Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/550

532 assessing personal property, and the annual value of immovable property, such as lands and houses, within the parish has come to be selected as the simplest and most practicable basis for assessments. The history is of high importance, because the basis of the poor rate was adopted as the basis for all other rates levied in local taxation. Whatever confusion has been introduced has arisen from other causes, such as the constituting poor-law unions containing more than one parish, the levying of county rates, a county having a boundary other than a parish or a union, and the assessing for rates by parish officers who acted independently of each other. Many efforts have been made to introduce a uniform system of assessment, but without success. One of the clearest thinkers on this subject was Sir George Cornewall Lewis. In appearing before a committee on taxation, in 1850, he said: "We have never recognized the principle of having one valuation for all the different rates. If that principle were once admitted, the inducement to have an accurate and complete valuation would be at its maximum, because then you would know that whatever charge might be imposed it would be imposed upon that valuation, whereas if there is one assessment for one rate and another assessment for another rate, and an amended assessment for a third rate, no one cares much about making any assessment perfect. This is one defect of the present system of valuation."

The defect has persisted and become more aggravated each year. In 1870 a special commission came to the resolution that "the great variety of rates levied by different authorities, even in the same area, on different assessments, with different deductions and by different collectors, has produced great confusion and expense; and that in any change of the law as regards local taxation, uniformity and simplicity of assessment and collection, as well as of economy of management, ought to be secured as far as possible." When it is considered that for the five independent valuations for raising rates on property there are in England and Wales more than one thousand valuation authorities, the hopelessness of obtaining uniformity is apparent. With such a multiplicity of agents it is useless to look for good results. There is no fixed or necessary time for making the valuation lists; no uniform system of or scale for making deductions for arriving at the ratable values of certain classes of property; exemptions and allowances are said to be given unduly, through undue pressure on the assessing authorities; and the assessment committees have no statutory power to ascertain from owners or occupiers the rentals and other particulars needed to determine values. The reforms needed are a geographical redistribution of taxing limits and uniform rules of assessments.