Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 by Various
page 63 of 207 (30%)
page 63 of 207 (30%)
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adjustment, but you will appreciate most the necessity for care in the
collection. Enthusiastic advocates for the levy meet every hard case put forward where it is difficult to raise money, such as a private ownership of an indivisible business, by saying: "But that will be made in instalments, or the man can raise a mortgage." But the extent to which this is done robs the levy of all the virtues attaching to outrightness, for each instalment becomes, as the years roll on, different in its real content upon a shifting price level, and every payment of interest on the mortgage--to say nothing of the ultimate repayment of that mortgage--falls to be met as if reckoned upon the original currency level. Then those classes of wealth which are not easily realisable without putting down the market price also require treatment by instalments, and those who wish to put forward a logical scheme also add a special charge upon salary-earners for some years--a pseudo-capitalisation of their earning power. A really fair and practicable levy would certainly be honeycombed with annual adjustments and payments for some period of years, and one must consider how far this would invalidate the economic case of the "outright cut," and make it no better than a high income-tax; indeed far worse, for the high income-tax does at least follow closely upon the annual facts as they change, or is not stereotyped by a valuation made in obsolete conditions. Imagine three shipowners each with vessels valued at £200,000, and each called upon to pay 20 per cent., or £40,000. One owning five small ships might have sold one of them, and thus paid his bill; the second, with one large ship, might have agreed to pay £8000 annually (plus interest) for five years; while the third might have mortgaged his vessel for £40,000, having no other capital at disposal. At to-day's values each might have been worth, say, £50,000, but for the tax. The first would actually have ships worth £40,000, so |
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