The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III Taxes On Urban Real Estate In the case of city real estate it is necessary to make a distinction between the two components of the real estate tax, the ground tax and the building or house tax--the tax on the site and the tax on the structure; for they are governed by distinct principles. Strictly speaking, we should have drawn the same distinction in the case of the agricultural landowner. But in that case the distinction is unimportant, because--in America at all events--the tenant is, in almost all cases, the owner and because the value of the farmer's buildings is generally of minor importance when compared with the value of his land. So far as this is not true, however, the principles now to be discussed apply there also. In American cities, where the occupiers of houses are frequently not the owners, the real estate tax is levied on the owners of property; and the question of ultimate incidence concerns only the landlord and the tenant. In England, where local rates are levied as a general rule on the occupiers,1 rather than the owners, and are proportional not to capital value but to rental value, the question is more complicated because of the peculiar divisions of ownership. 1 The local rates in England are, theoretically, assessed on the occupier. Even for a long period before the Elizabethan poor law (43 Eliz., chap, ii.), which is the basis of all English local taxation, it was the occupier, and not the owner, on whom fell the duty of relieving the poor. Cf. in general the history of local assessments in Castle, On Rating, chap. 1, and a volume published by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1846, entitled The Local Taxes of the United Kingdom. However, under the Small Tenements Act of 1869 (32 and 33 Vict. chap. 41,...