Taxation of the Poor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 28, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 22.

Taxation of the Poor

The Italian national debt in 1901 was $2,580,000,000. The revenue the same year was $285,000,000. Of this $35,000 was raised on tobacco; $13,800,000 was raised from a tax on salt, a monopoly which the government controls. It cost the government, all told, $1,200,000. The amount of $6,500,000 comes from a degrading national lottery, which takes from the people about $15,000,000 a year, mostly from the poor. Land is taxed from twenty cents to $1.20 an acre. Imported grain paid a tax of nearly $15,000,000; petroleum (not produced in Italy) of $20,000,000. And everything must be stamped from match boxes to mortgages. Incomes are taxed direct, not on a person's sworn statement, but on results of government investigation. Fuel must be imported, and wood and coal cost Italy about $20,000,000. Mr. Wolcott Calkins says in the Forum of May, from which article we gather the above facts: “I venture to enumerate a few articles with the percentage of increase over their normal cost. Salt, 1,300 per cent; sugar, 350 per cent; petroleum, 337 per cent; wine, 120 per cent; coffee, 75 per cent; wheat flour 62 per cent; meat, 10 per cent.” Agriculture is far below par. No wonder that there is discontent. The tobacco used, the wine and coffee drunk, are worse than the taxes, but think of those on the necessities of life. Moreover, it is safe to say that the priest-ridden church is a greater burden than the State. What wonder that anarchists and revolutionists are bred there?