Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/212

198 corresponding proportion for taxation was three and three fourths per cent.

Similar illustrations drawn from the recent tax experiences of nearly every State in the Union might be indefinitely multiplied, and in the most western States of the Union, where the communities are mainly agricultural, the opinion of officials is also to the effect that personal property, as a rule, exceeds realty, and to a great extent escapes assessment and taxation.

Another curious and interesting feature of the situation is that in all those States where the most minute and thorough system of questioning with respect to the ownership of personal property prevails, investigation shows that, notwithstanding the acknowledged great increase in wealth in the form of personal property in recent years, the skill of its owners in concealing it has grown more rapidly; or, in other words, in every State in which a vigorous attempt has been made to reach and assess all the personal property of its citizens, a smaller percentage of such property is taxed to-day than was effected under operation of laws a quarter of a century ago.

—A notice of some comparatively recent administrative experiences in attempting to successfully enforce taxation of personal property is especially pertinent at this point.

In 1879 California proposed a new Constitution. It was drafted in accordance with what was supposed to be the interest of the agricultural voters of the State, and was by them ratified, the merchants, commercial and financial interests being almost unanimously arrayed in opposition and voting against it. Under this Constitution and the laws made in pursuance of it, the results have been thus summarized: "Not only were bonds, money, and credits taxable, without any deduction on account of debts, except from credits, and then only such debts as were due to residents of the State of California, but holders of stock in corporations were avowedly and intentionally subjected to double taxation; first, upon the corporate property, and again upon the capital stock, which is merely their evidence of title to that property. It was supposed, alike by the friends and enemies of the new Constitution, that under its operation personal property of every description would be thoroughly reached, and at any rate that whatever was by any chance overlooked would be more than made up by double taxation upon that which was found. The actual result has been to falsify all the predictions of both the friends and enemies of the Constitution—for it has done no good, and very little harm, except, in promoting fraud—for the reason that the capacity of the patriotic taxpayer to commit perjury and the susceptibility of