ABSTRACT
§ 1. ACCEPTING as the test and measure of ‘ability to pay’ the distinction between costs of production and surplus-income, it may at first sight be obvious that a sound and equitable taxing-policy will levy taxes directly and exclusively upon those economic rents, high dividends and profits, swollen salaries and professional earnings, which comprise this surplus. A large school of singletaxers has always demanded that the whole of the tax-revenue should be raised by taxing land values, or their annual yield, up to 20s. in the £. Economic rent is, they affirm, the income furnished by Nature for the support of the social institution called the State. It is, they maintain, the only fund which can be attached without robbing some one of his rightful earnings, or diminishing some useful incentive to production. The landowner alone has a true ability to pay.
