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

in

Great Britain, no duties on the registration of deeds or

writings, except the fees of the officers who keep the register ;

and these are seldom more than a reasonable recompence for their

labour. The crown derives no revenue from them.

 

In Holland {Memoires concernant les Droits, etc. tom. i. p 223,

224, 225.} there are both stamp duties and duties upon

registration ; which in some cases are, and in some are not,

proportioned to the value of the property transferred. All

testaments must be written upon stamped paper, of which the price

is proportioned to the property disposed of ; so that there are

stamps which cost from three pence or three stivers a-sheet, to

three hundred florins, equal to about twentyseven pounds ten

shillings of our money. If the stamp is of an inferior price to

what the testator ought to have made use of, his succession is

confiscated. This is over and above all their other taxes on

succession. Except bills of exchange, and some other mercantile

bills, all other deeds, bonds, and contracts, are subject to a

stamp duty. This duty, however, does not rise in proportion to

the value of the subject. All sales of land and of houses, and

all mortgages upon either, must be registered, and, upon

registration, pay a duty to the state of two and a-half per cent.

upon the amount of the price or of the mortgage. This duty is

extended to the sale of all ships and vessels of more than two

tons burden, whether decked or undecked. These, it seems, are

considered as a sort of houses upon the water. The sale of

moveables, when it is ordered by a court of justice, is subject

to the like duty of two and a-half per cent.

 

In France, there are both stamp duties and duties upon

registration. The former are considered as a branch of the

aids of excise, and, in the provinces where those duties take

place, are levied by the excise officers. The latter are

considered as a branch of the domain of the crown and are levied

by a different set of officers.

 

Those modes of taxation by stamp duties and by duties upon

registration, are of very modern invention. In the course of

little more than a century, however, stamp duties have, in

Europe, become almost universal, and duties upon registration

extremely common. There is no art which one government sooner

learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets

of the people.

 

Taxes upon the transference of property from the dead to the

living, fall finally, as well as immediately, upon the persons to

whom the property is transferred. Taxes upon the sale of

land fall altogether upon the seller. The seller is almost

always under the necessity of selling, and must, therefore, take

such a price as he can get. The buyer is scarce ever under the

necessity of buying, and will, therefore, only give such a price

as he likes. He considers what the land will cost him, in tax and

price together. The more he is obliged to pay in the way of tax,

the less he will be disposed to give in the way of price. Such

taxes, therefore, fall almost always upon a necessitous person,

and must, therefore, be frequently very cruel and oppressive.

Taxes upon the sale of new-built houses, where the building is

sold without the ground, fall generally upon the buyer, because

the builder must generally have his profit ; otherwise he must

give up the trade. If he advances the tax, therefore, the buyer

must generally repay it to him. Taxes upon the sale of old

houses, for the same reason as those upon the sale of land, fall

generally upon the seller ; whom, in most cases, either

conveniency or necessity obliges to sell. The number of new-built

houses that are annually brought to market, is more or less

regulated by the demand. Unless the demand is such as to afford

the builder his profit, after paying all expenses, he will build

no more houses. The number of old houses which happen at any time

to come to market, is regulated by accidents, of which the

greater part have no relation to the demand. Two or three great

bankruptcies in a mercantile town, will bring many houses to

sale, which must be sold for what can be got for them. Taxes upon

the sale of ground-rents fall altogether upon the seller, for the

same reason as those upon the sale of lands. Stamp duties, and

duties upon the registration of bonds and contracts for borrowed

money, fall altogether upon the borrower, and, in fact, are

always paid by him. Duties of the same kind upon law proceedings

fall upon the suitors. They reduce to both the capital value of

the subject in dispute. The more it costs to acquire any

property, the less must be the neat value of it when acquired.

 

All taxes upon the transference of property of every kind, so far

as they diminish the capital value of that property, tend to

diminish the funds destined for the maintenance of productive

labour. They are all more or less unthrifty taxes that

increase the revenue of the sovereign, which seldom maintains any

but unproductive labourers, at the expense of the capital of the

people, which maintains none but productive.

 

Such taxes, even when they are proportioned to the value of the

property transferred, are still unequal; the frequency of

transference not being always equal in property of equal value.

When they are not proportioned to this value, which is the case

with the greater part of the stamp duties and duties of

registration, they are still more so. They are in no respect

arbitrary, but are, or may be, in all cases, perfectly clear and

certain. Though they sometimes fall upon the person who is not

very able to pay, the time of payment is, in most cases,

sufficiently convenient for him. When the payment becomes due, he

must, in most cases, have the more to pay. They are levied at

very little expense, and in general subject the contributors to

no other inconveniency, besides always the unavoidable one of

paying the tax.

