Excerpt from The Burdens of Local Taxation Who Bears Them Part of the tax, therefore, falls finally upon the farmers themselves, so far as they are consumers of their own products, and part upon all other consumers of farm prod ucts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Excerpt from Speech on Local Taxation Was paid every year in local burdens, or every five years they paid in local burdens the whole amount of the aggre gate income of real property, and exactly one-eighth of its value in poor rate assessment alone; such exceptional exactions to which the owners of real property were sub j ected, were monstrous, intolerable, and almost incredible. He would now endeavour briefly to compare the amount raised by Local Taxation with the amount annually raised by Imperial Taxation. The estimate of Imperial Taxation for 1870 1 was 67, 000, 000. If you deducted from that amount 27, for the interest of the national debt, you had 40, for defraying the expenses of the army and navy, for the civil service, and for all the purposes iof modern government. You had that of Impe rial Taxation as against of Local Taxation. But the comparison did not end there. Imperial Taxation was simple, it was intelligible, it was annually decreasing, and was being annually revised. Local Taxation, on the contrary, was a Chaos. It was confusion confounded, was a sort of thing which, as Lord Dundreary would say, no fellow could understand. It was annually 1ncreasing, and the basis of it had not been altered for 300 years. The public at large had no reason whatever to complain of Imperial Taxation. It was said, and he believed it, that it was equitably imposed, systematically collected, and economically expended. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who held the purse strings, was generally supposed to be a close-fisted gentleman, and he was responsible to the House and to the nation for Imperial Taxation. But Local Taxation was unjustly levied it was the most oppressive part of our public burdens, it was unsystematically collected, and, moreover, the number of rating authorities might almost be called legion, and there was little or no responsibility among' them. Further, one did not know for what purposes Local Taxation was raised, nor in what proportionate amounts it was expended. The poor, the labouring classes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Incidence of Taxation What we are concerned with in the main statement, and, above all, what we are concerned with at this moment in London, is the canon of equality. That on any theory of government immense sums must, year by year, be raised for the public treasury, Imperial and local, and that these can only come, in the end, out of the pockets of some of the members of the community, - this is the given fact. Who ought to pay the bill, and in what share and form, is the problem. That the distribution of the charge as between all the free subjects of the State should be based upon a rule of equality, is the axiom from which all men start. What is equality for the purposes of taxation is the crux. That the rule of Adam Smith is not sufficient, and is not, indeed, correct even so far'as it goes, has been practically admitted by later economists, although no one, I think, has taken the trouble to work out an adequate formula. I shall not pretend to do so tonight: but, by way of contribution to the discussion, I shall try to set out some at least of the conditions on which the discovery of the ultimate canon must depend. The development which the principle has taken is curious. The theory is suggested at least as early as the old Poor Law of Elizabeth, when the subjects were expected to contribute to the expenses of the State concerning pauperism according to their ability. I shall have to consider presently, when I pass to the question of local rates, how these words were interpreted at the time, and how oddly they changed their meaning afterwards. But the truth 18 that no one has yet devised any satisfactory measure of the ability of each citizen to bear the common burden. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Taxation: Local and Imperial and Local Government In the year ending March 1897, a sum of 37,000,000 was raised by local taxation in the form of rates. This sum was raised by the taxation, or, as it is more usually expressed, by the rating of occupiers of lands and houses by the various rating authorities, such as the Guardians of the Poor, County Councils, Town Councils, District Councils, Local Boards, Metropolitan Vestries, and Highway Authorities; this sum does not include the large sums which are annually paid under the names of gas and water rates, which so-called rates have no more connection with Local Taxation than railway rates. In the following pages I have endeavoured to examine into the question whether these local rates are paid by the persons who ought to pay them, and also to give a general historical account of the way in which these rates came to be made payable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."