Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1916 — TAX COMMISSION'S REPORT [ARTICLE]

TAX COMMISSION'S REPORT

The tax commission appointed by Governor Ralston under authority of the last legislature's enactment, has made its report. The investigation results in a disagreement on conclusions, four members of the commission signing the main report, and one, Dr. W. A. Rawles, of Indiana university bringing in a minority report. But there is agreement on some things, among them the following: Our tax system is unsatisfactory; It is unjust and discriminatory and it has been made wrnrse through the lack of uniformity in its enforcement; Our system of “equalization” doesn’t equalize but has given us inequalities of "monstrous proportions.” * The very officials on whom rested the responsibility of enforcing the law have flagrantly violated it ever since 1891; A tax limitation is admitted to be a sound theory. While the commission does not say that tax reform of some sort Is Impossible under the present state constitution, it does suggest that certain desirable fundamental

changes in our tax system will necessitate constitutional changes, thereby adding to the great mass of evidence that what Indiana really needs today, more than she needs anything else, is a new state constitution. The commission's report offers nothing new on the tax situation, either in the way of evidence of the failure of our present system or in proposed remedies; it shows that our prejudices still are in favor of the “old way of doing things” even though the old way repeatedly has proved inefficient and a failure; that prejudice are against the new way of doing a thing, even though it promises relief. Dr. Rawles takes the more progressive attitude. Apparently he fully realizes that as population increases and society becomes more complex the cost of government must increase and therefore it is not wise to establish a fixed limit on taxation; he condemns the general property tax and suggests the income tax as offering a palliative if not a cure. Dr. Rawles suggests that the tax system ■ should be rebuilt and that the foundation for the new system should be embedded in certain -necessary constitutional amendments. The proposition of taxing everything in sight, and out of sight if it can be discovered, has been tried in every ,state in the Union: it has been twisted into every conceivable shape, appjied in every possible way and each experiment has proved a failure. Of course the reason it won’t work is that man does not relish having to pay a penalty for working and saving; he can not see why if he serves society by making something society must have, he .must be fined in taxes; he can’t understand why it is that he must become a. pauper before society rewards him by decreasing his taxes and giving him a good home in a county institution. Every man, whether he reasons it out or not, is conscious of the injustice of a personal property tax and it is his disposition to avoid paying it. For ages and ages taxes have tended to settle on real property, visible, immovable property,

and some day, in the dim and distant future, we may rome to realize that there a reason for this just as there is a reason for the apple falling to the ground and the rock sinking in the water. But we are not ready to accept this truth as yet, therefore we go a little ways toward it, unwillingly perhaps, and play with the income tax idea. It is an improvement over the old and in the proportion of advancement over the old it is good. Of course taxation is a very insistent and complex problem, therefore we must have a complex remedy. Any simple solution of the problem is damned at once by its simplicity. It is altogether foolish to suggest that as population increases, independent of all human endeavor, it increases the value of land and that increase is far more than enough to meet the expenses of the government of modern society; it is entirely too simple to warrant a second thought to suggest that the way to eliminate the tax question is to eliminate taxes and simply appropriate for the governmental needs of society the land-site values society itself creates.—The Indiana Forum.