Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/77

Rh, even to a most obtuse intellect, that there is no one act which can be performed by a community that brings in so large a return to the credit of civilization and general happiness as the judicious expenditure for public purposes of a fair percentage of the general wealth collected under an equitable system of taxation.

Now, an income tax is the very essence of personal taxation, and although in respect to a specialty of application it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States not to be a direct tax, it comes to the ordinary taxpayer most directly; and this is the first or one of the most influential reasons why human nature, as ordinarily constituted, does not like it. The world's experience is to the same effect in respect to a "poll" or "head" tax. This in a popular sense is almost universally regarded as a direct tax, and altogether personal in its incidence. It has accordingly always been most unpopular. Its collection has been the occasion of great civil disturbances in the world's history, and it has been denied a place by popular vote or constitutional provision, in the tax system of most of the States of the Federal Union.

A second and more important reason why a general income tax powerfully antagonizes popular sentiment is that its efficient administration, or revenue productiveness, requires that every person liable to taxation in respect to his annual net gains, profits, or income shall make to a Government official an exhibit of the financial condition of his estate, business, or profession; for, in default of such an exhibit, any basis for assessment must be a mere matter of conjecture on the part of the assessor, with a result devoid of any pretense to correctness or equality. But such an exhibit, necessarily disclosing to a greater or less degree his financial condition to his business competitors, and to a curious, gossiping public, no man will willingly make; and he naturally regards it as in the nature of an outrage on the part of the government that seeks to compel him to do it. Hence the successful administration of an income tax involves and requires the use of arbitrary and inquisitorial methods and agencies, which, perfectly consistent with a despotism, are entirely antagonistic to and incompatible with the principles and maintenance of a free government.

Practically, as John Stuart Mill has expressed it, "the fairness which belongs to the principle of an income tax can not be made to attach to it in practice"; and, "while appparentlyapparently [sic] the most just of all modes of taxation, it is in effect more unjust than many others that are prima facie more objectionable" And again he says, "The tax, on whatever principles of equality it may be imposed, is in practice unequal in one of the worst ways, falling heaviest on the most conscientious" and "should be reserved as an extraordinary resource