Thomas G. Shearman
Charles B. Fillebrown
[Reprinted from the book, Natural Taxation,
published 1917.
Part I / The Authorities / Chapter 8 (continued)]
THE NATURAL TAX
1. Automatic taxation. -- Having seen that every
form of indirect taxation is unjust to the poor, and that every form
of so-called direct taxation of thus far examined is unjust to the
honest, we cannot be surprised at the unanimity with which it is
hitherto been declared that there is no scientific or natural method
of taxation.
Nevertheless, if we can find in actual operation, in every
civilized country, a species of taxation which automatically
collects from every citizen an amount almost exactly proportioned to
the fair in full market value of the benefits which he derives from
the government under which he lives and the society which surrounds
him, may we not safely infer that this is natural taxation? And is
not such taxation capable of being reduced to a science?
Such an automatic comic irresistible, an universal system does
exist. All over the world men paid to a superior authority
attribute, proportioned with wonderful exactness to these social
advantages. Each man is compelled to do this, by the fact that other
men surround him, and eager to pay tribute in his place if he will
not. The just amount of this tribute is determined by the
competition of all his neighbors, who calculate to a dollar just how
much the privilege is worth to them, and who will gladly take his
place and pay in his stead. Every man must, therefore, pay as much
as some other man will give for his place; and no man can be made to
pay any more.
2. Ground rent. -- This tribute is sometimes paid to the
state, when it is called the tax; but is far more often paid to
private individuals, when it is called ground rent.
Where there is no government there is no ground rent. As government
grows more complex and does more for society, ground rents increase.
Any advantage possessed by one piece of land over another will, it
is true, a give rise to rent; but that rent cannot be collected
without the aid of government; and no advantage infertility is every
equal in value to the advantage of society and government. An acre
of sand on the coast of New Jersey, at Atlantic City, Cape May, or
Long Beach, is worth more rent than one million acres of fertile
land five hundred miles distant from all human society. The
sixteenth of an acre of Bear Rock New York City is worth more than a
thousand acres of the best farming land in Manitoba.
Ground rent, therefore, is the tribute to which natural laws levy
upon every occupant of land, as the market price of all the social
as well as natural advantages appertaining to that land, including,
necessarily, his just share of the cost of government.
Footnote: The definition of rent here given is not inconsistent
with the principles of Ricardo; although it is not expressed in his
words. As Senior and other friends of Ricardo have remarked, he
never took pains to express himself accurately; and he constantly
assumed that his readers would remember every limitation which he
had once laid down and would comprehend all that was implied in his
mind. His definition of the law of rent is a remarkable illustration
of his peculiar methods.
No man could have been more fully aware than was Ricardo, of the
enormous amount of rent which was collected in his own time from
land which had no fertility and no productive power. Most of his
life was spent upon just such land in London; and for the use of
such land he paid and received great rents. Yet his famous
definition assumes that rent is never paid for anything except "the
use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil." And
his exposition of the operation of this law is confined so strictly
to the growth of "corn" (that is, wheat), that some of his
disciples and many of his critics seriously assume that Ricardo did
not suspect the existence of any law of rent, which was not governed
entirely by the growth of "corn."
But Ricardo's methods, in this end in other instances, recall the
style of the Ten Commandments. Taken literally, those Commandments
are as defective a code of morals as can be found in almost any
ethical system. They do not in terms forbid the most brutal violence
or recklessness, if the death does not result, nor any form of fraud
or swindling not amounting to literal theft. They do not for bid any
form of outrage upon unmarried women. They do not for bid lying,
except in judicial proceedings. They have not a word about malice,
envy, hatred, bribery, betrayal of trust, or even treason. And yet
both the Hebrew nation and the Christian church have always seemed
these prohibitions implied in the curt words which denounced merely
a few of the worst and most striking forms of the crime.
So it is with Ricardo. He took the most striking and easily
understood illustration of a principle as his method of stating the
principle itself. His writings always bear the marks of a genius,
which was driven by its own internal energy to find relief in
utterance, but which cared very little whether it's utterances were
understood or not. In this particular instance, he suggested a
principle by a single illustration of the most familiar character.
But the principle is not limited by the illustration. Any advantage
which one piece of land has over another, for the use of man, was
included, in Ricardo's mind, among the "original and
indestructible powers of the soil." And foremost among these
advantages stands that of affording standing ground, in the midst of
a highly civilized society, under the protection of a highly
organized and faithful government. End of footnote
3. The justice of ground rent. -- Now observe how perfectly
this natural tribute meets all the requirements of abstract justice,
with which are professor friends have so long wrestled in vain. Here
is the exact quid pro quo. No sane man, in any ordinary society,
pays too much rent. For he pays no more than some other man is
willing to pay for the same privileges. He therefore pays no more
than the market value of the advantage which he gains over other men
by occupying that precise position on the earth. He gains a certain
profit out of that position which he could not gained elsewhere.
That fact is conclusive proof that this profit is not the fruit of
his labor, but comes out of some superior fertility and the soil,
some superior opportunity for selling the fruits of his labor, some
superior protection from government in the enjoyment of those
fruits, or some other advantage of mere position. Thus he receives
full value in exchange for his payment. He receives it, not merely
society in general. He receives the whole of it; he is not compelled
to divide a dollar's worth of this benefit with his neighbors. But,
on the other hand, he pays the full value of what he thus receives,
and he owes nothing more to anybody. The transaction is closed upon
fair and equal terms.
Here, then, is a tax, just, equal, full, fair, paid for full value
received, returning full value for the payment, meeting all the
requirements of that ideal tax which professors and practical man
alike have declared to be an impossibility. It is not merely a tax
which justice allows -- it is one which justice demands. It is not
merely one which ought to be collected -- it is one which
infallibility will be and is collected. It is not merely one which
the state ought to see collected -- it is one which, in the long
run, the state cannot prevent from being collected. The state can
change the particular landlord -- it cannot abolish rent.
4. Landlords natural tax gatherers. -- it is quite true
that some men do not pay ground rent to anyone else. But these are
landlords of the most highly developed type. A few of these men
seem, at first glance, neither to pay nor receive ground rent. But
this is it an illusion. They do receive such rent, in the value
which remains in their possession in excess of what they would hold
if they paid rent like other people. Moreover, such men almost
invariably have either paid a price for the land on which they live
(which is capitalized rent paid by them), or they hold land which
cost them less than they could sell it for (which is capitalized
rent gained by them), or they have done both.
Those who actually receive ground rent, or who could receive it if
they would, form the class which we call "landlords." They
are that tax gatherers appointed by Nature. Year by year they assess
the value of the privilege of occupying their land. They can do
this, with an accuracy to which no government assessor can ever
attain, because they receive, at least once a year, the best
possible information as to this value, in the form of bids from
tenants. They have only to announce their willingness to receive
bids, and the bids come in. Nobody runs after the assessor to tell
him what property is worth. Everybody runs after the landlord to
tell him what his land is worth. Not that everybody tells him the
truth; but he soon finds out what is the truth by comparing
conflicting statements. The landlord, we repeat, is Nature's elected
to tax gatherers. But Nature does not compel him, any more than any
other collector of taxes, to pay over to the State what he collects.
This must be done by the State itself.
5. Taxation of ground rents. -- Nature, having thus
provided a method by which all men pay, of necessity, a tribute
sufficient to defray all expenses of government, clearly points to
the collection of such expenses from this tribute. We have already
seemed that Nature and Science condemn every other method of raising
public revenue, by making equality and justice impossible under any
such method. Do they not, with equal clearness and precision, point
to the taxation of ground rents, as not merely a just method of
raising revenue, but also as the only just one; scientifically
speaking, a tax upon ground rents is not a tax at all: it is merely
the collection by the State of a tax already levied by an automatic
process. If we call it a tax, it is a tax upon the proceeds of
taxation, and nothing else. Until this source or revenue is
exhausted, every other tax is double taxation. So long as this fund
remains, every other tax is, all of necessity, unjust, as truly as
it would be unjust to squander the proceeds of any tax among a few
favored officials and then levy the whole of the same tax over again
upon the people. Seldom has there been a more beautiful illustration
of the wise yet relentless working of natural law then in the proved
impossibility of justly collecting any tax other than upon ground
rent. It shows that Nature makes it impossible to execute justly a
statute which is in its nature unjust. The propriety of an exclusive
tax upon ground rents is established, not merely by affirmative
proof of its justice, but by the demonstration of universal
experience that no other form of taxation can be made effective,
adequate, just, and equal.