 

In France, the stamp duties are not much complained of. Those

of registration, which they call the Controle, are. They give

occasion, it is pretended, to much extortion in the officers of

the farmers-general who collect the tax, which is in a great

measure arbitrary and uncertain. In the greater part of the

libels which have been written against the present system of

finances in France, the abuses of the controle make a principal

article. Uncertainty, however, does not seem to be necessarily

inherent in the nature of such taxes. If the popular

complaints are well founded, the abuse must arise, not so much

from the nature of the tax as from the want of precision and

distinctness in the words of the edicts or laws which impose it.

 

The registration of mortgages, and in general of all rights upon

immoveable property, as it gives great security both to creditors

and purchasers, is extremely advantageous to the public. That of

the greater part of deeds of other kinds, is frequently

inconvenient and even dangerous to individuals, without any

advantage to the public. All registers which, it is acknowledged,

ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist. The

credit of individuals ought certainly never to depend upon so

very slender a security, as the probity and religion of the

inferior officers of revenue. But where the fees of registration

have been made a source of revenue to the sovereign,

register-officcs have commonly been multiplied without end, both

for the deeds which ought to be registered, and for those which

ought not. In France there are several different sorts of secret

registers. This abuse, though not perhaps a necessary, it must be

acknowledged, is a very natural effect of such taxes.

 

Such stamp duties as those in England upon cards and dice, upon

newspapers and periodical pamphlets, etc. are properly taxes upon

consumption; the final payment falls upon the persons who use or

consume such commodities. Such stamp duties as those upon

licences to retail ale, wine, and spiritous liquors, though

intended, perhaps, to fall upon the profits of the retailers, are

likewise finally paid by the consumers of those liquors. Such

taxes, though called by the same name, and levied by the same

officers, and in the same manner with the stamp duties above

mentioned upon the transference of property, are, however, of a

quite different nature, and fall upon quite different funds.

 

ARTICLE III. � Taxes upon the Wages of Labour.

 

The wages of the inferior classes of work men, I have

endeavoured to show in the first book are everywhere necessarily

regulated by two different circumstances; the demand for labour,

and the ordinary or average price of provisions. The demand for

labour, according as it happens to be either increasing

stationary or declining ; or to require an increasing,

stationary, or declining population. regulates the subsistence of

the labourer, and determines in what degree it shall be either

liberal, moderate, or scanty. The ordinary average price of

provisions determines the quantity of money which must be paid to

the workman, in order to enable him, one year with another, to

purchase this liberal, moderate, or scanty subsistence. While the

demand for the labour and the price of provisions, therefore,

remain the same, a direct tax upon the wages of labour can have

no other effect, than to raise them somewhat higher than the tax.

Let us suppose, for example, that, in a particular place, the

demand for labour and the price of provisions were such as to

render ten shillings a-week the ordinary wages of labour ; and

that a tax of one-fifth, or four shillings in the pound, was

imposed upon wages. If the demand for labour and the price of

provisions remained the same, it would still be necessary that

the labourer should, in that place, earn such a subsistence as

could be bought only for ten shillings a-week; so that, after

paying the tax, he should have ten shillings a-week free wages.

But, in order to leave him such free wages, after paying such a

tax, the price of labour must, in that place, soon rise, not to

twelve sillings aweek only, but to twelve and sixpence ; that is,

in order to enable him to pay a tax of one-fifth, his wages must

necessarily soon rise, not one-fifth part only, but one-fourth.

Whatever was the proportion of the tax, the wages of labour must,

in all cases rise, not only in that proportion, but in a higher

proportion. If the tax for example, was one-tenth, the wages

of labour must necessarily soon rise, not one-tenth part only,

but one-eighth.

 

A direct tax upon the wages of labour, therefore, though the

labourer might, perhaps, pay it out of his hand, could not

properly be said to be even advanced by him ; at least if the

demand for labour and the average price of provisions remained

the same after the tax as before it. In all such cases, not only

the tax, but something more than the tax, would in reality be

advanced by the person who immediately employed him. The final

payment would, in different cases, fall upon different persons.

The rise which such a tax might occasion in the wages of

manufacturing labour would be advanced by the master

manufacturer, who would both be entitled and obliged to charge

it, with a profit, upon the price of his goods. The final payment

of this rise of wages, therefore, together with the additional

profit of the master manufacturer would fall upon the consumer.

The rise which such a tax might occasion in the wages