![handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry3 and id is 1 raw text is:
March, r888.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
QUARTERLY.
THE BASES OF TAXATION.
IN his article on the Taxation of Labor, in the POLITICAL
SCIENCE QUARTERLY for September, 1886, Dr. Spahr
opened his discussion with the declaration that the system
of taxation which the great mass of Americans instinctively
accept is this: The equal taxation of all property, the non-
taxation of labor.
I do not cite this assertion with a view to confuting it.
Whether the acceptance, by Americans generally, of such a
principle be instinctive or be merely traditional; whether it
be due to a natural feeling of equity, or to a deliberate working
out of the question in the national mind, or to mere lack of
thinking on the subject, or to defects or vices of political
education, or to a conscious purpose of spoliation, or wholly
to the force of inherited usage, it is unquestionably true that
the American of the period immediately preceding the Civil
war did look upon wealth as the proper subject for the impo-
sition of taxes to the full extent, or nearly so, of the needs of
government. Dr. Spahr issues from his discussion of the
equities of contribution with the conclusion that this view of
taxation is the only right and proper one. The tendency which
he notes as proceeding rapidly, during the last twenty-six or
twenty-seven years, toward the imposition of considerable and
still increasing taxes upon the wages of labor (through imposts
upon articles of common consumption), he views as the result of
political degeneration, or as the effect of the selfish encroach-
ments of capital. It will be my object in this paper, first, to
Volume III.]
[ Number i.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/pclscceqry3&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most