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where they are situated, and to the person, wherever he lives, who is the owner of them on the first day of May. Thus a man who lives in the Berkshire mountains, say for example in the town of Lanesborough, will pay his poll-tax to that town. For his personal property, whether it be bonds of a railroad in Colorado, or shares in a bank in New York, or costly pictures in his house at Lanesborough, he will likewise pay taxes to Lanesborough. So for the house in which he lives, and the land upon which it stands, he pays taxes to that same town. But if he owns at the same time a house in Boston, he pays taxes for it to Boston, and if he owns a block of shops in Chicago he pays taxes for the same to Chicago. It is very apt to be the case that the rate of taxation is higher in large cities than in villages; and accordingly it often happens that wealthy inhabitants of cities, who own houses in some country town, move into them before the first of May, and otherwise comport themselves as legal residents of the country town, in order that their personal property may be assessed there rather than in the city.

About the first of May the assessors call upon the inhabitants of their town to render a true statement as to their property. The most approved form is for the assessors to send by mail to each taxable inhabitant a printed list of questions, with blank spaces which he is to fill with written answers. The questions relate to every kind of property, and when the person addressed returns the list to the assessors he must make oath that to the best of his knowledge and belief his answers are true. He thus becomes liable to the penalties for perjury if he can be proved to have sworn falsely. A reasonable timeusually six or eight weeks is allowed for the list to

Tax lists.

be returned to the assessors. If any one fails to return his list by the specified time, the assessors must make their own estimate of the probable amount of his property. If their estimate is too high, he may petition the assessors to have the error corrected, but in many cases it may prove troublesome to effect this.

Cheating

Observe here an important difference between the imposition of taxes upon real estate and upon personal property. Houses and lands cannot run away or be tucked out of sight. Their value, too, is something of which the assessors can very likely judge as well as the owner. Deception is therefore exthe govern- tremely difficult, and taxation for real estate ment. is pretty fairly distributed among the differWith regard to personal estate it is very different. It is comparatively easy to conceal one's ownership of some kinds of personal property, or to understate one's income. Hence the temptation to lessen the burden of the tax bill by making false statements is considerable, and doubtless a good deal of deception is practised. There are many people who are too honest to cheat individuals, but still consider it a venial sin to cheat the government.

ent owners.

The rate of

After the assessors have obtained all their returns they can calculate the total value of the taxable property in the town; and knowing the amount of the tax to be raised, it is easy to calculate the rate at which the tax is to be assessed. In most parts of the taxation. United States a rate of one and a half per cent, or $15 tax on each $1,000 worth of property, would be regarded as moderate; three per cent would be regarded as excessively high. At the lower of these rates a man worth $50,000 would pay $750 for his yearly taxes. The annual income of $50,000, invested on good security, is hardly more than $2,500.

Obviously $750 is a large sum to subtract from such an income.

tion.

In point of fact, however, the tax is seldom quite as heavy as this. It is not easy to tell exactly how much a man is worth, and accordingly assessors, not wishing to be too disagreeable in the discharge of their duties, have naturally fallen into a way of giving the lower valuation the benefit of the doubt, until in many places a custom has grown up of regularly Undervaluaundervaluing property for purposes of taxation. Very much as liquid measures have gradually shrunk until it takes five quart bottles to hold a gal lon, so there has been a shrinkage of valuations until it has become common to tax a man for only three fourths or perhaps two thirds of what his property is worth in the market. This makes the rate higher, to be sure, but the individual taxpayer nevertheless seems to feel relieved by it. Allowing for this undervaluation, we may say that a man worth $50,000 commonly pays not less than $500 for his yearly taxes, or about one fifth of the annual income of the property. We thus begin to see what a heavy burden The burden taxes are, and how essential to good govern- of taxation. ment it is that citizens should know what their money goes for, and should be able to exert some effective control over the public expenditures. Where the rate of taxation in a town rises to a very high point, such as two and a half or three per cent, the prosperity of the town is apt to be seriously crippled. Traders and manufacturers move away to other towns, or those who would otherwise come to the town in question stay away, because they cannot afford to use up all their profits in paying taxes. If such a state of things is long kept up, the spirit of enterprise is weakened, the place shows signs of untidiness and want of thrift,

and neighbouring towns, once perhaps far behind it in growth, by and by shoot ahead of it and take away

its business.

The specific objects for be appropriated are dis

Within its proper sphere, government by townmeeting is the form of government most effectively under watch and control. Everything is done in the full daylight of publicity. which public money is to cussed in the presence of everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to declare his opinions. Under this form of government people are not so liable to bewildering delusions as under other forms. I refer especially to the delusion that "the Government" is a sort of mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible The " magic fund" delu- fund of wealth, and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of "the People." Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is the prolific root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In point of fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any money for pubpurposes which it did not first take from its own people, - unless when it may have plundered it from some other people in victorious warfare.

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The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that "the Government" is "the People." Although he may think loosely about the government of his state or the still more remote government at Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small value.

town-meet

In the kind of discussion which it provokes, in the necessity of facing argument with argument Educational and of keeping one's temper under control, value of the the town-meeting is the best political train- ing. ing school in existence. Its educational value is far higher than that of the newspaper, which, in spite of its many merits as a diffuser of information, is very apt to do its best to bemuddle and sophisticate plain facts. The period when town-meetings were most important from the wide scope of their transactions was the period of earnest and sometimes stormy discussion that ushered in our Revolutionary war. Country towns were then of more importance relatively than Boston now; one country town was at the same time a great political centre; and its meetings were presided over and addressed by men of commanding ability, among whom Samuel Adams, "the man of the town-meeting," was foremost. In those days great principles of government were discussed with a wealth of knowledge and stated with masterly skill in townmeeting.

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The town-meeting is to a very limited extent a legislative body; it can make sundry regulations for the management of its local affairs. Such regulations are known by a very ancient name, "by-laws." By-laws. By is an Old Norse word meaning "town,"

and it appears in the names of such towns as Derby and Whitby in the part of England overrun by the Danes in the ninth and tenth centuries. By-laws are town laws.2

1 The phrase is Professor Hosmer's: see his Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town Meeting, in "Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies," vol. II. no. iv.; also his Samuel Adams, in "American Statesmen" series, Boston, 1885.

2 In modern usage the rules and regulations of clubs, learned societies, and other associations, are also called by-laws.

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