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

produce. The whole weight of the tax, therefore, would

fall upon the rent and profit; properly upon the rent of the

vineyard. When it has been proposed to lay any new tax upon

sugar, our sugar planters have frequently complained that the

whole weight of such taxes fell not upon the consumer, but upon

the producer; they never having been able to raise the price of

their sugar after the tax higher than it was before. The price

had, it seems, before the tax, been a monopoly price ; and the

arguments adduced to show that sugar was an improper subject of

taxation, demonstrated perhaps that it was a proper one ; the

gains of monopolists, whenever they can be come at, being

certainly of all subjects the most proper. But the ordinary price

of barley has never been a monopoly price ; and the rent and

profit of barley land have never been above their natural

proportion to those of other equally fertile and equally well

cultivated land. The different taxes which have been imposed upon

malt, beer, and ale, have never lowered the price of barley ;

have never reduced the rent and profit of barley land. The price

of malt to the brewer has constantly risen in proportion to the

taxes imposed upon it ; and those taxes, together with the

different duties upon beer and ale, have constantly either raised

the price, or, what comes to the same thing, reduced the quality

of those commodities to the consumer. The final payment of those

taxes has fallen constantly upon the consumer, and not upon the

producer.

 

The only people likely to suffer by the change of system here

proposed, are those who brew for their own private use. But

the exemption, which this superior rank of people at present

enjoy, from very heavy taxes which are paid by the poor labourer

and artificer, is surely most unjust and unequal, and ought to be

taken away, even though this change was never to take place. It

has probably been the interest of this superior order of people,

however, which has hitnerto prevented a change of system that

could not well fail both to increase the revenue and to relieve

the people.

 

Besides such duties as those of custom and excise above

mentioned, there are several others which affect the price of

goods more unequally and more indirectly. Of this kind are the

duties, which, in French, are called peages, which in old Saxon

times were called the duties of passage, and which seem to have

been originally established for the same purpose as our turnpike

tolls, or the tolls upon our canals and navigable rivers, for the

maintenance of the road or of the navigation. Those duties, when

applied to such purposes, are most properly imposed according to

the bulk or weight of the goods. As they were originally local

and provincial duties, applicable to local and provincial

purposes, the administration of them was, in most cases,

entrusted to the particular town, parish, or lordship, in which

they were levied; such communities being, in some way or other,

supposed to be accountable for the application. The

sovereign, who is altogether unaccountable, has in many countries

assumed to himself the administration of those duties; and though

he has in most cases enhanced very much the duty, he has in many

entirely neglected the application. If the turnpike tolls of

Great Britain should ever become one of the resources of

government, we may learn, by the example of many other nations,

what would probably be the consequence. Such tolls, no doubt,

are finally paid by the consumer; but the consumer is not taxed

in proportion to his expense, when he pays, not according to the

value, but according to the bulk or weight of what he consumes.

When such duties are imposed, not according to the bulk or

weight, but according to the supposed value of the goods, they

become properly a sort of inland customs or excise, which

obstruct very much the most important of all branches of

commerce, the interior commerce of the country.

 

In some small states, duties similar to those passage duties are

imposed upon goods carried across the territory, either by land

or by water, from one foreign country to another. These are in

some countries called transit-duties. Some of the little

Italian states which are situated upon the Po, and the rivers

which run into it, derive some revenue from duties of this kind,

which are paid altogether by foreigners, and which, perhaps, are

the only duties that one state can impose upon the subjects of

another, without obstruction in any respect, the industry or

commerce of its own. The most important transit-duty in the

world, is that levied by the king of Denmark upon all merchant

ships which pass through the Sound.

 

