OCR Text |
Show DOUBLE TAXATION FIGURES coming out of Washington from the house ways and means committee reveal the American people as staggering along the rocky road toward pauperization to the tune of $10,-000,000,000 $10,-000,000,000 year in taxes. Ten billions of dollars is a lot to pay for what we get for it Moreover, It la revealed that federal expenditures have Increased In-creased nearly seven time In the past 20 years! The committee places the total per capita tax burden of the people at very close to $78 per year, representing an Increase of about 14 per cent In the 20-year period. The purpose of the survey conducted by the house committee was to afford preliminary data which show that an effort should be made to afford some relief from double taxation, that Is, by tha federal government and by tha state on the same taxable wealth. In submitting Its report the committee pointed out that the whole system of taxation in the United State Is "complicated, cumbersome and In many respect Inequitable." In view of the number num-ber of taxes Imposed, the report say, the revenue are disappointing. All governmental units clothed with the power to levy taxes should know by experience that revenue doe not go upward as levies rise. When people can't pay the taxes Imposed, Im-posed, they don't pay them. Of course, the revenue Is disappointing to the tax gatherer but the figure fig-ure leave out of the picture the trail of human misery left in the wake of the tax gatherer, whose motto 1 "Onward and Upward." Eloquent Is the committee' remark that "the tax burden is reaching the breaking point" Universally, Uni-versally, the comment on this one sentence will be that this breaking point was reached long sgo. If there la on Jot or tittle of humor to be found in the report, it 1 found In the assertion that "the expenditure have increased to such degree a to require investigation in order to determine de-termine whether the public is obtaining value received re-ceived for the tax dollar." Taney that! The tax-. tax-. payer can answer that question, without an investigation. |