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WHO PAYS YOUR TAXES?

Few realize, when they think their neighbors smart forswearing off their personal or other taxes, and laugh at itas a good joke, that, since the aggregate of taxation is afixed amount, every man who swears down his fair sharebecomes thereby an assessor of all his neighbors. Whathe does not pay, although he ought to pay it, or whathe thinks he ought not to pay, must be paid by someone else. Were this considered, most men would surelyprefer to pay a disinterested assessor of their own selec-tion rather than to be assessed by every dishonest manin the community.

The attempt to assess everything vitiates censusreports and commercial statistics, because they make itseem undesirable for a merchant to contradict for theinformation of a bureau what he has sworn to for theinformation of the assessor. Nor does any argumentconvince the uneducated that questions asked about theirmeans will not be used as the basis of a charge by agovernment which assumes to tax everything.

The Report of the Law Committee of the CommonCouncil of Philadelphia , presented February, 1871, says,touching the incidence of taxation :

“ All taxes imposed upon property, real or personal,will, if possible, be reimposed by the tax-payer upon theconsumer of the article taxed, and, if practicable, a profit

in exchange for it an equivalent portion of the capital present and designedto concur with it in the production of wealth.”—“Treatise on PoliticalEconomy,” George Opdyke, pages 89-91 ; G. P. Putnam’s Sons.