Such taxes upon luxuries, as the greater part of the duties of

customs and excise, though they all fall indifferently upon every

different species of revenue, and are paid finally, or without

any retribution, by whoever consumes the commodities upon which

they are imposed ; yet they do not always fall equally or

proportionally upon the revenue of every individual. As every

man’s humour regulates the degree of his consumption, every man

contributes rather according to his humour, than proportion to

his revenue: the profuse contribute more, the parsimonious less,

than their proper proportion. During the minority of a man of

great fortune, he contributes commonly very little, by his

consumption, towards the support of that state from whose

protection he derives a great revenue. Those who live in another

country, contribute nothing by their consumption towards the

support of the government of that country, in which is situated

the source of their revenue. If in this latter country there

should be no land tax, nor any considerable duty upon the

transference either of moveable or immoveable property, as is the

case in Ireland, such absentees may derive a great revenue from

the protection of a government, to the support of which they do

not contribute a single shilling. This inequality is likely to be

greatest in a country of which the government is, in some

respects, subordinate and dependant upon that of some other. The

people who possess the most extensive property in the dependant,

will, in this case, generally chuse to live in the governing

country. Ireland is precisely in this situation; and we

cannot therefore wonder, that the proposal of a tax upon

absentees should be so very popular in that country. It might,

perhaps, be a little difficult to ascertain either what sort, or

what degree of absence, would subject a man to be taxed as an

absentee, or at what precise time the tax should either begin or

end. If you except, however, this very peculiar situation, any

inequality in the contribution of individuals which can arise

from such taxes, is much more than compensated by the very

circumstance which occasions that inequality; the circumstance

that every man’s contribution is altogether voluntary ; it being

altogether in his power, either to consume, or not to consume,

the commodity taxed. Where such taxes, therefore, are

properly assessed, and upon proper commodities, they are paid

with less grumbling than any other. When they are advanced by the

merchant or manufacturer, the consumer, who finally pays them,

soon comes to confound them with the price of the commodities,

and almost forgets that he pays any tax.

 

Such taxes are, or may be, perfectly certain; or may be assessed,

so as to leave no doubt concerning either what ought to be paid,

or when it ought to be paid; concerning either the quantity or

the time of payment. What ever uncertainty there may sometimes

be, either in the duties of customs in Great Britain, or in other

duties of the same kind in other countries, it cannot arise from

the nature of those duties, but from the inaccurate or unskilful

manner in which the law that imposes them is expressed.

 

Taxes upon luxuries generally are, and always may be, paid

piece-meal, or in proportion as the contributors have occasion to

purchase the goods upon which they are imposed. In the time and

mode of payment, they are, or may be, of all taxes the most

convenient. Upon the whole, such taxes, therefore, are perhaps as

agreeable to the three first of the four general maxims

concerning taxation, as any other. They offend in every

respect against the fourth.

 

Such taxes, in proportion to what they bring into the public

treasury of the state, always take out, or keep out, of the

pockets of the people, more than almost any other taxes. They

seem to do this in all the four different ways in which it is

possible to do it.

 

First, the levying of such taxes, even when imposed in the most

judicious manner, requires a great number of custom-house and

excise officers, whose salaries and perquisites are a real tax

upon the people, which brings nothing into the treasury of the

state. This expense, however, it must be acknowledged, is more

moderate in Great Britain than in most other countries. In

the year which ended on the 5th of July, 1775, the gross produce

of the different duties, under the management of the

commissioners of excise in England, amounted to �5,507,308:18:8�,

which was levied at an expense of little more than five and

a-half per cent. From this gross produce, however, there

must be deducted what was paid away in bounties and drawbacks

upon the exportation of exciseable goods, which will reduce the

neat produce below five millions. {The neat produce of that year,

after deducting all expenses and allowances, amounted to

�4,975,652:19:6.} The levying of the salt duty, and excise

duty, but under a different management, is much more expensive.

The neat revenue of the customs does not amount to two millions

and a-half, which is levied at an expense of more than ten per

cent., in the salaries of officers and other incidents. But the

perquisites of custom-house officers are everywhere much greater

than their salaries ; at some ports more than double or triple

those salaries. If the salaries of officers, and other

incidents, therefore, amount to more than ten per cent. upon the

neat revenue of the customs, the whole expense of levying that

revenue may amount, in salaries and perquisites together, to more

than twenty or thirty per cent. The officers of excise receive

few or no perquisites ; and the administration of that branch of

the revenue being of more recent establishment, is in general

less corrupted than that of the customs, into which length of

time has introduced and authorised many abuses. By charging upon

malt the whole revenue which is at present levied by the

different duties upon malt and malt liquors, a saving, it is

supposed, of more than �50,000, might be made in the annual

expense of the excise. By confining the duties of customs to a

few sorts of goods, and by levying those duties according to the

excise laws, a much greater saving might probably be made in the

annual expense of the customs.

 

Secondly, such taxes necessarily occasion some obstruction or

discouragement to certain branches of industry. As they always

raise the price of the commodity taxed, they so far discourage

its consumption, and consequently its production. If it is a

commodity of home growth or manufacture, less labour comes to be

employed in raising and producing it. If it is a foreign

commodity of which the tax increases in this manner the price,

the commodities of the same kind which are made at home may

thereby, indeed, gain some advantage in the home market, and a

greater quantity of domestic industry may thereby be turned

toward preparing them. But though this rise of price in a foreign

cotnmodity, may encourage domestic industry in one particular

branch,