MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
207 
THE THEORY OF THE GENERAL PROPERTY TAX IN 
MICHIGAN. 
W. O. HEDRICK. 
Michigan, like most of her sister states, relies mainly upon the gen- 
eral property tax for the means with which to defray the expenses of 
government. This tax came into use early in the territorial period of 
our history but its proceeds were devoted wholly to the needs of the 
local governments throughout the entire length of this time. The “sep- 
aration of sources” scheme of taxation, which now finds so many advo- 
cates, was indeed anticipated by the early customs in vogue in this 
commonwealth with regard to revenue matters and the present partisans 
of the “separation” method who would introduce this reform into the 
Michigan financial system may properly urge that “separation” is a 
re-establishment instead of a novelty. The new state government of 
1836 found the specific taxes, i from which the territorial establishment 
had hitherto drawn its chief support, inadequate to supply the wants 
of an independent authority and early in its history resorted to the tax 
on property, thus sharing with the local divisions the revenues from 
this impost. 
The laws concerning the levy upon property in Michigan have under- 
gone an enormous amount of legislative amendment and rearrangement 
— the general tax on property itself having been re-enacted as a com- 
plete piece of legislation no less than fifteen times during the history 
of the commonwealth. The intervals of time which have separated these 
enactments have varied greatly in length since not infrequently two 
legislatures in succession have adopted complete taxing statutes, al- 
though in other cases ten, fifteen and even twenty years have elapsed 
between the appearances of these new' measures. The first of these 
general imposts upon property became a law in 1820, the last in 1893. 
Each one of these taxing laws has followed essentially the same model 
so far as its structure is concerned and in all of them the provisions 
with regard to levying the tax and collecting it — in a word the adminis- 
trative methods — have comprised nine-tenths of the statute, and have 
furnished practically all the serious tax problems with which Michigan 
has been confronted. The theoretical features of property taxation in 
Michigan, it is conceived by this paper, is found in the remaining por- 
tions of these statutes and has to do with the legislative intent as to 
who should pay taxes and upon what property and to what jurisdiction. 
In brief, the design of the statutes with regard to taxation matters 
rather than the actual accomplishment under their administrative pro- 
visions or even the nature of these administrative provisions, is the sub- 
ject which we have undertaken to discuss as taxation theory and an 
examination of all the different taxing laws has been made with respect 
to what property it was designed should pay taxes through whom 
and where to show the character of this theory from time to time. 
