Thus it is that too high a tax on
the transfer of titles arrests the circulation of real property,
and renders estates less productive by keeping them from changing
hands.
If, on the contrary, the tax falls on product, it is nothing but
a tax of quotite, which each pays in the ratio of his
consumption, while the capitalist, whom it is purposed to strike,
escapes.
Moreover, the supposition of a progressive tax based either on
product or on capital is perfectly absurd. How can we imagine
the same product paying a duty of ten per cent. at the store of
one dealer and a duty of but five at another's? How are estates
already encumbered with mortgages and which change owners every
day, how is a capital formed by joint investment or by the
fortune of a single individual, to be distinguished upon the
official register, and taxed, not in the ratio of their value or
rent, but in the ratio of the fortune or presumed profits of the
proprietor?
There remains, then, a last resource,--to tax the net income of
each tax-payer, whatever his method of getting it.
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