Page:Principles of Political Economy Vol 2.djvu/421

Rh amount, being worth only half the number of years' purchase, could only be sold for 1500l., the perpetual income should pay twice as much per cent income tax as the terminable income; if the one pays 10l. a year the other should pay only 5l. But in this argument there is the obvious oversight, that it values the incomes by one standard and the payments by another; it capitalizes the incomes, but forgets to capitalize the payments. An annuity worth 3000l. ought, it is alleged, to be taxed twice as highly as one which is only worth 1500l., and no assertion can be more unquestionable; but it is forgotten that the income worth 3000l. pays to the supposed income tax 10l. a year in perpetuity, which is equivalent, by supposition, to 300l., while the terminable income pays the same 10l. only during the life of its owner, which on the same calculation is a value of 150l., and could actually be bought for that sum. Already, therefore, the income which is only half as valuable, pays only half as much to the tax; and if in addition to this its annual quota were reduced from 10l. to 5l., it would pay, not half, but a fourth part only of the payment demanded from the perpetual income. To make it just that the one income should pay only half as much per annum as the other, it would be necessary that it should pay that half for the same period, that is, in perpetuity.

The rule of payment which this school of financial reformers contend for, would be very proper if the tax were only to be levied once, to meet some national emergency. On the principle of requiring from all payers an equal sacrifice, every person who had anything belonging to him, reversioners included, would be called on for a payment proportioned to the present value of his property. I wonder it does not occur to the reformers in question, that precisely because this principle of assessment would be just in the case of a payment made once for all, it cannot possibly be just for a permanent tax. When each pays only once, one person pays no oftener than another; and the proportion which would be just in that case, cannot also be just if one person has to