I have made separate estimates of the incidence of each item. of taxation, but I have not space, nor would my readers have the patience to read them, if I gave the details. I, therefore, only give a summary of my conclusions, which is as follows: ESTIMATED INCIDENCE OF IMPERIAL PUBLIC BURDENS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM IN MILLIONS OF POUNDS. That is to say, out of nearly 88 million pounds raised by imperial taxation, not quite 40% is paid by the working classes and rather more than 60% by the upper and middle classes, and the taxation of the two classes per head is in the ratio 3:11. There are many difficulties in dealing with the question of the incidence of local taxation. In the first place, the Government is some years in arrears in publishing the local taxation accounts. They are, however, published separately (not in the statistical abstract, which always gives different figures) for the year ending March 1894, and I am therefore going to use these. Secondly, the two questions, "when is a rate or other local tax a public burden?" and "if it is, then what is its incidence?" are extremely difficult to answer. The receipts of the local authorities may be classified as follows: 1. Public Rates. 2. Government contributions (including receipts from Local Taxation Accounts). 3. Tolls, duties and dues. 4. Receipts from property and sales of property. 5. Fines, fees, penalties and licenses. 6. Revenue from water works, gas works, markets, etc. 7. Repayments from private improvement works. Of these, I take item 1 to be a public burden. Item 2 has been already considered under the head of imperial taxation. I am inclined to think that none of the other items are public burdens. In England, for the year 1893-94, the total receipts of the local authorities not due to rates or Government contributions amounted to £12,222,159. At that time the outstanding loans were £224,158,370. The ratio of the former to the latter sum is about 5.5:100. Now, if we consider that as regards most of the receipts under items 3-7, they are monies paid for definite services rendered by the Local Authority acting as a business firm, and if one considers that a large part of this 224 millions has been borrowed in order to enable the Local Authority to undertake the work and that most of this sum has to be repaid within a fixed number of years, it may, I think, be fairly assumed that the 12 million pounds is the return on the capital sum of 224 millions, and therefore should not be included as a public burden. I answer, then, my first question by saying that I shall only consider public rates as a public burden. Next comes the question of the incidence of rates. We can roughly classify rates as (1) upon land, (2) upon houses, (3) upon other property. Rates upon land and houses, I imagine, fall, in the long run, mainly on the landlord. When I am going to take a house I ask what is the rent? and what do the rates come to? I add these together and consider whether I can afford to pay this total sum for the house offered. Suppose then I take the house for 7 years, and when I have taken it the rates begin to steadily increase; the burden of the extra rate now falls upon me, though the burden of what I may call the old rate fell mainly on my landlord. We see then that the element of time and the power of forecasting what the rates will be in the near future are of great importance in determining the incidence of rates upon houses. As to the incidence of rates upon other property I hardly know what to think. So far as the rate is steady, the burden of it in time probably spreads itself over a large portion of the community, but in what proportion I do not know. A rate on machinery, though it falls in the first instance on the owners of machinery, must in the long run be a drag on business to be felt by the community at large. But I have said enough about the difficulty of this part of my subject and will now turn to see how other people have dealt with these difficulties. Professor Levi estimated that one-third of the local taxation was paid by the working class. I do not know the principles upon which he arrived at this estimate. Mr. Dudley Baxter thinks that the incidence of rates on land is three-fourths on the landlord and one-fourth on the tenant, but that in the case of houses it is something between one-half and one-third on the tenant. He finally estimated that in 1867 the upper and middle classes paid 161⁄2 million pounds in rates, and the working class 2 millions. A writer in the Economist (Jan. 20th, 1894) argues as follows: "There was recently published a most interesting report upon local taxation by Mr. H. H. Fowler and in that it was calculated that out of the £27,800,000 of rates raised in 1890-91 £17,500,000 consisted of rates borne by houses. It is only, of course, of this latter portion that the working classes bear any share, and from the revenue returns it appears that about 22 per cent. of the aggregate value of house property is made up of houses rated at £15 a year and under. Assuming that the £15 limit embraces the houses occupied by the working classes, and assuming also that the whole of the rates fell upon the occupiers—a very large assumption—the total contribution of these classes to the rates may be set down at £4,000,000 per annum." This, on the whole, is the best method of estimating the incidence of rates that I have seen, but it must not be forgotten that in addition to the many other assumptions made by the writer, he also assumes that no part of the rates upon land or other property ultimately falls upon the working class. And unfortunately there is no local taxation report for Ireland corresponding to Sir H. Fowler's for England. Mr. Acland, in the Westminster Review for April, 1888, estimates that 4% of a working man's income goes in local taxation. Estimating the income of the working classes at £500,000,000, we should get from this that £20,000,000 a year was the burden of local taxation on the working class. This is clearly an overestimate. The above divergence of views is sufficient to indicate the difficulty of the question. I cannot pretend to make a satisfactory estimate, but I think that it is better to make some estimate, however bad. I shall use the method given by the writer in the Economist, though I modify it slightly. In the year 1890-91 the total rates levied in England were as follows: In the year 1893-94 the total receipts from rates in England were £32,223,972. If the same proportion was borne by houses as in 1890-91, we find that £20,274,622 was the amount of rates levied on houses in 1893-94. I next have to find out how much of this was borne by houses whose annual value was less than £20 (instead of £15). In this year the total annual value of houses in England was £132,607,039, and of this £38,835,176 was the value of dwelling houses whose annual value was less than £20 per annum. So that we may take £5,940,620 to represent the amount of rates borne by houses of an annual value of less than £20 per annum. Clearly the whole of this does not fall upon the occupier, so that if we take this sum to represent the amount of rates paid by the working class we shall overstep the mark. On the other hand, the ultimate incidence of a part (though a small part) of the rates on lands and other property may fall on the working class. I shall, therefore, take £6,000,000 to be the amount of rates paid by the working classes in England for the year 1893-94. Working class, Total,. £6,000,000 26,224,000 £32,224,000 The total receipts of the Scottish local authorities derived from rates for the year 1893-94 were £3,660,078. In 1892-93 (according to the report of local taxation in Scotland) the rates amounted to £3,779,525, made up as follows: On Lands, On Buildings, £ 674,000 2,575,000 On other property, 531,000 In this, however, a sum of £149,000 odd of water rates have been included. Deducting this from the rates on buildings, I get as my less incorrect figures: On Lands, On Buildings, On other property, £ 674,000 2,426,000 531,000 Then assuming that the proportions are the same in 1893–94, I get for 1893-94 the following figures: On Lands, On Buildings, On other property, Total, £680,000 2,445,000 £3,660,000 In 1893-94 the total annual value of houses in Scotland was £14,089,239, and the annual value of dwelling houses whose annual value was less than £20 was £4,024,876. I therefore take it that the amount of rates levied on houses whose annual value was less than £20 was about £699,000. Using the same. assumptions and arguments as before, I obtain: In Ireland for the year 1893-94 the total receipts from rates amounted to nearly three millions, thus: |