People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1896 — The Income Tax. [ARTICLE]

The Income Tax.

The success of the income tax is only a question of time. We venture the prediction that this feature of the democratic platform of 1896 will be incorporated in the declaration of principles in 1900. A scientifically constructed income tax, carefully graded, offers the best solution of the problem of equal tax burdens. It is a reform which must come. The fact that the declaration for such a tax is still drawing the fire of the republican press and leaders is evidence that it is regarded as an issue that was not permanently disposed of by the results of the recent election.'-’^

It will be well to remember ;he language used by Associate Justice Harlan in his dissenting opinion on the decision of the supreme court. “The practical effect of the decision,” he said, “is not only to disregard great principles of equality in taxation, but the further principle that, in the imposition of taxes for the benefit of the government, the burdens thereof should be imposed upon those having most ability to bear them. The decision, in effect, works out a directly opposite result, in relieving the citizens having the greater ability, while the burdens of taxation are made to fall most heavily and oppressively upon those having the least ability. It lightens the burdens upon the large number in some states subject to the tax, and places it most unequally and disproportionately on the smaller number in other states. Considered in all its bearings this decision is in my judgment the most, disastrous blow ever struck at the constitutional power of congress.”

The adverse ruling of the supreme court pratically excluded any recourse to incomes from real estate and personal property for the purpose of raising revenue to meet the wants of the government under any circumstance. It was a decision that exempted wealth from its rightful share of the tax burden. Such a decision cannot always stand, and it is the duty of the democratic party to continue its warfare upon what only can be regarded as a concession to wealth and a discrimination against the masses. —Lafayette Journal.