76 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
Another advantage of the habitation tax as a tax on income not reached 
by the corporation taxes is that it will fall on those most able to bear 
it who now in great measure evade the general tax on personal 
property. It has been shown that the tax upon the rental value of property 
cannot be shifted, but falls upon the occupier alone, save under excep- 
tional conditions... Thus this tax on rentals would reach the class 
desired to be reached and would have to be borne by them alone, namely, 
the class occupying the more expensive kinds of dwellings. As the 
tax falls upon the person paying the rent, it cannot be said to be an 
additional burden placed upon real estate. In those cases in which 
the owner is also the occupier the tax may be regarded as a tax on the 
funded income of those not reached by other taxes. The general effect 
would then be to lessen the tax burden now levied on real estate. 
One of the greatest problems of modern finance is to lighten the burden 
of local real-estate taxation. Owing to the evasions of the personalty 
owners and their escape from the assessor, the tax needed for local 
purposes, and in most states, state revenues as well, has to be levied very 
largely on the owners of real estate. ‘The increased demand for urban 
residential property enables these owners to shift a large amount of the 
tax to the tenants and, hence, the high rents. In so far as the habitation 
tax as recommended by the minority of the New York commission might 
be made to produce a considerable revenue for local purposes, it is 
inevitable that the tax on real property would be lessened and in conse- 
quence rents would fall. The social and industrial advantages of a 
change of this kind would be very great, since rent is so important a 
factor in increasing the congestion of population. 
The habitation tax conforms in a high degree to the principle of 
certainty that has already been laid down. If a person does not change 
his residence and if the rate of tax on rentals is not changed from year to 
year, each taxpayer in the community knows what his tax will be and 
also what the amount is that each of his neighbors will have to pay, as 
the rent of buildings is usually fairly well known. 
At the present time much of the lack of interest in the problems of 
taxation and the consequent slowness of reform in this kind of legislation 
t SELIGMAN, On the Shifting and Incidence of Taxation, p. 127. 
