38o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whicli will be levied on a sliding scale. The scale is graduated so that 

 five per cent will be levied on small incomes and as much as six per 

 cent on large ones. Employees whose total incomes are less than six 

 hundred florins per annum are exempt. In addition to the income 

 tax, persons of either sex trading or carrying on business on their 

 own account are subject to an additional impost. The new law is in- 

 tended to supersede the existing system by the introduction of a 

 general tax on private trading and industrial establishments of all 

 descriptions, a tax on all joint-stock companies and other enterprises 

 legally bound to publish annual balance sheets, a tax on incomes 

 derived from invested caf>ital, and a personal income tax based on a 

 progressive sliding scale. 



In I'rance, the republic, although groaning under an almost 

 overwhelming burden of debt, has recently refused, by a vote in its 

 Chamber of Deputies of 267 to 236, to reconstruct its income-tax 

 system, with a view of increasing the revenue derived from it; and 

 subsequently, by a majority of 289, refused to reconsider its position, 

 although the organic law framed for France in 1875 gives the 

 national legislature unlimited power over taxation, direct as well as 

 indirect. During the popular discussion that preceded this legis- 

 lative action, it is interesting to note that a progressive income tax 

 was not properly regarded as more oppressive than many other 

 forms of taxation, and as a matter of French experience a heavy 

 income tax — about four per cent — is now levied on French bonds 

 and shares, in fact, on every dividend of a French company, while 

 no income tax is levied on French Government stocks or foreign 

 bonds; and this apparently unfair treatment is accounted for be- 

 cause the revenue derived from French companies can be easily 

 ascertained and the companies made responsible for it, while such 

 a result would be impossible in the case of foreign bonds or foreign 

 stocks and shares, and hence the difficulty has arisen of how to 

 compel the taxpayer to pay: as, if the declaration was left to him, 

 it was not unreasonable to suppose he would not declare it, or only 

 declare it in part; while if left for ascertainment by French officials, 

 it was feared that the income tax in France would become a political 

 weapon, which would be freely used against the legislators in power. 



M. Paul-Beaulieu, a distinguished French economist, has re- 

 cently advanced and advocated the view that a state in instituting 

 an income tax for the sole purpose of obtaining revenue, ought not 

 to grade the tax at all, or lay a higher rate on large incomes than on 

 smaller ones; or, in other words, that it is better to tax all incomes 

 that are taxed at all at one uniform rate; and the reason for this is 

 that the large incomes form so small a percentage of the total that 

 the increased rate adds no great amount to the revenue, while it 



