PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 379 



democracy taxed capital to death, no doubt, but in the middle ages 

 once a Florentine always a Florentine. Cosmopolitanism was not 

 invented, and a man hesitated long before seeking his fortune among 

 strangers when ' stranger ' and ' enemy ' were almost equivalent 

 terms. All that is now changed. A progressive income tax in Eng- 

 land, unless very moderate and managed with the utmost circum- 

 spection — and even then the experiment would be too dangerous 

 to try — would certainly result in an enormous transference of Eng- 

 lish capital to Belgium and Germany. If the idea of progressive 

 taxation is feasible at all, it is only feasible in the death duties, and 

 even there the difhculties are formidable enough." * 



In Germany, the income exemption being very small, nearly the 

 whole population of the country, male and female, are made subject 

 to the provisions of the income tax. According to M. Soetbeer, the 

 German economist, the total income of the classes in Germany who 

 pay income taxes is $2,190,000,000, and of this amount fifty-one 

 per cent is OT^Tied by people whose incomes range between two hun- 

 dred and twenty-five dollars and four hundred and twelve dollars. 

 And the !N^ew York l^ation surmises that a similar state of things 

 would be found if an analysis of all classes of income-tax payers 

 were to be made in England. 



In Austria a new law has been reported by a special Government 

 commission since a previous statement (see Chapter XYIII). At 

 present all persons of Austrian nationality whose annual income 

 exceeds six hundred florins will be liable to a personal income tax, 



* The rate of tax progression in Canton Vaud is much less heavy in the ease of real 

 than in respect to other descriptions of property. The amount of taxation is fixed yearly. 

 It was for the first year, after the law was passed, at the rate of one hundred and twenty 

 per mille on the lowest class of personal property, with exemptions on movable property, 

 tools, kitchen utensils, clothes, and household furniture. A much more intricate arrange- 

 ment exists for income derived from personal exertions. Sixteen pounds a year is allowed 

 to be deducted from the income, and exempted from taxation, for the head of the family 

 himself, his wife, for each of his children or descendants who are minors, and for each 

 person for whose maintenance the head of the family is legally liable. Thus, a man with a 

 wife and twelve children, possessing an income of five thousand six hundred francs (two 

 hundred and twenty-four pounds) a year, would be entirely exempt from taxation, as also 

 would be a man with a wife and three children and an income from labor of two thousand 

 francs (eighty pounds) a year. It can not be supposed that a low taxation of this character, 

 with all the risks involved of causing capital to emigrate, and of preventing strangers, who, 

 after an interval, are also to be subject to the same tax, from settling in the canton, or 

 from remaining there, with all the differences of class-feeling which it evoked, could have 

 become law without calling forth some strong and almost passionate expressions. It has 

 to be remembered that besides the taxation for the administration of the canton proper, 

 those levied for the expenses, which we include under the head of local government, such 

 as roads, watercourses, education, free to all classes in Switzerland, and carried out with 

 much vigor and cost, are likewise levied according to the same system. We may form some 

 idea of the weight of the burden thus imposed. 



