incomes.
An income-tax, fairly assessed on these principles, would be, in point of justice, the least exceptionable of all taxes. The objection to it, in the present state of public morality, is the impossibility of ascertaining the real incomes of the contributors. Notwithstanding, too, what is called the inquisitorial nature of the tax, no amount of inquisitorial power which would be tolerated by a people the most disposed to submit to it could enable the revenue officers to assess the tax from actual knowledge of the circumstances of contributors. Rents, salaries, annuities, and all fixed incomes, [pg 556] can be exactly ascertained. But the variable gains of professions, and still more the profits of business, which the person interested can not always himself exactly ascertain, can still less be estimated with any approach to fairness by a tax-collector. The main reliance must be placed, and always has been placed, on the returns made by the person himself. The tax, therefore, on whatever principles of equality it may be imposed, is in practice unequal in one of the worst ways, falling heaviest on the most conscientious.
It is to be feared, therefore, that the fairness which belongs to the principle of an income-tax can not be made to attach to it in practice. This consideration would lead us to concur in the opinion which, until of late, has usually prevailed—that direct taxes on income should be reserved as an extraordinary resource for great national emergencies, in which the necessity of a large additional revenue overrules all objections.
The difficulties of a fair income-tax have elicited a proposition for a direct tax of so much per cent, not on income but on expenditure; the aggregate amount of each person's expenditure being ascertained as the amount of income now is, from statements furnished by the contributors themselves. The only security would still be the veracity of individuals, and there is no reason for supposing that their statements would