About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman, Our Fiscal Difficulties and the Way out 1 (1919)

handle is hein.tera/dfwo0001 and id is 1 raw text is: ADDRESS OUR FISCAL DIFFICULTIES AND THE WAY OUT BY EDWIN R1. A. SELIGMAN After many years of warning a fiscal crisis now confronts us and it is a crisis not alone in state finance but also, especially as far as New York City is concerned, in municipal finance. We are met everywhere by the fact of increasing expenditures, and side by side with the increasing expenditures we find a narrowing of the base of revenues. In our state finance the adoption of prohibition will remove a fruitful source of revenue. What is still more important, the not improbable assumption by the federal government of the telegraph, the telephone, and perhaps even of the railways, will destroy another most important category of revenue not alone in the state at large, but in all localities. In New York City, the base of taxation is being narrowed almost every year until real estate has come to bear the overwhelming share of local taxation. This has brought with it such a contin- ually increasing tax rate as finally to constitute an intolerable and crushing burden. So far as the tax is imposed on buildings, it leads to an increase of rents which is becoming a grave factor in social unrest. So far as the leases are long leases or so far as the tax falls on the land, apart from the buildings, the result is a continual depreciation in the value of the land and in the wiping out of many equities. Where, as in New York City, so large a part of real estate is owned by the modest investor, this becomes a matter of grave consequence. In both city and state, therefore, some broadening of the base of taxation must be found in order to extricate us from impending disaster. For the state simply to increase the direct tax would be of little avail, because the direct tax as actually administered is overwhelmingly a tax on real estate and the result would be simply to intensify still further the burdens not only on the farmer but on the property owners and tenants in our cities.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most