BEST METHODS OF TAXATION. 527 



whom the property came and the receiver of the legacy. Thus, 

 lineal issue or lineal ancestor, brother or sister, should pay at the 

 rate of seventy-five cents for each and every hundred dollars of 

 the clear value of the interest in the property. A descendant of a 

 brother or sister of the decedent paid double this rate; an uncle 

 or an aunt was taxed three dollars for every one hundred dollars 

 passing; a great-uncle or a great-aunt, four dollars; and persons 

 in any other degree of collateral consanguinity, or a stranger, or a 

 body politic or corporate, five dollars. The only exemption made 

 was in favor of a wife or husband. As only personal property was 

 intended to be reached, all land and real estate escaped the duty. 



The law of 1898 made important modifications in these rates 

 and manner of assessing. In the first place, the rates fell only on 

 legacies in excess of $10,000, a limit ten times larger than that of 

 the law of 1862. The degrees of relationship were the same, the 

 rates were copied from those of the earlier act, and the same ex- 

 emption of property passing between husband and wife was ad- 

 mitted. But the idea of a progressive tax was ingrafted into the 

 law. Thus, the old rates applied only to legacies of more than 

 $10,000 and not more than $25,000. When the property passing 

 was valued between $25,000 and $100,000 the rates were multi- 

 plied by one and a half; between $100,000 and $500,000, they were 

 multiplied by two; between $500,000 and $1,000,000, they were 

 multiplied by two and a half; and by three when the property was 

 in excess of $1,000,000. In restricting the tax to personal prop- 

 erty passing by inheritance the measure aims at a crude means of 

 making the burdens of personal more nearly approach those of real 

 property. No such consideration controlled the views of those re- 

 sponsible for the act, and, after all, it offers only a question of theo- 

 retical interest. The inheritance tax collected in many of the 

 States may have owed their adoption to such an idea, but the United 

 States, in taking up these duties, merely saw a means of obtaining 

 revenue without regarding the actual results of the tax on the 

 estates paying it. 



" The inheritance tax in one form or another has come to stay, 

 and new States are being added every year to the list of those which 

 have adopted it. Five years ago it was found in only nine States 

 of the Union Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New York, 

 West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and New 

 Jersey. During the first half of 1893 Ohio, Maine, California, and 

 Michigan were added to the list, though the Michigan law was 

 afterward annulled because of an unusual provision in the State 

 Constitution which was not complied with. In 1894 Louisiana re- 

 vived her former tax on foreign heirs; Minnesota adopted a con- 