6. No objectionable methods of collection. -- The absolute
soundness of the theory upon which the tax of ground rents is based
is further established by the fact that it's efficient collection
requires no objectionable methods. Such a tax already exists in the
United States, although it is covered up by a multitude of other
taxes. We all know, by experience, that's such a tax is entirely
free from the oppressive and corrupting incidence of other taxes. It
calls for no personal returns, no taxpayer's oaths, no exposure of
private affairs. The collector of such a tax would not have the
slightest excuse for inquisitorial proceedings, for the examination
of private books, for entry into houses, for personal searches, or
for asking a single question of the taxpayer. In fact he would not
pay the smallest attention to any statement which a taxpayer might
make. Women and children would be taxed no more heavily than men.
Trusts estates would pay no more than others. There would be no
exemptions, no favoritism, and no preference given, either to the
rich or to the poor. Mistakes, of course, would occur, and the
bribery of assessors would be possible. But those are an extremely
small part of the evils of all existing methods of taxation; and
some of the most monstrous inequalities are found where the
assessors are absolutely incorruptible and thoroughly competent. All
of these would disappear.
7. Assessment of ground rent practicable. -- it is
asserted by a few persons, who have given no careful consideration
to the subject, that it is as difficult to assess accurately the
value of the bare land as it is to assess any other property. This
objection will not bear the least examination.
Of course, absolute accuracy is not to be expected in anything. It
has not pleased God to make this world literally perfect, in any
respect; and men cannot hold to be wiser than his maker. But a close
approach to accuracy is possible in taxing ground rents, and it is
not possible in any other tax.
Where land is rented severally from its improvements, the tax can
be collected with almost ideal accuracy. The tenant can be required
to pay it, being allowed to deduct it from his rent. He will have no
motive for understating the rent, and if he overstates it the loss
will be his own. Nothing but positive fraud on the part of the
official assessor can produce inequality in this tax, and such fraud
would be too dangerous to be common.
Where land and improvements are rented together, the value of the
land alone is always approximately ascertainable. Real estate
dealers in the district would have little difficulty in estimating
the price at which any tract of land could readily be sold, and this
would be the proper basis for assessment.
Where land is owned by the actual occupier, dealers can still
easily estimate its market value. Titles to town lots are
continually changing, thus fixing a standard of prices; while in
rural districts there is much less variation in prices, and all the
neighbors know the relative value of each farm. Whatever
inequalities might remain, it is certain that they would be vastly
less than those which are now common.
8. Assessment of farmland. -- It has been asked: how can
the unimproved value of farmlands be ascertained after they have
been cleared, plowed, drained, and fertilized for many years? The
answer is simple. The whole of a farm is to be assessed at the same
value per acre which attaches to the unimproved land remaining on
the farm and having substantially the same natural advantages or
disadvantages. It is next asked: how shall such an estimate be made
if the whole farm has been fully cultivated? There is no such farm,
except a few very small ones, selected from larger farms; and in
those cases the valuation can be made upon the basis of unimproved
land on adjoining farms. It is been pretended that there are cases
in which there is no unimproved land near by. But this is almost
absurd. Yet if such a marvelous farm could be found, it is certain
to be close to a highway. The price which could be obtained for the
land covered by the highway, if closed and sold, would afford a
perfect test of the value of all adjoining land.
But the best reply to all such objections is to be found in the
practical experience of California, where this very method of
assessment is carried out in agricultural districts, without
difficulty, having been required by law ever since 1879, and by the
experience of Massachusetts, where the value of farmlands has been
ascertained by the decennial census, for many years, carefully
separating the value of improved lands from unimproved and
unimprovable lands.
9. Judicial correction of assessments. -- Under the present
systems of taxation it is been found necessary to allow appeals to
the courts from some unjust assessments; while state boards of
equalization in New York, Illinois, California, and other states put
county evaluations up or down, in order to remedy the evils caused
by local carelessness or evasion. These remedies should be extended
and placed upon a foundation of complete justice. The courts should
be given full power to make local assessments uniform, reducing
every assessment to the basis of the lowest in the county. The
county would lose no revenue, for the tax rate would be increased to
correspond with the general reduction. But citizens would be
relieved from the gross injustice which many now suffer. At present,
in New York, if not everywhere, a taxpayer can obtain no relief
unless his own property is overvalued. But an undervaluation of his
neighbors is just as effectual an increase of his share of the
general burden as would be an overvaluation of his own property. It
would cast an offensive responsibility upon him, to give him relief
only through a judgment increasing his neighbor's assessments; and
such a course would produce no better results for the county then
would a general reduction to one common basis. This State at large
would take care of its interest in the matter, through the board of
equalization.
10. Correction by sales. -- If all other remedies failed,
one would remain, which is far too dangerous for use under existing
methods, but which would be quite safe under the new system. The
owner of any real estate which was assessed for more than the real
value of the bare land, could refuse to pay the tax. Then is land
would be offered for sale to the highest bidder, subject to the
obligation of paying to the owner the appraised value of all it
improvements thereon, upon the principles already stated. The value
could never be more than the cost of replacing the improvements, and
it would often be much less, because costly buildings are frequently
erected in situations where they are or become useless, and
therefore of no value. To the full extent of their actual market
value, however, the purchaser at a tax sale would be required to
indemnify the owner. Such a sale would determine the precise value
of the land for the purposes of taxation.
Nor would such sales, however frequent they might be, work any
hardship to the landowner. He would have a right to bid; and he
would have great advantages over any other bidder. All the money
paid in excess of the tax and the penalty would go directly into his
pocket; and therefore he would be the all-league bidder not required
to pay more than that sum. If the tax were really excessive, no one
would bid up to it, because the purchaser would be compelled to pay
annually thereafter as large a tax as he was willing to bid at the
sale. The tax sale, in short, would fix the valuation upon which
future assessments would be made. Thus the ground rent (which,
capitalized, constitutes the only value of any land) would be fully
taxed; while the landowner would have absolute security for the
possession of the value all his improvements, free of tax. But no
such experiment would ever become really necessary.
11. Taxation of franchises and monopolies. -- It has been
already mentioned that the professed defenders of farmers and other
owners of small homesteads oppose the concentration of taxation upon
ground rents, upon the plea that this would exempt all franchises
and monopolies, including railways, express companies, telegraphs,
telephones, gas works, electric lighting works, oil pipe-lines, and
the like. If this were the fact we may be sure that the shrewd
managers of such monopolies, assisted as they are by the most
sagacious and experienced advisers in the country, would have
discovered it by this time. We may also be sure that the
legislatures of two-thirds of the states, owned as they are, body
and soul, by corporations of this precise class, would hasten to
avow their conversion to the principle of taxing ground rents and to
embody it in their statutes. The Senate of the United States would
before now have passed any necessary amendment to the Constitution,
by a two-thirds vote.
But do we see the slightest tendency in this direction? Is the
proposal received with favor by the managers of a single great
railway or telegraph or of any great monopoly? On the contrary, is
it not notorious that they are unanimously and bitterly opposed to
it?
These gentlemen are not deceived. They know well enough that their
valuable franchises represent exclusive rights to the use of the
land, and that they neither have nor can have any exclusive rights
to anything else, except to patent rights, which are very costly and
which last only for a few years.
