PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 9 



and stationery, could not be properly estimated at less than forty 

 million dollars. 



" Again, on ' assessment day,' there would be universal conceal- 

 ment of all articles of small bulk and great value. Watches, jewels, 

 gold, money of all kinds, and every like conceivable thing would van- 

 ish from sight. Men would walk about stuffed with valuables. Old 

 stoves, pots, and pans would be filled with money and jewels. Valu- 

 able goods which could not be hidden would be covered with dust 

 or otherwise made to look almost worthless. In every mill and 

 factory manufactures would be kept in an unfinished state, as far as 

 possible, until assessment day had passed. A thousand devices would 

 be resorted to in order to reduce the apparent value of the things 

 which the assessor would inspect, or to prevent him from seeing 

 them at all. 



" In order to make this plan of official valuations successful, the 

 assessors must enter every room in every house and strip naked 

 every man and woman whom they suspect of concealing taxable 

 property. This is the only way in which visible, tangible personal 

 property ever was or ever can be fairly, equally, and effectually 

 taxed. 



" And, when all this was done, the system would none the less 

 fail. It could not be made even approximately correct. Every 

 article would be valued very much too high or very much too low. 

 Nor would the average produce any fair result. The goods of Jones 

 would be appraised at two hundred per cent of their real value ; the 

 goods of Smith at ninety per cent; and the goods of Brown at fifty 

 per cent. Jones would thus be cheated heavily, and of Smith mod- 

 erately, for the sole benefit of Brown." * 



On the other hand, if the fiction of law, that personal property 

 follows the owner, is to govern, then all such property may be taxed 

 where it is not, and be exempt from taxation in the place where it 

 actually is, and where it shares in the benefits that flow from the 

 protective expenditures — police, fire department, etc. — which are 

 incident and necessary to the locality. Or, as is very often and 

 perhaps most usually the case, the same property is subjected to 

 double taxation; and as a proof that this latter supposition, which 

 seems on its face an absurdity, is a matter of constant experience, 

 it may be mentioned that some years since, and probably at the 

 present time, a well-known publishing house was regularly taxed in 

 Cambridge, Mass., for so much of its stock in trade as was kept 

 in store and permanently employed in business in New York city, 

 although it was admitted that the same tangible, visible property 



* Taxation of Personal Property, Impracticable, Unequal, and Unjust. By Thomas S. 

 Shearman. New York, 1895. 



