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WHO PAYS YOUR TAXES?

bigger the income, the bigger the thief.” It is a taxwhich is more readily evaded by the very rich than byany others, because it pays a rich man to employ the bestcounsel, to resort to legal artifices, or to remove his resi-dence for the purpose of saving a considerable sum ofmoney; whilst upon the man of moderate circumstances,especially those on a salary or having a fairly definiteprofessional income, it falls with redoubled weight.

Secondly, even a graduated tax has not that justicewhich appears on its face. For a poor man with a largefamily to pay anything out of an income which barelysupports him is more of a hardship than for a wealthyman, who has only himself to care for, to pay a largeproportion out of his superfluity. In order to imposeanything like equal burdens, an income tax should begraduated with reference not only to the amount of in-come, but to the amount of necessary expenditures, andconsequently with reference also to the social position ofthe individual. Thus, a butcher’s foreman with fifteenhundred dollars a year, who lives as butcher’s foremenand men of the laboring class usually do, would find a taxupon his income far less burdensome than the smallmerchant who makes fifteen hundred dollars’ profit, butwhose mode of living and dress, from the nature of hisoccupation, necessarily involves a much larger expendi-ture. But such graduation would be impossible.

Thirdly, an income tax is paid, if paid at all, entirelyout of savings. It tends to discourage frugality, and to