44 
THE ABCOF TAXATION 
(a) Unlike the tax upon land, the tax of $100 upon 
the house cannot come out of the $300 rent (house 
rent or interest) except indirectly through its effect 
upon wages as before mentioned, because house rent 
cannot normally be less than interest on the actual 
cost of building the house; it must instead be paid 
by the user of the house, over and above his interest, 
making his house rent, the annual cost of his house 
for use, I400 instead of I300. 
(1b) To repeat: a house rent, otherwise $300, is 
increased to I400 by a tax of fioo on the house. In 
contrast with this, you may either take off a present 
tax of 1100 from the land, or you may increase that 
tax to I200, and in neither case will the cost of the 
land to the user be affected. Take off the fioo tax 
from the house, and the cost of the house to the user 
will be reduced from I400 to $300 a year; of land and 
house together, from I700 to |6oo. 
Proposition 9.— The moral of this illustration is 
that you get for use annually I300 worth of land for I300, 
and a house costing $300 for I400. In other words, a 
tax upon land is a part of, is included in, and 
comes out of, ground rent, and is no burden to the 
user: while a tax upon a house is a clear addition 
to house rent, and comes principally out of the user 
of the house. 
To recapitulate: (1) It has been shown that a 
house tax of |ioo that has been regularly levied 
takes in taxation |ioo a year of the user’s income. 
(2) It has been shown that a land tax of $100 
takes in taxation no part of the income of the user or 
present owner, provided that he purchased the land 
after the tax was imposed.