RECENT EXPERIMENTS IN STATE TAXATION. 465 



banks pay one half per centum on deposits ; express, telegraph, and 

 telephone companies, three per centum on gross earnings, and steam- 

 boats two per centum. These quotations are sufficient to show the 

 methods of corporation taxation. 



The expediency and justice of a tax on collateral inheritances is 

 not so readily admitted. Although it has been enforced as a war-tax, 

 it is somewhat of an innovation on the principles of taxation observed 

 in this country. There is a slight flavor of communism in the idea, 

 yet the proposition is not altogether objectionable, and may be sus- 

 tained by good arguments. A law of a similar character has been in 

 operation in England many years. It is held to be in the nature of a 

 franchise or license tax, upon the right derived from the state of trans- 

 mitting property, and is inflicted only when property is bequeathed 

 out of the immediate family. If there are no constitutional objections, 

 the recipients of the bequests certainly have no cause for complaint, if 

 the Government compels them to pay a small share of their gift for its 

 support. A Pennsylvania man, for instance, who receives a windfall 

 of 8100,000 from a distant relative or an intimate friend, will obtain 

 no sympathy if he growls because be is obliged to turn over $3,000 

 of it into the public treasury. He is better able to do so than any 

 other man who has acquired his property by hard toil and individual 

 exertion and enterprise. In Maryland the rate is two and one half per 

 centum on every $100 of collateral inheritances over 1500, and the tax 

 yielded, last year, $86,218.46. The New York Legislature last winter 

 passed a bill imposing a tax of five per centum on similar bequests. 

 Although it aroused some opposition, Governor Hill signed the meas- 

 ure, with a recommendation that it be amended next winter so as to 

 place the limit at $5,000 instead of $500, it being argued that in its 

 present form it might place heavy burdens on poor persons who might 

 receive small bequests of $1,000 or $2,000. It is estimated that the 

 new law will yield annually in New York between $750,000 and 

 81,000,000. Evidences of the spread of the idea of "taxation without 

 lamentation " are found in the recent proceedings of the Legislatures 

 of other States. In Pennsylvania a bill was introduced, in April last, 

 imposing a tax of five mills on the interest of deposits in savings-banks 

 having no capital stock. There are obvious reasons for not taxing 

 deposits in savings-banks, audit is to be hoped that this sort of special 

 taxation will not be more extensively adopted. Notwithstanding the 

 disastrous results, politically, in other States, of a heavy tax on the 

 liquor-traffic, Illinois has just placed on its statute-books a law impos- 

 ing a tax of 8500 per annum on the sale of liquors, and $150 per an- 

 num on the sale of beer. In California, at the last session, a bill was 

 passed to submit to the people an amendment to the Constitution pro- 

 viding that railroads shall pay an annual tax of two and a half per 

 centum on gross earnings, and also that income-taxes may be assessed 

 and collected from persons and corporations. The existing laws, and 



VOL. XXTIII. — 30 



