The recent war imposed an unusually heavy burden of taxation upon us.  But when we think of the millions of people who paid for the war with their lives, and of the fact that the war was fought for the most precious of all things,—­human liberty,—­the money tax that each citizen had to pay in some form or other seems very insignificant.

BENEFITS OF TEAM WORK IN TAXATION

In Chapter iv we read how Benjamin Franklin secured the services of a man to keep the pavements of the neighborhood clean “for the sum of sixpence per month to be paid by each house.”  By this bit of cooperation, each householder was relieved of a burden, and had the benefit not only of having his own pavement cleaned, but also of knowing that those of all his neighbors would be equally clean, and thus of having a pleasanter neighborhood, and the cost was insignificant.  This incident illustrates the underlying principle of taxation in a self-governing community.  The poorest citizen is made rich in the benefits that he may enjoy, while the cost is made proportional to his ability to pay.

MISUSE OF TAXES

Like the rest of our governing machinery, however, our system of levying, collecting, and paying taxes does not always work perfectly, and there is more or less ground for dissatisfaction with it.  In the first place, the people do not always get full value for their taxes.  While it is true that the farmer receives, in return for his road tax, vastly more than he could purchase privately with the same amount of money, yet, if the road improvements are poorly made, he gets less than he should.  It usually costs as much to employ an inefficient road supervisor, or school teacher or superintendent, or sheriff, as to employ an efficient one—­in fact, in the long run it costs more.  Sometimes more persons are employed in government offices than there is any need for, or some of those employed are shirkers, or otherwise inefficient.  There is wastefulness in the methods by which appropriations are made for the expenses of government.  Sometimes there is “graft,” by which public money is diverted to the private uses of officials, contractors, or others.

A CAUSE OF DISSATISFACTION

Such abuses as these are, of course, not faults of the taxing system, but they naturally make citizens reluctant to pay taxes.  People want to know that their money is spent for the purposes for which it was paid, and that it is used economically and effectively for these purposes.  Nothing else will do so much to remove the dislike of taxation as assurance on these points.  As Franklin said with reference to his successful experiment in street cleaning, it “raised a general desire to have all the streets paved, and made the people more willing to submit to a tax for that purpose.”