FROM THE ARCHIVES:Income tax, as we know it, was introduced in the United Kingdom as a temporary measure to balance the budget in 1842. Some 30 years later, The Irish Timessupported a newly formed movement to abolish it in favour of sales taxes. – JOE JOYCE
THAT IS the best tax – and only the best form of taxation should be adopted by a capable Minister – whose incidence does not wound, which does not fall with one hateful swoop, which does not foster a legion of pimps and spies, which cannot be overcharged in the despicable hope that sooner than have all his private affairs exposed before numerous officials a man will submit to an overcharge and a wrong.
No one smarts under the duty he pays on every quarter pound of tea, or pound of sugar. If people must have wine or spirits they pay for the indulgence as they buy, not in one crushing lump sum. Who resents the imposition of an infinitesimal duty on his pint of beer? or on his ounce of tobacco?
If people will have such luxuries it is fair they should pay for them. It is not fair that indulgence in habits which are deemed to be vicious should be facilitated by fastening the serpent tooth of an income-tax upon working men.
The old Athenians, in preparation for war, had an Income Tax, but the leaders were at once more wise and more industrious than talking statesmen. Their Income Tax was graduated.
The man who possessed a large income paid largely, he who had a small income paid at a proportionate rate. This was reasonable. The modern Sybarite can recoup his Income Tax by a word.
He has only to put down one carriage out of a dozen; or to keep 30 servants instead of 33; or to give one grand dinner less in the year; or to place on the board Claret instead of Gieseler; or to dawdle in the Elysium of Paris two months instead of three. But the clerk, the author, the working man, the physician, the surgeon have no such resource. “Of equalled weight the poisoned arrows fly.”
The clergyman, whose curtailed income barely supplies the absolute necessaries of life, writhes under worse than Egyptian bondage.
He must deny his children the humble pleasures which youth loves. He must avoid a book shop, and weigh out with eager and hungry eyes how much he can spare of his small joint for the stranger or the poor. He must pay, for first he gets a square-printed notice informing him that he is assessed at his gross income, not one penny being allowed for all his outgoings; he is told he may appeal; he is summoned to appear before a dread Divan, which sifts and probes his affairs to the very bottom, and who look like the ghosts of Inquisitors in a torture room.
The whole system of income tax is based upon the supposition that every man is a rogue, and that the best way to fleece the rogues is to set up a legion of detectives taken from their own body to strip them.
http://url.ie/8del