90

THE  A  B  C  OF  TAXATION

because,  unless  the  owner  can  get  a  rent  sufficient  to
pay  interest  on  the  cost  of  the  house,  over  and  above
taxes,  no  more  houses  will  be  built,  until  they  become
so  scarce  as  to  force  rent  to  a  point  that  will  cover  the
cost  of  maintenance.
How  can  taxation  be  confiscation?  Etymologically
the  words  have  nothing,  and  colloquially  almost
nothing,  in  common.  To  confiscate  is,  according  to  the
Century  Dictionary,  “to  adjudge  to  be  forfeited  to  the
public  treasury  by  way  of  penalty”  —the  meaning  is
inseparable  from  the  idea  of  forfeiture.  To  tax,  on
the  contrary,  is  “to  levy  money  or  other  contributions,
as  from  subjects  or  citizens,  to  meet  the  expense  of
government.”
Is  it  just  to  allow  the  landowners’  investment,  now
exempt,  to  remain  exempt?  Does  either  legal  equity
or  ethics  require  that  the  land  should  be  exempt  from
an  increased  tax,  or  that  its  owner  should  have  even
partial,  much  less  total,  immunity  from  the  burden  of
taxation?  Because  a  new  tax  upon  land  would  reduce
proportionately  the  selling  price,  should  owners  of
land  for  that  reason  continue  to  go  scot  free?
The  advance  in  Boston’s  tax  rate  per  thousand  for
1907  ($15.90)  is  $3  over  that  of  1897  ($13.00.)  The
capitalised  value  of  this  increase,  $650,000,000  multiplied ­
  by  $3  per  thousand,  multiplied  by  twenty
years  (the  number  years  purchase),  is  $39,000,000.
Do  we  hear  that  Boston  has  confiscated  $39,000,000
worth  of  her  citizen’s  land  in  the  last  ten  years?
Boston  has  to-day  some  $560,000,000  of  new  land
value,  which  it  did  not  have  fifty  years  ago.  Meantime ­
  the  tax  rate  doubled  from  $8  in  1856  to  $16  in
1906.  The  capitalised  value  of  this  $8  increase  in