to the principle of an income tax, cannot be made to attach to it in practice: and that this tax, while apparently the roost just of all modes of raising a revenue, is in effect more unjust than many others which are primâ facie more objectionable. This consideration would lead us to concur in the opinion which, until of late, has usually prevailed that direct taxes on income should be reserved as an extraordinary resource for great national emergencies, in which the necessity of a large additional revenue overrules all objections.
The difficulties of a fair income tax have elicited a proposition for a direct tax of so much per cent, not on income but on expenditure; the aggregate amount of each person's expenditure being ascertained, as the amount of income now is, from statements furnished by the contributors themselves. The author of this suggestion, Mr. Revans, in a clever pamphlet on the subject,[1] contends that the returns which persons would furnish of their expenditure would be more trustworthy than those which they now make of their income, inasmuch as expenditure is in its own nature more public than income, and false representations of it more easily detected. He cannot, I think, have sufficiently considered, how few of the items in the annual expenditure of most families can be judged of with any approximation to correctness from the external signs. The only security would still be the veracity of individuals, and there is no reason for supposing that their statements would be more trustworthy on the subject of their expenses than that of their revenues; especially as, the expenditure of most persons being composed of many more items than their income, there would be more scope for concealment and suppression in the detail of expenses than even of receipts.
The taxes on expenditure at present in force, either in this
- ↑ "A Percentage Tax on Domestic Expenditure to supply the whole of the Public Revenue." By John Revans. Published by Hatchard, in 1847.
