People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1894 — PULLMAN’S TAXES. [ARTICLE]

PULLMAN’S TAXES.

Got. Altgeld DmUtm Them to Be BL dlculously Low. Springfield, 111., Sept 26. —At Tuesday’s meeting of the stat# board of equalization Gov. Altgeld was present and was invited to address the board. The governor in his address took up the question of the assessment of the capital Btock of corporations, and especially the complaints concerning the assessment of Pullman’s Palace Car company. The governor disclaimed any intention of interfering with the work of the board, but said he felt it his duty to lay before them some facts which he had recently collected. Pullman’s Palace Car company, according to the records in the secretary of state’s office, has a capital stock of $30,000,000. Mr. Pullman had testified before a commission, among other things, that this capital stock was paid in cash and had been enlarged from time to time during the twenty-seven years of its existence, and that quarterly dividends of 2 per cent, had been paid, based on the whole capital, ever since its organization; that for the first two years they were 3 per cent, quarterly, and for a time afterward they were paid for two years at 9% per cent, and since that time they had been 8 per cent, per annum without any changes. Mr. Pullman had further declared under oath that the company had no bonded debt and had accumulated $25,000,000 in undivided, profits, the governor continued. Adding this $25,000,000 to the capital stock makes $61,000,000 which the stock of the Pullman company represents. The market reports show this stock to be worth more than $61,000,000.

The governor continued to give facts and figures from the company’s own reports and showed that the company’s surplus had been upward of $3,000,000 a year for many years. If the stock of the Pullman company were assessed like other property it would make an assessment of from $12,360,000 to $15,000,000. Instead of this it was assessed at only $1,650,000 in the state, the company having represented that its property was assessed in other states, but failed to show where. The auditor of state has written letters to the officers of every state in the union and the dominion of Canada and received letters showing the actual amount of the assessment and the taxes paid by the Pullman company in each of these states. It appears that in sixteen states the company pays no taxes at all. In several other states and in Canada no assessments are shown, and in seventeen the total amount of tax paid by the Pullman company is only $21,425. In the remaining seven states the taxes paid are not given, but the total assessment isonly $1,104,359. The calculation based upon the ruling per cent, of taxation would place the total amount of taxes paid by the company at $40,751 outside of Illinois. This in Chicago would pay the taxes on less than $4,000,000 of property. The governor estimates that the Pullman company pays taxes on only about $2,000,000 in America, and that nearly $60,000,000 entirely escapes taxation, and the company has now in its possession millions of dollars that should have been paid into the public treasury. The board could not, the governor said, reach back and compel the company to pay what it should have paid in the past; but it could assess the company as high in proportion to the market value of its property as others are assessed.