12. Railway franchises. -- Take one of our great railway
lines, for example. Add up either the market value or the cost of
replacing its rails, equipment, building improvements, and chattels
of every kind, whether movable or immovable, and at a most liberal
valuation. The total will not come within millions of its nominal
debt, and will never touch its capital stock. What gives value to
the enormous amount of stock? The exclusive privilege of using a
narrow strip of barren land, five hundred, a thousand, or two
thousand miles long, unbroken by highways or any other rights over
land, whether public or private. Under the present system railway
managers persuade local assessors that this land should be valued no
higher than equally barren land in adjoining farms, and the farmers'
especial advocates insist that this is the true basis of valuation.
But it is absurd.
The value of all land depends upon the value of the use which can
be made it. No farmer can use his land for the carriage of goods or
passengers beyond the limits of his own farm. If all the farmers
between New York and San Francisco agreed to build a railway,
without forming a railway corporation, they would be compelled to
break their line at every highway, to dismount or passengers and to
unload their freight. Therefore, nobody outside of a railway company
can use his land for this most valuable purpose. And this privilege
of using an unbroken strip of land, with locomotives running forty
miles an hour, is all which gives to the stock of any American
railway company its market value; while it generally covers from
one-third to one-half of its bonds, in addition.
The notion that such privileges on land are to be appraised by the
acre, like farmlands, can be readily tested by applying the same
principle to any other land. In great cities land is often sold at a
price estimated by the square foot. Some lots, containing 2,000
square feet, are salable for $200,000, or $100 per foot. But if a
single foot of this land were sold by itself, with the knowledge
that no more could be had, who would give even one dollar for it,
except as a means of blackmailing the owner for the rest? Just so,
the value of a strip of land unbroken for a thousand miles, for use
as a railway, is something immense; while the same land cut up in a
thousand sections, never to be united would be almost valueless. For
purposes of transportation it would have no value whatever.
Again, the value of land depends upon the variety of uses to which
it may lawfully be put. Steam railways, although very useful, are to
some extent a nuisance. The government cannot permit them to be
operated upon every tract of land. Consequently, land owned by
individuals is generally restricted to other uses, and it is
therefore worth less than land owned by railway companies.
13. Other franchises. -- The franchise of a telegraph company is of
the same nature. It is absolutely nothing but an exclusive privilege
to extend wires over land. But this is a privilege of enormous
value. The founders of the Western Union Telegraph Company had
managed to sell this privilege to investors in its stock, for least
$50,000,000.
The franchises of gas companies, electric light companies, steam
heating companies, water works, and the like, consist so obviously
of mere privileges to use unimproved land as to need no explanation.
Street railroads, also, so palpably own no privileges, other than
the mere right to run over bare land, that it seems almost an insult
to the understanding of any reader to explain the case. None of
these corporations have any other franchises than these rights over
land. For these franchises most of them have paid enormous bribes to
legislators and aldermen. Upon these franchises they have issued
vast amounts of stock and bonds. One such corporation, after
purchasing all the rails, equipment, and other productions of human
labor connected with the road, for about $2,000,000, proceeded to
issue $8,000,000 of stocks and bonds upon its land privileges.
It will be said that there are general railway laws, so that
anybody can construct a new rival line, and thus destroy the land
values of an existing line. Whenever that can really be done, the
truth of this theory is promptly proved, by the destruction of stock
values in both corporations, as in the desperate struggle between
the New York Central and the West Shore lines, in 1884. But this is
only partially true. A rival line must run through towns and very
near cities, or it can get little business. The aldermen of every
city must be bought up; and as the old corporation will pay liberal
bribes to induce the aldermen to do nothing, the new one must bring
far more liberal considerations to bear upon our patriotic rulers.
Nor is it merely a question of money. Bribery must be conducted
decently and in order. Public sentiment must be judiciously worked
up to support the scheme. It requires an immense amount of ingenious
and well-directed effort to carry any such project into effect.
In the case of street railroads, telegraphic subways, gas works,
and other privileges in cities, is obvious that the limit is soon
reached, an even the liberality of a legislature or a board of
aldermen cannot make room for many rival schemes of this kind. The
streets cannot be torn up forever, although in New York and in
Brooklyn they do not fall much short of this. The limits imposed by
Nature are such that more than three-fourths of the whole market
values of the stock and bonds of corporations having these municipal
privileges consist of pure land values.
Under the present system, in most cases, all these enormous values
go untaxed. The law of New York distinctly exempt franchises from
taxation, although it is well settled that they would be taxable as
land but for this legislative interference. Under the system here
proposed all these values would be fairly taxed.
14. Can the rent tax be shifted? -- while the Duke of
Argyle and all his landlord allies rend the air with their
denunciations of the proposed tax on rent, as confiscation and
robbery, other opponents of the tax, appreciating the fact that
tenants far outnumber landlords of the polls, devote their energy to
proving that this tax would all be shifted upon tenants, by an
increase of rent, so that landlords would finally pay none of it. If
this were true, then no relief from the unequal distribution of
wealth can be had, for all direct taxes would ultimately fall upon
consumption, just as surely as do indirect taxes. In short, no tax
would be really direct. The greatest benefit thus far held out, as a
result of adopting in exclusive tax upon ground rent, would be
unattainable under that or any other system.
On the other hand, if this doctrine is true, the indignation of the
Duke of Argyle and all the great landlords are Britain and Ireland
is absurdly misdirected. If they can recover this tax from their
tenants, precisely as the importer of foreign goods recovers customs
taxes from the purchasers of those goods, they will lose nothing by
the change, and may even profit by it. It is very clear that the
landlords do not believe a word of this doctrine of shifting
taxation; for if they did they would look within difference, if not
with positive favor, upon the taxation of ground rents. So far from
doing this, dukes, earls, and marquises, are eagerly struggling in
England for the election as councilman and aldermen, for the sole
purpose of preventing the taxation of ground rents.
The weight of authority upon such a question is worthy of
attention, although by no means decisive. Now, while a few
respectable and sincere students of economic science hold to the
doctrine of the transferability of the ground rent tax to the
tenants, no one will dispute than an overwhelming weight of
authority, both in numbers and in reputation, scout that doctrine as
absurd. Not only the entire school of Ricardo and Mill, but also
9/1nine-tenths more of other economic writers, making a fundamental
doctrine of their science that such a tax never can be transferred
to tenants.
15. The question illustrated. -- Let us, however, consider
the question for ourselves, as if it were entirely new. The simplest
way of testing it is to imagine that the tax was made heavy enough
to absorb the whole rent. For, although this is impossible, it
really makes no difference whether half or the whole of rent is
taken by taxation, so long as the State is determined to take some
fixed proportion of rent. Any good accountant can satisfy himself
that the results would be the same under either plan. But persons
unaccustomed to figures could not follow any other calculations so
easily as they can follow one based upon a tax equal to the whole
rent.
Let us then suppose that the "single tax unlimited" to be
in operation. Let us suppose the total ground rent of the United
States to be $1 billion. The total production of the nation does not
exceed $13 billion per annum. Out of this, 65 million people have to
draw other living expenses. Even if they had no ground rent and no
taxes to pay, they could not possibly save $5 billion a year. But
suppose they could. The landlords collect in rent $1 billion. The
government takes the whole of this in taxes. The landlords then
shift the tax upon the tenants, and insist upon collecting $2
billion in rent. But the government next year taxes the whole of
this increased sum out of the landlords. The landlords then raise
their rent to $3 billion. But the government immediately takes the
whole of that in taxes. The landlords raise their rent to $4
billion. The government again takes it all. They raise rent once
more to $5 billion. Again it is all swallowed up in taxes. Will the
landlords raise their rent again? How can they? They would by that
time have taken every dollar that tenants earned, over the barest
living; and if they attempted to extort another dollar, some tenant
would die of starvation; and rents would fall, from lack of tenants.
And as the government would have extracted the whole of their rent,
they would have gained not a dollar by their persistent oppression
of their tenants.
16. Distinction between land and houses. -- It will be said
that nothing of this kind could really be done by any government.
