Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/543

Rh its inability to increase indirect taxes on consumption by its general resort to an extension of the internal taxes and excise. The instrumentalities of business offer a fair field for stamp taxes, and these, when not so burdensome as to invite evasion, are acceptable because of the ease with which they are assessed and collected. A specific duty on the more important acts of commerce and daily business may be evaded, it is true, but not when the paper or instrument taxed must become public evidence. Stamps of small denomination on bonds, debentures, or certificates of stock and of indebtedness; on a bill of sale or memorandum to sell; on bank checks, drafts, or certificates of deposit; bills of exchange, draft, or promissory note; money orders and bills of lading; on express and freight receipts, on telegraph messages, and a large number of legal and other instruments, such as leases, mortgages, charter party, insurance policies—these are simple duties, productive of large returns, and not unequal in their weight. The law of 1898 included such stamp taxes, as well as others on proprietary articles and wines. It was not simple to predict the incidence of these rates, and the distribution has been unequal. The charges of one cent on telegraph messages and express packages are paid by the sender in the larger number of cases, the companies merely adding a penny to their rates. This was not the intention of the law, and the courts have held that it was not so intended. The individual is powerless in a few transactions, and only the great concerns are able to avail themselves of this decision. The duties for seats or berths in a parlor car or for proprietary medicines, are paid by the company or manufacturer, though in certain preparations the price to the consumer was advanced on the passage of the act. With all their drawbacks, and they are not few in number, these stamp duties afford a ready means of obtaining a good revenue without increasing unduly the general burdens of taxation. The law of 1898 was modeled after that of 1863, and many of the rates and descriptions will undoubtedly be incorporated into the permanent internal revenue system of the country—a measure enforced by the remarkably unequal returns derived from the customs.

The existing system of internal duties is even more defensible than the tariff as a source of revenue. Its inequalities, due to the haste in which the measure was prepared and the inexperience of those who framed the provisions and fixed upon the rates, are worn away in use, and where the rates are moderate and are not infected with a penal quality, the community adapts itself to them, accepting them as a necessary convenience. In the United States this spirit of acquiescence is most marked, not only because of a natural patience of tax burdens, but because of as natural a fear of other untried and more radical or oppressive measures. The situation of