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Show J THE AUDITOR ON ASSESSMENTS. We notice that State Auditor James A. Kd wards is out iu a recommendation for higher valuation on property. Tn this, however, wo fear that he looks upon the matter more from tho official than from the taxpayers ftaudpoint. The official naturally wants to get as much revenuo as possible within the fax limit -which the law provides. The taxpayer tax-payer deEires to pay the minimum amount of taxation. So richt there is an irrepressible conflict that probably never will cease. Taking tho law literally, Auditor "Edwards "Ed-wards is on solid ground when he. advocates ad-vocates tho assessment of property at its full market or cash valu But looking look-ing at it from tho practical standpoint, and from the view of every-day experience, ex-perience, the controlling sentiment has always been opposed to the literal following fol-lowing of the law. Many considerations enter into this practical modification of the letter of the statute. First of all. everyono knows that thr-re are. large values in property that: arc not reached by the assessor at all. These are iu-tangible iu-tangible values which arise from good will, from concealed property, and from revenue-producing properties that are hcjd in such a- way as to make access to them by the assessor practically impossible, im-possible, although they can hardly be said exactly to be concealed. Everybody Every-body understands how it is, everybody knows that taxation ought to be placed upon the property that is best able to pay it and everybody Ijnows that a great deal of t.his4 property is so held that the assessor is uuable to reach it. Those who have visible property naturally na-turally shrink from the high valuation of it, because thev understand as fully as any one can explain to them, tho injustice in-justice of requiring them io pay in full on their property values when so much other propcrtv is not reached at all. When a man Caving to pay, let us say, ono hundred dollars in taxation, sees a neighbor who he knows is much richer than he is himself pa only ten or fifteen fif-teen dollars in taxation, it creates in his mind a feeling of injustice that, it is. idle to argue against. In the one ease tho man bos his propcrtv out in the open, the assessor can see it, ho can put a. fair valuation upon it, and it is his duty to enter it on tho roll. Tho other man has his property iu stocks, bonds, or in some form that the assessor js unable to find. There is so much of this that the idea, of compelling the visible property "to pTy all the taxes is everywhere recognized to be unjust. un-just. It maj- be said that it does not do the owners of visible property a'ny good to have their property afsessed at a minimized u'gurc, But it does do good all the same, for it. makes the assessor somewhat more diligent in trying to reach the property that it hidden, and it has a tendency to a better equalization equali-zation of the tax burdens throughout the State, where the common conseut fixes the valuation at one-half . to two-thirds of the real value, than it docs where there is an acute sense of obligatiou to put the value up to - a hich figure in some counties and iu others to assess it. at about oue-half the market rate. If there wore a. State Board of Equalization Equaliza-tion that would sternly and justly equalize in facit as between tho different counties, this difficulty might in a measure meas-ure be overcome. But boards of equalization equal-ization do not do that, because the members of boards like (0 bo popuiui1, they do uot want to antagonize a whole couDty or a series of counties; so they let the valuations slide along about as they are turned in. There is an occasional oc-casional little raise made in order to how that the board is there and is doing do-ing something, but. tho chances make very little difference in the aggregate, not enough to particularly antagonize anybody. Then, .is applied to this count.;, there is always this proposition. The taxpayers tax-payers of the State at large pay far loss in proportion to their holdings thau do the people of Salt Lake City and county. This is particularly accentuated accentu-ated acainet the taxpayers of Salt Lake City. The valuations here are far in excess, relatively, of the values in tho other counties. They have always beeu so; they arc so this. year in a more marked degree than ever before- The consequence is that Salt Lake City 1 pay? an increasingly larger and larger percentage of tbo whole burdcus of the State taxation, and the outhidc counties pay in diminishing ratio year by year. The proposition to increase tho values on the assessment roll always means "sookiug it to Salt Lake." This is so well known and so universally the outcome out-come of any movement of this kind, that tbo people of this city have come naturally to resent as a planned imposition im-position upon them all such propositions bs this, that now comes from the State Auditor. The remedy that Mr. Edwards seeks from the one-sided official view is uot to be afforded in any such a way as ho proposes; bis -idea would emphasize an injustice already too evident. The real remedy for the evils of our taxing tax-ing system is to got a, bettor system, a scientific system, a system which will reach the real, property values iu this State, and exempt, so far as is possible, r.ho burdens imposed, upon the small property owners to the exemption in extraordinary ex-traordinary degree of the very rich. Thifi can bo, bad only by a complete revision re-vision of our State revenue system and the doing away with the methods laid down in our State Constitution, which are antiquated, unjust, partial, awd in effective in a most extraordinary degree. de-gree. . |