Quite true; but that is simply because nothing of the kind could be
done by landlords. Landlords know, to their cost, that it takes
three or four years to enable them to recover from tenants even
increased taxation upon houses, although they will recover it in the
end. But, since it is difficult to recover a tax which tends to
diminish the number of houses, how vastly more difficult must it be
to recover a tax upon the value of land, which has no tendency
whatever to diminish the amount of available land.
And here the reader can see the reason for the distinction. If
owners of houses can recover from tenants a tax upon houses, nobody
will build any more houses for renting. But the owners of land
cannot create anymore land, no matter how liberally he may be paid
for it; and he cannot diminish the area of land, no matter how
little he may receive for it. Every increase of taxation upon ground
rents makes it more difficult to keep land out of use, and therefore
it increases the competition between the landlords to get tenants.
Under a light tax upon ground rents, two tenants pursue one
landlord. But under a heavy tax, two landlords pursue one tenant. If
ground rents should be taxed even to half their amount, landlords
without tenants would be compelled to sell at any price to other
landlords who could get tenants. The tendency of all taxes upon
ground rents, therefore, it is to reduce rent rather than to
increase it; and this makes the very idea of a transfer of such
taxes to the tenant utterly absurd.
A moment's reflection will satisfy everyone that landlords charge
just as much for their land as they can possibly get, except in
special cases of good nature, charity, or ignorance. In all ordinary
cases the only reason why they do not charge more is that they
cannot find anybody able and willing to pay more. How can this
condition be changed by taxes upon rent? It is not end it cannot be.
The average landlord will charge the highest rent which he can get,
tax or no tax. And, as no man will ever get more than he can get, no
amount of tax upon ground rent will ever be shifted over to tenants
by any increase of rents.
17. Amount of the tax on rent. -- It does not follow that
the State should compel the landlord to pay over all that he
receives. If the State could and should do this the landlord would
cease to do his work, because he would receive no compensation for
it. Natural laws again settle this question, by making such exact
collection impossible. Not all the power of all governments,
concentrated upon the landlords of a single town, could extract from
them precisely 100 per cent of the rent received by them.
Nor does it follow that even 90 per cent of rent ought to be taken.
Where rents are large, the retention of 10 or even 5 per cent might
be sufficient to induce landlords to follow up tenants and extract
from them that just rent which everybody ought to pay. We're rents
are small, a commission of 10 or even 15 per cent may be
insufficient for this purpose. And iron rule is not natural rule;
and it will not work well.
What would Nature or Science dictate upon this point? Is it not
that the State should collect from the natural tax collectors
whenever a mount the State really needs, for the effective but
economical administration of government? Is it not better, in case
there should remain any considerable access over this, that it
should remain in private hands, rather than it should be taken by
the State, before the State officers know how to use it for the real
benefit of the people at large? Grant, if you please, that there
would be such a surplus of rent as to breed wasteful luxury among
landlords, is not this less injurious to the community than
wholesale waste and embezzle of public funds? Our whole national
history illustrates the truth that surplus public revenues first
corrupt public officers and then debauch the nation itself.
But in fact, in the long run, there will be no such question to
decide. The honest needs of public government grow faster than
population and fully as fast as wealth itself. Local taxation will
increase rapidly; and it ought to do so. Such taxation increased in
Ohio, for example, 1,400 per cent in forty years, between 1846 and
1886; well population increased only 100 per cent and wealth 1,000
per cent. It is more likely that vigilance will be needed to prevent
the taxation of rent from rising to fast, than it would be required
to keep landlords from retaining too much. This is not imply that
ground rent will not be sufficient to supply many, possibly all, of
those additions to human happiness which Henry George has pictured
in such glowing words. But such extensions of the sphere of
government must take place gradually; or they will be ruinous
failures, simply because the state cannot at once furnish the
necessary machinery for their successful operation.
This natural tax might be adopted in one day, not only without
injury to the nation, but with positive benefit to more than
nine-tenths all the people. But this would be strictly upon
condition that the amount collected for public use should not yet
first exceed that which was previously collected. Indeed, it would
be essential to the permanence of such taxation that public revenues
should be at the beginning of the new system even smaller than they
were immediately before. And we may be perfectly sure that they
would be. A body of 4 million taxpayers will take care of that.
18. New benefits shared with landlords. -- There is,
nevertheless, a certain element of truth underlying the idea that a
rent tax can be shifted. While it is not true that one dollar of the
tax can be transferred to the tenant, in any case where rent is
fixed upon strictly business principles, it is true that, in many
places, an especially in rural districts of England, the owners of
farmlands do not charge the full market value of the land to their
tenants personal considerations, kindness of feeling, custom,
long-continued relations between the families of the landlord in the
tenant, public opinion, tradition, the desire to control votes, and
many similar influences keep rents below their market value. Under a
system of taxation, concentrated upon rents, these influences would
lose much of their power. Under a tax, deliberately raised to the
highest practicable point, these influences would lose all of their
power. Tenants would, therefore, find their rents increased to do
the full value of the land. Here would seem to be a real shifting of
the tax.
But this would be only a seeming, not a reality. The tenants, who
now receive the benefit of those influences, are in a reality
themselves landlords, to that extent. They divide economical rent
with their landlords. They do not divide the rent, thus left in
their pockets, with the community at-large. They do not reduce the
prices of their products or charge any less for their services. Many
of them sublet a part of the land to others, to whom they charge the
full market price. The community, as a whole, pays just as much
rent, when the duke allows the farmer to occupy land at 20 per cent
below its full value, as it does when the duke's creditors seize his
land and make the farmer pay the last penny that the land is worth.
The farmer sells wheat at the same price and pays to his laborers
the same wages, in either case. But there is a good deal of
difference in the style of his daughter's dresses and the length of
his annual vacation.
There is another result which must follow, if the community gains
in wealth in happiness, through this change in methods of taxation.
Every advance in prosperity -- every widespread increase in wealth,
tends to increase rent. If it is true, as will be presently
maintained, that this reforming taxation will stimulate production,
increase wages, promote the development of industry, add to the
profits of capital and reward the efforts of skill, then there will
be a greatly increased demand for the locations which offer the best
natural opportunities for the use of capital, labor and skill; and
ground rents will rise. But this is not the shifting of an old
burden; it is the sharing of a new benefit.
SOCIAL EFFECTS OF NATURAL TAXATION
1. The effect in general. -- The adoption of a
natural, intelligent, and scientific system of taxation would bring
about a just distribution of wealth, would give a perpetual stimulus
to industry and production, would greatly increase wages, would
increase the profits of capital, would give security to property now
unknown, would encourage manufactures, commerce, and agriculture,
and would incidentally solve many social problems which under
present conditions seem almost insoluble.
It is hoped that at each branch of the inquiry has been discussed,
it has appeared that each step toward this great but simple reform
has been attended with the solution of some difficult problem. But
others have been reserved for this final review.
2. Stimulus to production. -- It must surely have been
evident, without argument, that when all taxes are concentrated upon
ground rents alone, and went every piece of land is estimated for
assessment at the amount for which could be rented for present use,
the tax constantly increasing, in exact proportion to any increase
in the rental value of the land, it would generally be impossible to
hold any land out of use for the purpose of speculation. The only
exception would be cases in which it was so clearly desirable that
the land should be preserved for future use, that its possessor
could better afford to pay the tax out of his capital that allow
land to be put to any present use which would spoil it for a more
desirable future use. The pressure put upon the landowner to make
immediate and beneficial use of the land would, in most cases, be
irresistible. The result, in all but a few exceptional cases, would
be that all land, which anyone cared to claim as owner, would be put
into immediate use for productive purposes; while a vast amount of
land which is now held for pure speculation, would be abandoned to
the use of anyone who was willing to pay the annual tax.
Under such a system all and would be made useful, up to its full
capacity. The possession of land would necessitate the constant
employment of labor in its use in development; and all who were
unable or unwilling to use land to the best advantage of the
community would abandon it to those who were both able and willing.
