laid down by Prof. Cossa (Scienza delle Finanze) is "that it should, when possible, tax income only, whether national or individual, but spare the estate itself."
If the burden of taxation, or the amount taken, is not fully compensated by increased production or increased saving, it becomes one of the greatest evils to which a people can be subjected; for under such circumstances the means of future production will be impaired, encroached upon, and the country will necessarily begin to retrograde.
When the share of the annual product falling to the workmen of any country is barely sufficient to support life free of taxation, then the burden of taxes begins to promote pauperism. It takes that which is necessary to existence and the maintenance of energy. This is now occurring in Italy. The taxation of Italy probably absorbs more than one third part of the product of the country. The army is served first, the workmen second, while the women become diseased and the children die by lack of adequate nourishment.
Taxation is also an evil, though in a lesser degree, when the rate assessed is not the same upon all persons, property, and business within the same sphere of (business) competition; when it is made an instrumentality for effecting some other purpose than that of raising revenue, no matter how desirable that purpose may be; and when, as in the United States, it is largely indirect, and its incidence and amount are thereby concealed from the ultimate taxpayers.[1]
The general result of experience is also to the effect that when excessive and exceptional taxation has been resorted to by a state for the purpose of regulating or destroying industries or traffic, it has rarely been successful. The economic and moral lesson
- ↑ A most interesting and instructive example of the decay in modern times of a considerable state due to radically vicious methods of collecting revenue is afforded by the present condition of the Asiatic kingdom of Persia. Its typical despotic government, represented by the Shah, annually demands and exacts a large amount of money from its subjects to defray the expenses of the state, but not more, perhaps, than the resources of the country and its people would fairly warrant and sustain, if it was collected by intelligent methods. In default, however, of any knowledge of how to get revenue without destroying the springs of wealth, the method of taxing is so irregular both as to time and rate, and so thoroughly unjust and unequal, as to impair the value and security of property, prevent accumulation and free use of capital, and discourage commerce. A British expert has recently reported to his home government that if a qualified European or American could be placed at the head of the exchequer at Teheran, who was allowed such control that no penny exacted from the people of the state should be absorbed on its way to the treasury, or be taken save in due course of law, he might yet save Persia and drain into it a new and vigorous Asiatic population, who would fill its now deserted hut fertile plains, and organize a commerce in which all the world stood ready to participate and furnish the instrumentalities necessary for its development.
