which will be levied on a sliding scale. The scale is graduated so that five per cent will be levied on small incomes and as much as six per cent on large ones. Employees whose total incomes are less than six hundred florins per annum are exempt. In addition to the income tax, persons of either sex trading or carrying on business on their own account are subject to an additional impost. The new law is intended to supersede the existing system by the introduction of a general tax on private trading and industrial establishments of all descriptions, a tax on all joint-stock companies and other enterprises legally bound to publish annual balance sheets, a tax on incomes derived from invested capital, and a personal income tax based on a progressive sliding scale.
In France, the republic, although groaning under an almost overwhelming burden of debt, has recently refused, by a vote in its Chamber of Deputies of 267 to 236, to reconstruct its income-tax system, with a view of increasing the revenue derived from it; and subsequently, by a majority of 289, refused to reconsider its position, although the organic law framed for France in 1875 gives the national legislature unlimited power over taxation, direct as well as indirect. During the popular discussion that preceded this legislative action, it is interesting to note that a progressive income tax was not properly regarded as more oppressive than many other forms of taxation, and as a matter of French experience a heavy income tax—about four per cent—is now levied on French bonds and shares, in fact, on every dividend of a French company, while no income tax is levied on French Government stocks or foreign bonds; and this apparently unfair treatment is accounted for because the revenue derived from French companies can be easily ascertained and the companies made responsible for it, while such a result would be impossible in the case of foreign bonds or foreign stocks and shares, and hence the difficulty has arisen of how to compel the taxpayer to pay: as, if the declaration was left to him, it was not unreasonable to suppose he would not declare it, or only declare it in part; while if left for ascertainment by French officials, it was feared that the income tax in France would become a political weapon, which would be freely used against the legislators in power.
M. Paul-Beaulieu, a distinguished French economist, has recently advanced and advocated the view that a state in instituting an income tax for the sole purpose of obtaining revenue, ought not to grade the tax at all, or lay a higher rate on large incomes than on smaller ones; or, in other words, that it is better to tax all incomes that are taxed at all at one uniform rate; and the reason for this is that the large incomes form so small a percentage of the total that the increased rate adds no great amount to the revenue, while