But this is only one of the many stimulants to production which are
involved in reformed taxation. Think of the many other
encouragements which industry would receive. Money and credit, free
from all taxes, would crowd into the industrial field. Factories,
mills, furnaces, foundries, workshops, stores, offices, machinery,
tools, instruments of production in every conceivable form, would
all be free from taxes. The farmers' barns, crops, plows, tools and
implements, his horses, cattle, sheep, materials and products of
every kind, would be free of tax. His land could be drained,
stubbed, subsoiled and improved to the highest point, without adding
a dollar to his taxes. Commerce would be free as air. The farmer
would buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest. Monopoly
could no longer hinder production. The only limit of production
would be the limit of demand.
3. Effect on wages. -- Using the term "wages" as
including all forms of compensation for personal labor, it should
seem clear that the greatest increase in production which would thus
be brought about must greatly increase the demand for labor, and
would therefore produce the general and permanent advance in wages.
Nominal wages, expressed in terms of money, must advance, because
there would be an anxious demand for labor on the part of all
landowners. For without a constant supply of efficient labor, the
annual tax could not be paid; and then the land would fall into the
hands of those who would exact extract from the land, either by
their own labor or by the labor of others, a revenue sufficient to
pay the tax, with a profit. The increased demand for labor thus
arising would, in any country large enough to make a rate of its
own, largely increase the general rate of wages. That this is the
invariable result, in all similar cases, has been abundantly proved
by past experience. The opening of new land to labor has always
tended to increase wages; and under the proposed system of taxation
there would be an enormous increase in the new land thus opened to
labor, and therefore a corresponding increase in the reward of
labor. The effect upon wages would be precisely that which would be
produced by the discovery of a new continent of fertile and healthy
land.
Real wages (in other words, the real reward of labor) would be
increased to a much greater extent than nominal wages for while
wages, expressed in the forms of money, must rise, as already shown,
prices of the good things which wages buy would fall, on account of
the much greater production of such things, which would result from
the immensely greater application of labor and capital to land. More
than this, it having been already shown that the bulk of taxation is
now borne by the wage-earners, and that the whole of this taxation
would be taken off their shoulders by the new system, the real
income would be practically increased by the full amount of this
reduction of taxation; the effect of which they would feel in a
general reduction of the cost of living.
4. Effect on money wages. -- The advance in money wages
must, of necessity, be rather vaguely estimated. But long experience
has furnished abundant means for trustworthy calculations. It is not
at all necessary that there should be a demand for double the number
of laborers, to double the rate of wages. A much smaller increase in
the demand will suffice, so long as the supply of labor does not
meet the demand.
It having been shown to the taxation of ground rents would compel
their owners to employ labor in producing something out of which
taxes could be paid while the release of the great purchasing class
from heavy taxation would enlarge their purchasing power, it follows
that in immediate demand for labor would arise, in excess of the
local supply. The degree to which wages would rise, in consequence
of this demand, would largely depend upon the extent of the field
over which the new system of taxation was in force. The adoption of
just taxation in a single country, or even in an entire state, would
cause a great increase of production there; but wages would be kept
down, to a considerable degree, by the incoming of laborers from
outside.
5. Immigration and wages. -- But the adoption of just
taxation, throughout the United States, would cause a rise in wages
far too great to be repressed by foreign immigration. Laborers of
all kinds have never yet come to America in any one year, to the
extent of even one twentieth part of the home supply. As the new
arrivals furnish a market for nearly all that they earn, they do
not, at the utmost, furnish an element of competition with native
laborers in excess of one-half of their earnings. If, therefore, the
average rate of American wages could be doubled, by causes having a
permanent operation, immigration might continue at full tide for
many years, before it could seriously effect wages. The truth of
this theory may be illustrated by the case of domestic servants.
From various causes their average wages in the United States have
much more than doubled since 1860. Those who then received $6
dollars a month could now readily earn $14, while living in much
greater comfort and having much easier work. The immigration of
women of this class has been enormous; but it has never reduced
wages. It may well be doubted whether it has even had any material
influence in preventing further advance. All the great advance in
the wages of domestic servants has occurred since they began to
arrive in great numbers.
We may safely assume that any rise in wages which would result from
a reform in taxation, and extending over the whole or the larger
portion of United States, would be permanent, notwithstanding any
probable amount of immigration.
6. Amount of rise in wages. -- As the purchasing power of
laborers would be increased at least 15 per cent from the instant
that which taxes were taken off their purchases, an increase of
demand to that extent may be assumed as certain, subject to such
reduction of demand as might be caused by the reduced profits of
than not more than 50,000 families who would suffer any loss of
income through the new taxation. As their losses would not trench
upon their usual fund for expenditure, their purchases would fall
off only to a very moderate degree. An allowance of $3,000 for each
of these families would be ample. This would amount in all to
$150,000,000, or not more than one-tenth of the increase in the
purchasing power of the other classes. After making large allowance
for a saving disposition among the poorer classes, under their new
prosperity, it is impossible to estimate the increase in purchases
at less than 10 per cent, or $1,000,000,000 per annum. It would
probably be much more.
On the other hand, the anxiety of landowners to put their land to
profitable use, the absolute release of all productive industry from
burden, shackles, and restrictions, the untaxed money, untaxed
manufactures, untaxed commerce, untaxed agriculture and untaxed
credit would all combine to give a sudden and tremendous stimulus to
industry. Production, for these reasons alone, could not failed to
increase immensely. Adding this consideration to the other, the
effective demand for labor could not fail to increase by more than
one-third; and this would cause a rise in wages of fully 100 per
cent.
7. Effect on capital. -- The owners of capital will
naturally desire to know how their interest will be affected. Will
not the doubling of wages diminish the profit of capital? No. On the
contrary it will greatly increased that profit.
In the first place, it must the remembered that ground rents are
not capital. Correctly speaking, they're not even true wealth. They
are mere taxes upon wealth -- instruments by which tribute can be
exacted from wealth. We're now considering only genuine capital --
true wealth, it employed in the reproduction of wealth.
In the next place, capital necessarily depends for its profit upon
a large demand for its productions. Modern capitalists are fully
aware that great gains can never come from small transactions, no
matter how large the profit on each transaction may be. Sales of $1
million at a profit of 50 per cent are a small account, compared
with sales of $1,000,000 at a profit of 5 per cent. The number of
those who live without their own labor is an must be always and
everywhere so small, compared with the vast massive mankind, as to
afford an insignificant market for the enormous production of modern
industry. The vast majority, who labor with their own ends, furnish
the only market worthy of consideration for modern capital.
This great majority always spend the larger part of their earnings;
and they would continue to do so, even if their earnings were
doubled or trebled. The doubling of their wages means, therefore,
the doubling of the market for the joint production of labor and
capital. It means the doubling of the gross profit of capital. This
would not be true of a similar increase of income to any other
class. The owners of rent would not double their purchases, if rent
were doubled. They would put much of their surplus into capital,
competing with capital already invested. This might be good for
others than capitalists. Yet, unless it brought about an increase of
wages, it would not increase the demand for goods; and so it would
not increase the profit of capital. An increase of wealth, in that
hands of the few, leads to increased wastefulness in the nature of
their expenditures. Their outlay does not reproduce capital. The
outlay of the working-class does. Not only does their food renew
their vigor, but even their amusements, when intelligently directed,
greatly increase their productive power and energy. High wages lead
not only to cheap production, but also to a vast increase of
production. They also lead immediately to a corresponding increase
of the market for such productions.
There is no conflict of interest between labor and capital,
although there are many conflicts of interest between individual
laborers and individual capitalists. The lifting of all taxation
from labor and capital will benefit both.
8. Absolute security of property. -- When taxation is
levied exclusively upon ground rents every man will have, for the
first time in human history, an absolute and indefeasible title to
all of his property which is the production of human skill and
industry, subject only to the right of the State to take it, upon
making full compensation for its value. Such compensation would
enable the owner to replace the property thus taken with other
property of the same description and value. This general right of
the State is practically no limitation upon the absolute right to
individual property.
