82 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
tax,’”’ to be levied as an additional assessment on a sum equal to three 
times the annual rent or rental value of all the buildings on the land.* 
In the supplementary report of Professor R. T. Ely to the Report 
of the Maryland Tax Commission of 1888, a tax on the rental values of 
places of business was proposed as a substitute for the general tax on 
personal property.” 
In 1897, the Massachusetts Tax Commission recommended that 
this tax and the tax on inheritances be substituted for the tax on intangible 
personal property. The recommendation is supported by several pages 
of argument. 
According to this scheme, the minimum rental to be exempt from 
taxation was fixed at $400 a year. All rentals of $400 and over were 
to be taxed at 10 per cent. on the excess of $400. In every case the 
sum of $400 was to be subtracted from the total amount of rent paid. 
Thus, a person occupying a house whose rental value was $500 a year 
would pay a tax of $10, this being 10 per cent. of the excess of rental 
over $400. When the rent was $600, the tax would be $20; when the 
rent was $800, the tax would be $40; $1,200, $80, and so on. This 
tax as proposed by the commission was to be levied upon the occupier of 
a dwelling and of a dwelling only. Houses or parts of houses that were 
used for business purposes were in no way to be affected by the tax. 
It was felt by the commission that houses used in business are sufficiently 
reached by the tax on real property and by the corporation taxes, so 
that the attempt to tax them again would expose the taxing authorities 
to the charge of double taxation, and also cause an undue resistance to 
the new legislation recommended. 
t Report of New York Tax Commission, 1871, p. 107. 
2 Report of Maryland Tax Commission, 1888. 
3 Report of Massachusetts Tax Commission, 1897, p. 207. In rejecting the report of the Massachusetts 
Tax Commission, the House Committee of the General Court said: ‘‘The proposed habitation tax cannot, 
on the whole, be commended as based on a reasonably good criterion of a man’s income, because so many 
other things than a man’s income determine the house he livesin..... Even with an earnest desire to avoid 
hypercritical objections to the carefully thought out schemes proposed in the commissioners’ report, anyone 
who stops and for a moment considers the.neighbors in his own street or block will see at once how poor a 
test the rental value of the different houses is of the comparative wealth of the occupiers. The professional 
man with a large family will often be found occupying as good a house as the childless millionaire. As a single 
test, the house rental scheme would inevitably prove not only misleading but often oppressive; and the con- 
clusions based upon it would not be nearly so accurate as those arrived at by the average assessor under the 
present system, which takes into account not only the house but the whole scale of living of the tax-payer 
as well as his reputed resources.” —Report of the Industrial Commission, Vol. XIX, p. 1052. 
