Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/67

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PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

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practically brought before them, is indicated by reference to the following decisions:

The Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania provides (Article IX, section 1) that "all taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws." In June, 1885, an act was passed by the Legislature imposing a tax of three mills on the dollar on mortgages, moneys loaned or invested in other States, money capital in the hands of individual citizens, and other classes of property. The act did not extend to corporations, which were taxed at a similar, in some cases at a higher rate, under a statute of 1879. The act of 1885 was opposed on the ground that it violated the constitutional rule of uniformity, but it was declared valid by the Supreme Court of the State, which held that substantial uniformity had been obtained. A decision in New Jersey turned upon a constitutional provision that "property shall be assessed for taxes under general laws and by uniform rules, according to its true value." In 1884 the Legislature of the State passed an "act for the taxation of railroads and canals," which imposed a tax upon the lands and tangible property used by railroad and canal companies and their franchises, and touching no other property. The constitutionality of this law was questioned by most of the leading companies, but was affirmed by the State Court of Errors and Appeals, which held that as the law was a general one, framed in general terms and restricted to no locality, it operated equally upon a whole class of property, whose characteristics enabled it to be dealt with separately. The court further declared, that as a previous act had secured the companies against being required to pay more than their full share of tax, a substantial uniformity was thus secured.

These and other like decisions of the State courts of the United States show that in order to sustain a tax law under the requirement of generality or uniformity it is not necessary that all property should be taxed, and that a State has the right to select property for taxation at its discretion. Of course, discrimination may result from the exercise by the State of the power of dividing the objects of taxation into classes, but while persons of the same class and property of the same kind are subjected to an equal burden, the constitutional requirements as to uniformity seem to be satisfied.

The fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which prohibits any State from depriving any person of property "without due process of law," is also in conformity with the principle enunciated in the above citations; for taxation without jurisdiction, and therefore without the possibility of the correlative return of any protection as compensation, would obviously be an arbitrary exaction and not due process of law. But if property is otherwise (than by taxation) taken by the Government (as by the so-called law of "eminent domain"), full and fair pecuniary return must be made for its value. This is a prin-

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