It is perfectly plain that no one has any such right at present,
and that no one can have it, under any existing system of taxation.
For, so long as the State assumes the right to tax anything besides
rent, it is impossible for any man to retain the entire fruits of
his own industry. Every year the State will deduct something from
those fruits, under the name of taxation; and no one can never
foresee precisely how much will be taken in this manner. The
fluctuations, both in the amounts and methods of such taxes, are so
great and incalculable that no one can have any reasonable certainty
as to the extent to which his earnings will be secure against the
demands of the State.
But if taxes were once confined strictly to ground rent, all this
would be changed. Chattels of every description would of course be
absolutely secure; since the only remedy which would be allowed to
the State for the collection of taxes would be a sale of some
exclusive privilege on land. But buildings and all other
improvements on land would be equally secure against all top taking
without compensation. This is not at first sight so clear; and it
needs, therefore, fuller explanation.
9. Improvements paid for on tax sales. -- The exclusive
tax upon ground rent would lose its entire character if the state
were allowed, under any pretense, to collect it from personal
property or improvements. It is a fundamental condition of such
attacks that it be collected only out of rent. It must, therefore,
when payment is refused, be collected only by selling the control of
the taxed land to some person, who will not only pay the tax, but
will also pay to the landholder thus sold out the full value of all
his improvements. If no one will pay the tax, subject to those
conditions, that is conclusive proof that the taxes to high, and
that it is in reality based upon an assessment including other
values than the mere value of the land. The purchaser in such case
would, of course, take the land, subject to the annual liability for
taxes; but he would also acquire the same absolute title to
improvements which the previous possessor had; so that he, in turn,
could not be sold out for taxes without full compensation for
improvements. Thus no one would ever pay taxes upon the value of any
other property than the bare land.
Universal experience has demonstrated that there would not be the
slightest difficulty in carrying such a system into practical
operation. This system has long been in operation, upon a great
scale, both in public and private affairs. Wherever ferry franchises
belong to a municipality, as in the city of New York, such
franchises are sold at auction, at intervals of five or ten years,
always subject to two conditions: first, the payment of rent to the
municipality; and second, the payment of full compensation to the
former owner of the franchises, for boats, piers, houses, and all
other structures and materials used in operating the ferry. Street
railway franchises are sold in the same manner, for terms of years,
by every honest municipal body having control of the subject. So
landlords constantly lease their land for terms of years, to men who
erect expensive buildings thereon; the landlords covenanting to pay
the value of such improvements upon the expiration of the lease.
There is no more difficulty in providing for an annual sale of land,
if necessary, subject to these conditions, than there it is in
providing for a sale in every five, ten, or twenty years. A ferry
franchise is just as much of title to "land," within the
meaning of law, science and common sense, as his any other land
title whatever.
Of course the valuation of improvements would be made upon a
common-sense basis. The landowner, upon making default in taxes,
would be entitled to just as much compensation for his buildings as
those buildings really added to the market value of the land on
which they were built, but no more. If as often happens, an
expensive building had been put up in a district where it could
never be of any use, nothing should be allowed for it beyond the
value of its materials, after it had been pulled down. But for any
really useful building compensation would be allowed, sufficient to
enable the owner to put up a similar building, in similar condition,
upon an adjoining tract of land. In short, whatever loss the owner
of a building incurred, by reason of his own mistakes or
extravagance, he would be left to bear; but whatever value belonged
to the building, exclusive of the land underneath it, he would
invariably be allowed to retain.
10. The Railway problem. -- this is no place for even a
full statement of the great railway problem, with its almost endless
branches. Much less will an attempt be here made to give in a
complete solution. All that will be attempted is to suggest the
close connection between this complicated problem and the simple one
of taxation.
It is by no means so clear as it seems to those who suffer from
them, that high real rate rates are actually unjust. That which is
unjust in such cases is generally the fact that the large profits
made upon such transactions are in the nature of rent, and equitably
belong to the whole community. All attempts to correct this apparent
injustice have thus far failed; and it may be worthy of inquiry
whether this failure is not caused by some unrecognized justice in
the system complained of. May it not be that the wrong consists, not
in the differential rates, but in the failure of the government to
collect any part of these differences for public use?
Are not many of the evils complained of the due to inflated nominal
values and fictitious securities? That such is the general opinion
is strongly indicated by the stringent prohibition of fictitious
stocks and bonds in the new constitutions of Illinois, Pennsylvania,
and other states as well as in the statutes of still more. But if
this opinion is well founded the concentration of taxes upon land
privileges, including railway franchises, will practically settle
that question by taking a very large part of such inflated values
for public use.
The complete separation between the ownership of the road and the
ownership of moving stock, proposed by Mr. Hudson, would seem to
cover all the remaining ground. Under the one natural tax the owners
of the road would be taxed in proportion to the value of its
franchise, but the owners of the rolling stock would not be taxed at
all. All persons in corporations could operate trains upon the road,
subject to general rules. If the people of any place were charged
too much of the carriage of their persons and property, they could
put their own trains upon the road on equal terms with all the
others. This was the original railway idea, and it has been
abandoned, not because it is really impracticable, as railway
managers pretend, but because it is less profitable to railway
companies than the monopoly which is created by the present system.
11. Just taxation the remedy for unjust appropriation. --
The proposal of a method of just scientific and natural taxation is
so simple and unpretending that eager social reformers cannot
believe it possible that it can carry with it any cure for the evils
of our time. They point to the unequal distributions of wealth, the
growth and powers of monopolies, the watered stocks and bonds, the
bribe-bought franchises, the usurped privileges, the stolen lands,
the wholesale appropriation of public property to private use, and
they ask how it can be possible that "a mere fiscal reform"
can bring relief from any of these evils. Yet it can. No great
upheaval of society is needed. No social reorganization is required.
No general state assumption of machinery of production is either
necessary or desirable.
It is continually but erroneously denied that the enormous fortunes
of the present-day are due to land monopoly or to methods of
taxation. Fortunes of considerable extent are gained by skill and
genius, and there is no good reason why such fortunes should not be
encouraged. Bessemer, Edison, Bell, and other inventors have
deserved wealth, and a capitalist who made their inventions possible
and forced them upon public attention deserve it too. But all the
unwieldy fortunes, and all which have had undesirable origins, owe
their existences to some form of monopoly which could not have
existed under the natural system of taxation.
The enormous wealth of British dukes and of our own -- or lately
our own -- Astors is of course due entirely to the comparative
exemption ground rents from taxation. But all the excess of wealth
gained by railway kings, above a liberal compensation for
shrewdness, sagacity, and foresight, is due to precisely the same
cause. It has been shown that the chief value of railways consist in
exclusive and peculiar privileges upon a land; and the greatest part
of this value arises from its comparative exemption from taxation.
The great monopolies which have grown with such startling rapidity
into such overshadowing power owe all of their wealth and power to
their manipulation of railways and of duties on imports. Under
natural taxation there would be no import duties to manipulate, and
the railways could not afford to be manipulated.
12. "Watered stocks. -- Let us pass to the
consideration of the inflated stocks and bonds which are made the
excuse for extortion. What can taxation do with them? The answer is
so plain that one wonders at the question. Even without the adoption
of the full reform here proposed, the change of a few lines in the
tax laws would put a speedy end to these abuses. If all corporate
securities were made subject to the general tax rate at their full
nominal value, the "water" would be let out of them within
three months. "Yet show I unto you a more excellent way."
Stock inflation does not really enable railways to charge high
rates. The Erie line cannot charge more on through traffic than the
Central. And, upon the whole, those who use railways do not pay more
than the service is worth. The real evil is that a very great part
of the value of such service consists in the use of the land over
which the railway runs, that this portion belongs to the public, and
that hardly any of it is taken, as his ought to be, for public use.
