An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

of horses or oxen, but

endeavours to cultivate with the meanest and most wretched

instrutnents of husbandry that he can. Such is his distrust in

the justice of his assessors, that he counterfeits poverty, and

wishes to appear scarce able to pay anything, for fear of being

obliged to pay too much. By this miserable policy, he does not,

perhaps, always consult his own interest in the most effectual

manner ; and he probably loses more by the diminution of his

produce, than he saves by that of his tax. Though, in consequence

of this wretched cultivation, the market is, no doubt, somewhat

worse supplied; yet the small rise of price which this may

occasion, as it is not likely even to indemnify the farmer for

the diminution of his produce, it is still less likely to enable

him to pay more rent to the landlord. The public, the farmer, the

landlord, all suffer more or less by this degraded cultivation.

That the personal taille tends, in many different ways, to

discourage cultivation, and consequently to dry up the principal

source of the wealth of every great country, I have already had

occasion to observe in the third book of this Inquiry.

 

What are called poll-taxes in the southern provinces of North

America, and the West India islands, annual taxes of so much

a-head upon every negro, are properly taxes upon the profits of a

certain species of stock employed in agriculture. As the

planters, are the greater part of them, both farmers and

landlords, the final payment of the tax falls upon them in their

quality of landlords, without any retribution.

 

Taxes of so much a head upon the bondmen employed in cultivation,

seem anciently to have been common all over Europe. There

subsists at present a tax of this kind in the empire of Russia.

It is probably upon this account that poll-taxes of all kinds

have often been represented as badges of slavery. Every tax,

however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery,

but of liberty. It denotes that he is subject to government,

indeed ; but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be

the property of a master. A poll tax upon slaves is altogether

different from a poll-tax upon freemen. The latter is paid by the

persons upon whom it is imposed; the former, by a different set

of persons. The latter is either altogether arbitrary, or

altogether unequal, and, in most cases, is both the one and the

other; the former, though in some respects unequal, different

slaves being of different values, is in no respect arbitrary.

Every master, who knows the number of his own slaves, knows

exactly what he has to pay. Those different taxes, however, being

called by the same name, have been considered as of the same

nature.

 

The taxes which in Holland are imposed upon men and maid

servants, are taxes, not upon stock, but upon expense; and so far

resemble the taxes upon consumable commodities. The tax of a

guinea a-head for every man-servant, which has lately been

imposed in Great Britain, is of the same kind. It falls heaviest

upon the middling rank. A man of two hundred a-year may keep a

single man-servant. A man of ten thousand a-year will not keep

fifty. It does not affect the poor.

 

Taxes upon the profits of stock, in particular employments, can

never affect the interest of money. Nobody will lend his money

for less interest to those who exercise the taxed, than to those

who exercise the untaxed employments. Taxes upon the revenue

arising from stock in all employments, where the government

attempts to levy them with any degree of exactness, will, in many

cases, fall upon the interest of money. The vingtieme, or

twentieth penny, in France, is a tax of the same kind with what

is called the land tax in England, and is assessed, in the same

manner, upon the revenue arising upon land, houses, and stock. So

far as it affects stock, it is assessed, though not with great

rigour, yet with much more exactness than that part of the land

tax in England which is imposed upon the same fund. It, in many

cases, falls altogether upon the interest of money. Money is

frequently sunk in France, upon what are called contracts for the

constitution of a rent ; that is, perpetual annuities, redeemable

at any time by the debtor, upon payment of the sum originally

advanced, but of which this redemption is not exigible by the

creditor except in particular cases. The vingtieme seems not

to have raised the rate of those annuities, though it is exactly

levied upon them all.

 

APPENDIX TO ARTICLES I. AND II. � Taxes upon the Capital Value of

Lands, Houses, and Stock.

 

While property remains in the possession of the same person,

whatever permanent taxes may have been imposed upon it, they have

never been intended to diminish or take away any part of its

capital value, but only some part of the revenue arising from it.

But when property changes hands, when it is transmitted either

from the dead to the living, or from the living to the living,

such taxes have frequently been imposed upon it as necessarily

take away some part of its capital value.

 

The transference of all sorts of property from the dead to the

living, and that of immoveable property of land and houses from

the living to the living, are transactions which are in their

nature either public and notorious, or such as cannot be long

concealed. Such transactions, therefore, may be taxed directly.

