Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/81

Rh the amount of rent paid or the rentable value of the dwelling of the taxpayer. That portion of a house used exclusively for trade or a similar purpose and not for a residence is not counted in the valuation of the rentable value like a furnished house or a private chapel; but premises or dependencies of dwelling houses, courts, stables, and carriage houses of luxury, clubs, societies, and Masonic lodges are counted in.

In assessing the mobiliary tax it is not necessary that the figures taken as a basis for taxation should be the real rent; it is sufficient that the proportion of the assumed rent, the basis of the tax, and the real rentable value of the dwelling should be exactly the same for all taxpayers; so that a taxed citizen can convince himself whether he is overtaxed or not by comparing his own rent with that generally charged in his community.

The theory which underlies the French system of taxation is that the rent or rental value of the premises occupied by the taxpayer as a residence is proportioned to the amount of his property; and this generally speaking, would seem to be a not unreasonable assumption. At all events, it would seem to possess this great advantage—namely, that the rent payable by every citizen may be readily ascertained, while the amount of his means can not, if he chooses to conceal it.The following epitome which has been recently made of the burdens of taxation imposed upon an honest taxpayer in New York as compared with that which is borne by a man possessed of the same means or income in the city of Paris is believed to be approximately correct:

Let us assume that the property of such an individual, if out of business, consists of personal estate, such as railway bonds and stocks of the value of $100,000, that the net annual income therefrom is $5,000, and that the rent paid by such individual amounts to one fifth of his income, equal to $1,000, or that being engaged in business his average annual profits enable him to occupy an apartment of the same rental value. In Paris the party in question would have to pay as contributions mobilières about 400 francs, or, say, $80, or, including his door and window tax, which he pays through his landlord, say, $90. If engaged in business or practicing a profession, he would have to pay a license tax or patente, which varies from 100 to 1,000 francs (we are speaking, of course, of the mass of the people, and not of merchants or companies occupying very extensive and costly premises, whose patente may run up to several thousand francs, and whose taxes are payable out of the profits of their business, and not out of the income derived from their investments). Such householder thus pays on an average, say, 1,000 francs as the total of his direct taxes. Supposing him to pay the sum of 1,000 francs indirectly in the shape of octroi duties on the provisions consumed by himself and family in the course of the year (and this allowance we consider a very liberal one), we find the total amount of his annual taxes, direct and indirect, to be, say, 2,000 francs, or $400; while in New York a person similarly situated would have to pay, if he made an honest and full declaration of his property, about 2.6 per cent on his principal, making, in the present case, his tax amount to $2,600. Even if we assume that the Parisian pays an additional $200 per year on an average in the way of succession and other exceptional taxes, his contributions to the expenses of the

Russia seems to have abandoned the idea of an income tax, and in place of it would appear to have substituted what is known as a