The proper remedy is not to give service to those who use the
railways for less than it is worth, but to use the same share of the
value of railway land for public purposes as in the case of other
lands. When this is done the entire people will receive, through
relief from other taxation, their share of the value which they have
given to the railways. And, at the same time, it will become
impossible for Railway companies to maintain inflated stocks and
bonds because to do so would be to invite greater taxation than they
could bear.
13. Corrupt grants. -- So as to bribe-bought franchises. It
would be quite unnecessary to rescind them. It would only be
necessary to tax them on the basis of their true value, which is
pure ground rent. Thus Americans street railroads, which generally
owe their franchises to the grossest corruption and which charge
fares of five were ten cents for a service which costs less than
half that sum, need not be interfered with. Under a proper system of
taxation it would made little difference whether the fares were
reduced or not. If the fares were reduced to three cents, ground
rents would be increased, and the city would derive greater revenue
from its taxes on those rents. If the fares remained unchanged, the
value of the railroad franchise would be so much greater, and the
tax upon that would be greater in proportion. It would make little
difference even to those who traveled in the cars. If the fares were
reduced, the travelers would have to pay more rent for their homes.
Thus they would contribute as much to the public funds in one way as
in the other.
At first sight it would seem that the redress thus obtained would
be very inadequate. But it would not. Of course, no pass wrong can
be entirely obliterated. No scheme of social reforms seriously
proposes to secure compensation for all the past. The world does not
contain wealth enough to pay damages for all past injuries. But the
taxation of all franchises, on the basis of their present fair
market value with the concentration of all taxes upon ground rents,
of which these are a part, would take for the public benefit all
that the public could have secured under the most honest and
impartial sale of such franchises. It will also tax those
corporations which obtained their grants for nothing just so much
more than it will tax those which paid a fair price.
14. Taxation in the best remedy for past corruption. --
For these franchises could not, upon the average, have been
originally sold for more than they would now pay under such
taxation. If they had been sold at auction for a sum in cash, free
of taxation, they would never have brought a sum which, however well
invested, would produce in income equal to the average annual tax.
If new franchises should be sold, free of taxation, to the highest
bidder for an annual payment, that payment in the long run, would
rarely, if ever, equal the taxes which would be paid under this
system. Therefore it would be better, in the long run, to give these
franchises to the corporations which will give the best security for
the best and cheapest public service than to sell them to the
highest bidder either for a single or an annual payment. Indeed to
sell them for a single present payment is obviously a bad method. It
confines competition to a very few men of great wealth, depriving
the municipality of the better service, which less wealthy but more
energetic men would probably render; it cripples the operation of
the franchise by impairing the capital of the managers; and it pours
into the public treasury a large sum, which cannot be well in
vested, and which is an almost irresistible temptation to
extravagance and waste.
And those corporations which have obtained of valuable franchises
for nothing, except bribes, will necessarily be taxed more happily
than those which are already subject to an annual payment. Thus the
Broadway Railroad, in New York City, is subject to an annual payment
of $40,000. The real annual value of its franchise (obtained by
paying alderman $20,000 each) is so much more than $400,000 that
this figure may be taken as an extremely moderate one. Assuming that
to be correct, the taxable value of this franchise would be reduced
to $360,000 by this liability to an annual payment. If another
charter, equally valuable, should be granted in a parallel street,
for nothing, it's taxable value would be the full $400,000.
Supposing half of such value to be taken by taxation, half the
amount gained by bribery would be recovered. Under the present
system, every conceivable method for recovering the loss sustained
by the community through such schemes of corruption has been tried,
without the slightest success. Even if the adoption of just taxation
should only recover half of a just compensation for the franchises
corruptly given away, that is thousand times more than has ever yet
been recovered, and ten times more than ever can be recovered in any
other way.
15. Usurped Lands. -- Take the case of usurped or stolen
lands. In Great Britain, the Lords of the manner, having had control
of Parliament for centuries, have stolen vast quantities of land
from the people, under the forms of law. In the United States, vast
tracts of land have been taken up, under forged grants or under
perjured testimony. Spanish grants are a byword, and the homestead
law has been perverted into the most successful scheme for buying
government land at a fourth of its value which could have been
devised. It ought to be entitled: "An Act to prohibit the
purchase of land by honest man, and to encourage monopoly and
perjury." Railroad lands, to the amount of hundreds of millions
of acres, have been obtained for nothing, except a few beggarly
bribes to Congressmen and State legislators, amounting in all two
less than a ten-thousandth part of the market value. What then?
Shall we sue in the courts for relief? None could be had, without
laying down rules of law, which would be ruinous to innocent
purchasers all over the land. Shall we pass confiscatory? The
Constitution forbids, and if it did not, our own consciences would
revolt in the idea. There is no possible relief in that direction.
Great Britain has no written Constitution, and her Parliament has
unlimited power. Shall Parliament direct the confiscation of the old
common lands? Shall it undertake to reclaim literal possession of "the
land for the people?" Let us not waste time in discussing the
question on moral grounds. Rightly or wrongly the moral sense of the
people would revolt at such a proposition. And if it did not, yet
the immense complications involved in awarding compensation for
improvements would break down the whole project. It is not
worthwhile to inquire into the abstract morality of an utterly
impracticable scheme.
But in Great Britain and America alike the adoption of a just,
natural, an uniform method of taxation would give an immediate
remedy. Without confiscation, without violence, without any social
upheaval, it would take for public use about half of the revenue
thus misappropriated, which is no more than ought to be taken, in
any case, while it is far more than can ever be obtained in any
other way.
"The best remedy for injustice is simple justice."
16. Reforming government. -- By this time, it is
hoped, the attentive reader will have begun to see that the adoption
of natural taxation leads, by an easy course, to reform in all
benefits of government and the abolition of corruption in public
office, by removing most inducement to corruption. It would nearly
extirpate the bribery of legislatures and councils by leaving
nothing for anyone to gain by offering bribes. Not absolutely, of
course. It cannot be too often repeated that nothing in this world
is or ever will be perfect. But this reform in taxation would remove
most of the present inducements to bribery, falsehood and fraud in
public affairs.
17. Abolition of fraud and bribery in tax matters. -- The
most prolific sources of these evils are directly connected with bad
methods of taxation. Every change in laws imposing taxes upon
commodities, either by a tariff or by excises, affects so many
private interests that all parties agree in charging wholesale
bribery and corruption upon each other, and non seriously claim to
be innocent. This branch of the subject has already been
sufficiently treated. The innumerable frauds and perjury which arise
out of the taxation of personal property have also been referred to.
All these abominations would disappear, with the acceptance of
natural taxation. Nobody would be required to make any return of his
wealth, and no attention would be paid to it if he made any. There
would be but one thing to be taxed, and its value would be
ascertained by independent investigation. Valuations of land might
be compared with the rents actually paid, but those rents would be
learned by inquiry among tenants, not among landlords. Large
landowners might attempt to bribe assessors, as they do now. But the
value of land is so easily determined that other landowners could be
provided with an ample remedy in an application to the courts to
make assessments just and uniform.
18. Special local assessments dispensed with. -- The
complex system of special assessments for local improvements, which
is indispensable under all existing methods of taxation, with its
allowance for "betterments," to use a current English
term, would become unnecessary. All improvements could be made at
the common expense because whenever improvement might thus be made
in the value of adjoining property would all be an increase in the
value of the mere land, and this addition would lead at once to a
permanent increase in the tax upon that land to a proportionate
amount. Such assessments have always been our fertile source of
injustice, inequality and fraud. They are, inevitably, largely based
upon guesswork, whereas the subsequent taxation would be measured by
actual, known values.
19. Bribery made unprofitable. -- The most appalling
developments of crime in American government, however, have taken
place with regard to the grants of special privileges on land,
especially to railway, gas, electrical light, and similar companies.
