374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in graveyards); and in blanks officially furnished for sucli purpose 

 there is a special space for a return of every individual's income. If 

 no return is made, then the Board of Assessors meet in secret in an 

 upper room of the City Ilall, known as the " Dooming Chamber," 

 and arbitrarily determine the amount of income for which each de- 

 linquent shall be assessed; and from such determination there is 

 practically no appeal. The amount thus assessed for income to the 

 individual is then " lumped in " with the aggregate of his other 

 taxes; and if a dissatisfied taxpayer wishes to discover what amount 

 has been decided upon as his income, the assessors will not afford 

 him any information. Under such circumstances it might naturally 

 be supposed that the administration of an income tax in the city 

 of Boston would be an unqualified success. But what are the facts? 



First, comparatively few of the taxpayers of Boston make any 

 returns to the assessors of their income. Second, the returns that 

 are made are not open to the inspection of the public. There is no 

 law in Massachusetts covering this point, but one of the Boston 

 assessors is reported as saying that if the returns were open to public 

 inspection none would be made, as the chief objection of taxpayers 

 to filing returns was the fear that their incomes from business or 

 professions might be known. The statutes of Massachusetts, how- 

 ever, provide that the returns of each individual's property shall be 

 made by the assessors of every city and town in the State to the 

 secretary of the Commonwealth; but inquiry shows that the Boston 

 assessors make no such returns. Third, although the amount an- 

 nually collected from an income tax in the city of Boston is very 

 considerable — $840,000 in 1892— it probably represents, according 

 to the Boston Advertiser, " only about one fourth of what is due in 

 the city from incomes." In the face of such an exhibit the question is 

 pertinent, What measure of success do the present advocates of a 

 Federal income tax expect will follow an attempt to expand the 

 Boston system of its administration over an area of country extending 

 from Florida to Alaska? 



One would naturally think that the lesson of experience which 

 the Government and the people of the United States have already 

 had, would restrain further experimenting with this subject until the 

 next war or the arrival of the millennium. 



That a free government can not efficiently collect a tax which its 

 people regard as unjust without a resort to despotic methods that 

 public sentiment in turn will not tolerate is illustrated in this further 

 tax experience of Massachusetts : 



The State laws require that citizens who are shareholders in 

 corporations organized in other States shall be taxed in Massachu- 

 setts on the market value of shares so held; and such owners are re- 



