ABSTRACT
The land tax reaches only one type of income, and levies of various kinds that reach citizens in proportion to their expenditures, weigh anew on landowners; the taxes on sales of properties that are assessed, not on income, but on the national capitals, weigh also on real estate, in a ratio five or six times heavier than on chattels. Personal taxes and personal property taxes are established on such arbitrary grounds that the majority of cities have preferred to substitute for them some consumption tax. Almost all governments have imposed a heavy tax on inheritances, sales, and all transfers of property; again attacking capital rather than income, they diminish the productive base of wealth, almost like levying the tenth on the seed instead of levying it on the harvest. However, as this tax is usually collected at the time when it is most convenient to pay.
