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Show i ! ji AAiscGdanu ii Taxation and Industrial Expansion. Expan-sion. Proba'oly the most difficult task that confronts governing power is to raise ;ind properly apportion the taxes necessary neces-sary to t'arry on government. There mi'ht be addc! to this the statement that probably in no other country throughout through-out the- world does tt cost so much per dollar, per capita, to raise and spend taxes, as it does in the United States. j The confusion of our tax laws reflects upon tiie Industries. Countless questions arie hi regard to the enforcement of tax laws in the .vovereUTn grates. The inheritance in-heritance tax on real estate Ls due in the state where locate-. Where personal property is owned in a foreign state tt has been held to follow the residence of the owner. But numerous states have held it subject to taxation in the state where located, thus subjecting the same property to double tax. The federal inheritance in-heritance tax would hit this property in one state or the other, thus subjecting it to triple- taxation. There ie an actual instance in which railroad stock of a decedent was subject to the tax in Wisconsin Wis-consin because that was the state of his residence; in Illinois, bocause the stock was in a safety deposit box in Chicago; and in Utah, because the railroad company com-pany was a Utah corporation. In such a case would a federal tax levy further contribution? Under the guise of taxation for revenue, reve-nue, our domestic business interests have been made to pay a large share of the high cost of political government. Patronage, political expediencey and so-called so-called national needs, are the weapons through which millions of dollars in tax payments are annually taken from our industrial enterprises. In this way American industry, which is of the people, peo-ple, by the people and for the people, iias been compelled to pay tribute to those who have been allowed so to abuse the legislative powers placed in their hands by a none too careful citizenry. Much has been heard in recent years of economy in government, but to date no real exhibition of this approved theory has been translated into practice. Indeed, while the discussion over the need of governmental thrift lias been most intense in-tense during, the past ten years, the more practical politicians have succeeded succeed-ed in having enacted a constantly increasing in-creasing number of burdensome tax laws. One of the direct results of the race between federal, state and local tax assessors as-sessors is that in some of the leading industrial in-dustrial districts many plants have been moving fro.m one state to another. There are instances where plant owners, find- , ing it impracticable to close down their plants in one state and reopen in another, an-other, have adopted the alternative of transferring their charters of incorporation incorpora-tion to more favorable states, so as to escape paying exorbitant and unreasonable unreason-able taxes or other forms of state fees, for the privilege of doing business and incidentally (so it seems) contributing to the prosperity of a given community. ill. J. Hickey in American Industries. |