GROUND RENT A SOCIAL PRODUCT 25 
the appreciation in the value of their land may be 
fairly reckoned as an offset to the imposition of any 
new tax upon it. 
This present exemption, however, is not offered as 
a reason for additional taxation, but rather as a 
justification for taking the opportunity to transfer 
the present load from the head and the tail to the back 
and shoulders of the horse. As an anti-single-tax 
professor of political economy happily puts it: “The 
beauty, to my mind, of a tax upon land values is that 
in a few years nobody pays it.” 
XII The Single Tax as an Income Tax 
An income tax has always been a favourite form of 
tax, because it has been regarded as well calculated to 
bear upon “ each according to his ability.” The taxa 
tion of ground rent would surely be the purest possible 
exemplification and application of the principle of the 
income tax, because it would fall upon all those in 
comes which are unearned, which are in their nature 
perpetual, and which are amply able to bear the 
whole burden of taxation. Of course, such an income 
tax should have impartial application. A large un 
earned income should be taxed at the same rate as a 
small income of the same nature and derived from the 
same source. If it is right that corporations or other 
aggregations of capital should engage in business 
enterprises for profit upon equal terms with indi 
viduals, then it is right that an impartial income 
tax should impose at least the same rate upon the 
many million dollar incomes of the railroads and the 
coal operators, and United States steel companies, 
as upon smaller unearned incomes of one, five, or 
ten thousand dollars, derived from the same source.