, and for the most part are classified as follows: Probate duties; legacy duties; duties on estates, real and personal; succession duties; capital duties on companies; receipts; records; patent medicines; marine insurances, etc. In fact, it is said that you can do nothing of any consequence in Great Britain without a stamp of some kind.

A system of taxation through the instrumentality of stamps can, however, be devised and made a permanent feature of the