Page:Principles of Political Economy Vol 2.djvu/422

402 make the payment only once, and the other several times. This, however, is the type of the case which actually occurs. The permanent incomes pay the tax as much oftener than the temporary ones, as a perpetuity exceeds the certain or uncertain length of time which forms the duration of the income for life or years.

All attempts to establish a claim in favour of terminable incomes on numerical grounds to make out, in short, that a proportional tax is not a proportional tax are manifestly absurd. The claim does not rest on grounds of arithmetic, but of human wants and feelings. It is not because the temporary annuitant has smaller means, but because he has greater necessities, that he ought to be assessed at a lower rate.

In spite of the nominal equality of income, A, an annuitant of 1000l. a year, cannot so well afford to pay 100l. out of it, as B who derives the same annual sum from heritable property; A having usually a demand on his income which B has not, namely, to provide by saving for children or others; to which, in the case of salaries or professional gains, must generally be added a provision for his own later years; while B may expend his whole income without injury to his old age, and still have it all to bestow on others after his death. If A, in order to meet these exigencies, must lay by 300l. of his income, to take 100l. from him as income tax is to take 100l. from 700l., since it must be retrenched from that part only of his means which he can afford to spend on his own consumption. Were he to throw it rateably on what he spends and on what he saves, abating 70l. from his consumption and 30l. from his annual saving, then indeed his immediate sacrifice would be proportionately the same as B's: but then his children or his old age would be worse provided for in consequence of the tax. The capital sum which would be accumulated for them would be one-tenth less, and on the reduced income afforded by this reduced capital, they would be a second time charged with income tax; while B's heirs would only be charged once.