186 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
abundant evidence that in normal times most short-term delinquency 
is due to a faulty collecting procedure and practice. 
Long-term delinquency also is fostered and encouraged by an 
inefficient collection system, but there are generally other and more 
fundamental causes. Among these other causes are overassessment 
and a heavy tax burden. ‘These in turn may have more remote 
causes. Overassessment may be due to a sudden and extreme 
deflation in property values, whereas heavy taxes may be due to a 
wasteful government or insufficient wealth to support comfortably 
necessary public functions. Delinquency of the long-term variety is 
thus usually symptomatic of fundamental maladjustments—economic 
and political. 
_ FAULTY COLLECTING PRACTICE 
Sometimes too much time elapses between the date of assessment 
and the date when taxes are due. In this interval people move away, 
property changes hands, values disappear, all of which add to the 
difficulty of collecting and the certainty of a considerable shrinkage 
in the levy. Frequently the time of payment suits neither the con- 
venience of the taxpayers nor the needs of the Government. In less 
than a third of the States payment may be made in installments. 
Many jurisdictions send the taxpayer no statement, thus making it 
difficult for him to pay promptly if he wants to. In some States 
several months elapse between the time when taxes become due and 
the time when the first penalty is imposed. Even the penalties for 
the first several months of delinquency are often too trifling to be 
much of a stimulus to prompt payment. Finally the usual long delay 
before final action can be taken on the tax lien and the tendency of 
the State legislatures to liberalize the terms of redemption are a con- 
stant invitation to delinquency. 
The New York Tax Commission (79, p. 9) in its 1928 report says: 
Delinquency in New York results for the most part from the methods of collec- 
tion rather than from inability of property owners to pay taxes. Yet delin- 
quency, once started, tends to be cumulative. 
It is logical that prebilling, installment paying, and a reasonably 
stiff penalty should discourage delinquency, and some evidence has 
been collected to substantiate this theory.’* There is some question, 
however, whether severe penalties discourage delinquency. If they 
do, then it should follow, other things being equal, that the higher 
the penalty the less the amount of delinquency. Leonard,” in a 
study of delinquency, attempted to test this assumption. He com- 
pared the penalties of a group of 10 States with high delinquency 
ratios (ratio of taxes delinquent to taxes levied) with the penalties of 
11 States with low delinquency ratios and reached the conclusion 
that high penalties do not make for low delinquency ratios. He 
points out that the high penalties may have been developed in the 
high-delinquency areas in the attempt to check the rise in delin- 
quency. He suggests that possibly the severe penalties aggravate 
the situation rather than relieve it. The fact that the delinquency 
ratios differ widely within the same State, under the same law, 
suggests that the severity of the statutory penalty is not the most 
74 4 study relating the delinquency of 24 large cities of the United States and Canada to their respective 
collection procedures was Made by the Philadelphia PE CAEE of Municipal Research, and the results given 
in Citizens’ Business, no. 747, Sept. 14, 1926. See (64, p. 27) for reprint. 
17% LEONARD, J. L. DELINQUENT TAXES. Unpublished “doctorate dissertation, Yale Univ., 1929. 