The notorious robbery of the United States by the Union Pacific and
Central Pacific companies to an amount exceeding $100,000,000 is
only one of many instances, although the most prominent one. The
repeated purchase of the Broadway Railroad franchise from corrupt
alderman and legislators, repeatedly set aside by the courts, has
attracted more attention than hundreds of similar crimes. But every
street-railroad franchise in New York has certainly been procured in
precisely the same way, and probably every such railroad in the
country, the franchise of which was worth anything, was chartered
upon similar terms. Gas companies, electrical light companies, and
steam heating companies all pay heavy bribes for permission to lay
their pipes or wires in city streets.
The taxation of all these franchises at their full value, on the
same basis with other privileges over land, would make it impossible
to obtain them for nothing. No bargains with alderman could relieve
them from paying handsomely for their annual value. There would no
longer be an eager crowd of bribe-offerers, and therefore the crowd
of bribe-takers would cease to buy their way into municipal
government. The bribes offered to aldermen would be too small to
repay the aldermen's bribes to their electors. Such franchises would
be generally given to those who would accept them on terms most
favorable to the public, with respect to low charges, good
accommodation, and faithful service. No money would be paid, either
to the municipality or to the aldermen; for taxes would have to be
paid, and they would automatically increase as the value of the
franchises increased.
20. The tenement-house problem. -- The rapid increase of
low-class tenement houses in large American cities, especially in
New York, has excited the just anxiety an alarm of our most
thoughtful citizens. Many plans of restriction and regulation are
urged. They all aim at results which are eminently desirable. But
they all involve large expenses, which must be finally borne, under
our present methods of taxation, by the very tenants whose extreme
and degrading poverty is the very cause of the difficulty. It is
perfectly true that such houses do not afford sufficient space and
air to sustain health. It is often true that they do not furnish
accommodations necessary to maintain decency, although much has been
done out late years to improve them and to keep them under careful
inspection. But every good thing is costly; and who is to pay the
cost? If the landlord is forced by law to provide better
accommodations, he must charge more rent for the house; and it has
been already shown that he can, in the long run, compel the payment
of such additional rent, because, if he could not, no more tenant
houses would be built until tenants were able and willing to pay a
fair price of interest upon all the cost of building such houses,
including all compulsory improvements.
Or suppose that the cost of such improvements is paid by the
government. The expense would be paid out of taxes. Who would pay
the taxes? A full share would fall upon these very houses; and, as
the cost of such improvements when made by the city would be far
greater than it would be if they were made by the landlord, the
probability is that the tax upon the class of houses thus
State-repaired would be nearly as great as the cost of private
repair would be. Be it more or less, this taxed must be finally paid
by the tenants. And in this event, a large share of the tax would
fall upon other buildings, occupied by a class but little less poor
than the occupants of tenement houses, and thus they would be
dragged down into actual poverty. The next result would be that the
tenement dwellers would be so impoverished by the increase of their
rents as to deprive them of some portion of the food or clothing
which they had with difficulty managed to provide under the original
rent. All of them would suffer inconvenience, most of them would
suffer actual privation; they're earning power would be reduced, and
many of them would be driven out altogether by the bidding of other
tenants who had previously occupied houses or parts of houses of a
slightly higher grade, which they had been compelled to give up by
the pressure of taxation, or which, while they were much better than
the tenements had been before tenements were reformed, were no
better than the reformed and improved tenements.
Any compulsory improvements of this kind must inevitably make the
lot of the lower class -- "the residuum," as it is called
-- harder than ever.
As usual, it will be said that "this is all theory."
Unfortunately, it is a theory which was never thought much thought
of until practical experience called attention to it. The dwellings
of the poor have been torn down and rebuilt with improvements, upon
a large-scale, in Paris, London, Berlin, and other cities, and
always with precisely these results. Those who occupied the old,
condemned buildings did not return to the new ones. They simply
could not afford it. Their places were taken by others, who had
always occupied rather better homes, and who were driven by
increased taxation to descend a step in the social scale, finding in
the new dwellings homes not quite equal to their old abodes, but
much better and more expensive than the buildings which had been
destroyed as uninhabitable. The "residuum" were driven
into more degraded conditions than those under which they previously
lived.
21. Its solution. -- Must we, then, abandon all hope of
improvement in the homes of the poor? Not all. While insisting upon
renovations and necessary improvements, let us remove all taxes from
houses. This will make houses more abundant; this will make house
rents cheaper; this will enable house owners to furnish necessary
improvements without increasing rents or losing interest upon their
investments.
Less work out in illustration. Twenty thousand dollars is a
reasonable estimate for the price of many tenement houses in New
York; half for the house and half for the land. Houses being usually
assessed for 70 per cent of their full value, the house as
distinguished from the land, would be assessed at $7,000 and taxed,
at present rates, $133. If this tax were taken off, representing, as
it does, a capital of about $2,600, the owner could afford to spend
$2000 on improvements without raising the rent, and yet make a
profit. Competition with other house owners would eventually compel
him either to spend about his much, or else reduce his charge for
the house by more than $100 a year. Legislation might hasten his
action or require him to make the improvements, instead of lowering
his rented. In either case the tenants' condition would be greatly
improved
Without deciding that no other reform is necessary or desirable, it
is at least demonstrated by long and wide experience that no
permanent and complete reform of the tenement house is possible
without first abolishing all taxes on buildings.
22. Summary of conclusions. -- The adoption of natural
taxation would obviously relieve the great mass of the people from
all taxes and tax-burdens whatever, except rent, which they now pay,
in addition to taxes.
It would put an end to that artificial concentration of wealth in
the hands of a few, which is now making such rapid progress.
While leaving natural inequalities in human skill, intelligence,
industry, and productive power to produce their natural effects in
moderate inequalities of wealth, it would gradually remove those
unnatural and monstrous inequalities which now exist, with no
benefit to anyone and with vast injury to society as a whole.
It would put a premium upon improvement and industry, by relieving
them from double taxation; while it would lay such burdens upon a
mere "dogs in the manger" as would drive them into
productive industry.
It would secure to the owner of every product of human industry and
skill an absolute and indefeasible title to such property, so that
it could not be taken from him, even for taxes, without full
compensation for its market value; a title, therefore, far superior
to any which can now be held by any human being.
It would increase the demand for human labor in the production of
good things for human use, to the utmost possible limit, thus
causing a general rising wages of at least 50 per cent comment and
more probably 100 per cent.
It would relieve wages from all present forms of taxation, thus
increasing the net income of laborers, at once and forever, by at
least 15 per cent more. Whether times were good or bad, wages high
or low, the net income of every laborer would always be at least 15
per cent higher than it could possibly be under the present system,
at similar periods.
It would encourage capital to free investment, by relieving it from
all fear of punishment for enterprise, under the name of taxation.
It would solve the American currency problem, by opening banks of
deposit in every nook and corner, free of taxation; thus giving to
every farmer precisely the same facilities for exchange as are
enjoyed by the wealthiest merchant or manufacturer, and making a
large supply of either coin or notes superfluous.
It would largely reduce the shares of taxes paid by farmers,
because their share of ground rent is smaller than is that of other
landowners; while it would not increase the present burdens upon
residents of towns in cities, since they would pay nothing but rent,
and that they pay now, in addition to taxes.
It would remove all shackles from commerce, trade, manufacturers,
agriculture, and industry of every kind, giving them a stimulus such
as they have never known.
It would throw open to all men some land, upon which they could
make a living, without requiring them to invest any capital in its
purchase, and at no greater rent than they could reasonably afford
to pay. It would, therefore, enormously increase the production in
wealth of the nation, while securing a fair, though not literally
equal, distribution of that wealth.
It would reform government, by lifting the masses out of the
degrading conditions which make them an easy prey to corrupt
influences, by removing all temptation to fraud in matters of
taxation, and by destroying the chief inducements to the corruption
of legislatures and councils.
It would not at once make man moral, industrious, or intelligence;
it would not give to any man a dollar which he did not earn for
himself; it would not open any "royal roads" to wealth;
for "royal" ways are ways of idleness.
But it would open fair and equal opportunities to men of equal
capacity and industry; and it would remove nearly all artificial
hindrances to the success of the honest, intelligent, and
industrious.
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