taxation to
distribute the burden according to ability. It is evident that the
expenditures of the very wealthy for such articles as bring revenue to the
government are not in the same proportion to their income as the
expenditures of the poorer people are to their incomes. A further reason
is based upon the supposition that large incomes involve a considerable
unearned increment, in the shape of rent or extraordinary profits, because
of accidental opportunity or the crowding of population. An income tax,
carefully graduated, is supposed to cause such extra privileges and
opportunities to bear a fair share of government expenses.

There are several difficulties in administering such a tax which have
stood in the way of its general and permanent adoption. No one has yet
devised a certain or fair method of estimating income. The peculiarities
of any business or employment make great variation in the ability given by
a certain income in dollars and cents. The business man in a small town,
with an income of $5,000, might live in relative luxury, and still have a
surplus for investment in his business. The same man, attempting business
in a large city, might, even with an income of $10,000, find it barely
possible to keep up appearances. The income of farmers is largely in
provisions and personal privileges from use of teams, etc., never counted
in dollars and cents, while the village mechanic pays from his measured
income for all such comforts, or goes without them. The actual, necessary
expenses of the business of a professional man in the way of books and
travel are as essential to his business as are farm implements and live
stock to the farm; yet no one counts such expenses as a subtraction from
the income. A teacher promoted to a higher position is at once subjected
to extraordinary expenses, and may be less able with a higher salary to
meet the requirements of his new life than he was with a lower salary to
meet the less expensive requirements.

Another principal difficulty is the unpopularity of such a tax from its
necessary interference with private business. The country will be almost
certainly more divided along lines of wealth over an income tax than over
anything else. On the part of the wealthy it seems an effort of the people
to take from them actual property rights. On the part of the poorer
classes it fosters the assumption that the more wealthy are unjustly so.
In the nature of the case, it is an arbitrary