The transference of stock or moveable property, from the living

to the living, by the lending of money, is frequently a secret

transaction, and may always be made so. It cannot easily,

therefore, be taxed directly. It has been taxed indirectly in two

different ways; first, by requiring that the deed, containing the

obligation to repay, should be written upon paper or parchment

which had paid a certain stamp duty, otherwise not to be valid ;

secondly, by requiring, under the like penalty of invalidity,

that it should be recorded either in a public or secret register,

and by imposing certain duties upon such registration. Stamp

duties, and duties of registration, have frequently been imposed

likewise upon the deeds transferring property of all kinds from

the dead to the living, and upon those transferring immoveable

property from the living to the living ; transactions which might

easily have been taxed directly.

 

The vicesima hereditatum, or the twentieth penny of inheritances,

imposed by Augustus upon the ancient Romans, was a tax upon the

transference of property from the dead to the living. Dion

Cassius, { Lib. 55. See also Burman. de Vectigalibus Pop. Rom.

cap. xi. and Bouchaud de l’impot du vingtieme sur les

successions.} the author who writes concerning it the least

indistinctly, says, that it was imposed upon all successions,

legacies and donations, in case of death, except upon those to

the nearest relations, and to the poor.

 

Of the same kind is the Dutch tax upon successions. { See

Memoires concernant les Droits, etc. tom i, p. 225.} Collateral

successions are taxed according to the degree of relation, from

five to thirty per cent. upon the whole value of the succession.

Testamentary donations, or legacies to collaterals, are subject

to the like duties. Those from husband to wife, or from wife to

husband, to the fiftieth penny. The luctuosa hereditas, the

mournful succession of ascendants to descendants, to the

twentieth penny only. Direct successions, or those of

descendants to ascendants, pay no tax. The death of a father, to

such of his children as live in the same house with him, is

seldom attended with any increase, and frequently with a

considerable diminution of revenue ; by the loss of his industry,

of his office, or of some life-rent estate, of which he may have

been in possession. That tax would be cruel and oppressive,

which aggravated their loss, by taking from them any part of his

succession. It may, however, sometimes be otherwise with

those children, who, in the language of the Roman law, are said

to be emancipated; in that of the Scotch law, to be

foris-familiated ; that is, who have received their portion, have

got families of their own, and are supported by funds separate

and independent of those of their father. Whatever part of his

succession might come to such children, would be a real addition

to their fortune, and might, therefore, perhaps, without more

inconveniency than what attends all duties of this kind, be

liable to some tax.

 

The casualties of the feudal law were taxes upon the transference

of land, both from the dead to the living, and from the living to

the living. In ancient times, they constituted, in every part

of Europe, one of the principal branches of the revenue of the

crown.

 

The heir of every immediate vassal of the crown paid a certain

duty, generally a year’s rent, upon receiving the investiture of

the estate. If the heir was a minor, the whole rents of the

estate. during the continuance of the minority, devolved to the

superior, without any other charge besides the maintenance of the

minor, and the payment of the widow’s dower, when there happened

to be a dowager upon the land. When the minor came to de of age,

another tax, called relief, was still due to the superior, which

generally amounted likewise to a year’s rent. A long minority,

which, in the present times, so frequently disburdens a great

estate of all its incumbrances. and restores the family to their

ancient splendour, could in those times have no such effect. The

waste, and not the disincumbrance of the estate, was the common

effect of a long minority.

 

By a feudal law, the vassal could not alienate without the

consent of his superior, who generally extorted a fine or

composition on granting it. This fine, which was at first

arbitrary, came, in many countries, to be regulated at a certain

portion of the price of the land. In some countries, where the

greater part of the other feudal customs have gone into disuse,

this tax upon the alienation of land still continues to make a

very considerable branch of the revenue of the sovereign. In the

canton of Berne it is so high as a sixth part of the price of all

noble fiefs, and a tenth part of that of all ignoble

ones.{Memoires concernant les Droits, etc, tom.i p.154} In the

canton of Lucern, the tax upon the sale of land is not universal,

and takes place only in certain districts. But if any person

sells his land in order to remove out of the territory, he pays

ten per cent. upon the whole price of the sale. { id. p.157.}

Taxes of the same kind, upon the sale either of all lands, or of

lands held by certain tenures, take place in many other

countries, and make a more or less considerable branch of the

revenue of the sovereign.

 

Such transactions may be taxed indirectly, by means either of

stamp duties, or of duties upon registration; and those duties

either may, or may not, be proportioned to the value of the

subject which is transferred.

 

In Great Britain, the stamp duties are higher or lower, not so

much according to the value of the property transferred (an

eighteen-penny or half-crown stamp being sufficient upon a bond

for the largest sum of money), as according to the nature of the

deed. The highest do not exceed six pounds upon every sheet of

paper, or skin of parchment ; and these high duties fall chiefly

upon grants from the crown, and upon certain law proceedings,

without any regard to the value of the subject. There are,