An Essay on the Reform of Local Taxation in England |
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according to ability Act of Elizabeth Adam Smith adopted agricultural annual value authorities basis benefit burden classes contribution customs deduct demand direct assessment district doles Dowell duty economic rent economists England equity Exchequer exemption existing expenditure farmers and parsons Final Report finance grants grievances Ibid imposed incidence income income-tax indirect taxes individual inhabited house-duty instance land land-tax landlord landowners legislature levied local taxation Lord Lord Mansfield Lord Salisbury measure ment method movables necessary non-ratable property occupiers onerous outlay paid parish Parliament pay rates payment perfect competition personal property political economy Poor Law Commissioners practical principle problem Professor Edgeworth profits property-tax proposal purposes question ratable property rate-payers real property reason reform regards relief rent-tax Royal Commission scheme scientific single tax statute subsidies subventions taxation according Taxation in Germany tenant tenths and fifteenths theory tion trade premises wealth
Popular passages
Page 76 - ... to raise weekly or otherwise (by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar and other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal-mines, or saleable underwoods in the said parish, in such competent sum and sums of money as they shall think fit...
Page 79 - ... a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware and stuff to set the poor on work, and also competent sums of money for and towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind and such other among them being poor and not able to work, and also for the putting out of such children to be apprentices, to be gathered out of the same parish...
Page 262 - The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich; and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon houserents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable.
Page 100 - But supposing it were not, what do they mean by the visible stock of an artificer ? Some artificers have a considerable stock-in-trade; some have only a little; others none at all. Shall the tools of a carpenter be called his stock-in-trade, and as such be rated ? A tailor has no stock-in-trade ; a butcher has none; a shoemaker has a great deal. Shall the tailor, whose profit is considerably greater than that of the shoemaker, be untaxed, and the shoemaker taxed ?
Page 79 - Propriations of Tithes, Coal Mines or saleable Underwoods in the said Parish, in such competent Sum and Sums of Money as they shall think fit...
Page 232 - ... there are circumstances attending its operation which make it difficult, perhaps impossible, at any rate in our opinion not desirable, to maintain it as a portion of the permanent and ordinary finances of the country. The public feeling of its inequality is a fact most important in itself. The inquisition it entails is a most serious disadvantage. And the frauds to which it leads are an evil which it is not possible to characterise in terms too strong.
Page 144 - Holland . . . has come to a different conclusion, namely, that the occupier of a house with a high ground rent, as in a central region, will, at most, pay only as much tax as what is paid by the occupier of an exactly similar house with (little or) no ground rent, as in a suburban periphery. Mr. Pierson deduces this conclusion from the assumption that the difference between the rents of the two houses may be expected to be the same after and before the imposition of the tax (or, at least, not greater...
Page 63 - In other words, owners of property shall not be rated directly on the income from their property. This decision shows how clearly the difference between a land tax and a local rate was recognised by the Court. " The charge is on the person, not on the land, but on the person in respect of the land, for the more equality and indifferency.
Page 231 - But in laying down a practical rule that is to apply to all taxes, equality of contribution is an inferior consideration. The distinguishing characteristic of the best tax is, not that it is most nearly proportioned to the means of individuals, but that it is easily assessed and collected, and is, at the same time, most conducive, all things considered, to the public interests.
Page 124 - English political economists are not speaking of real men, but of imaginary ones ; not of men as we see them, but of men as it is convenient to us to suppose they are.