[p. 356]
|356| The system of imposts, however, immediately falls into the contradiction that it is to [be] absolutely just, that each is to contribute in proportion to the size of his possession; but this possession is nothing immovable, fixed, but in the industry of acquisition something living, infinite, incalculable; if capital is assessed and calculated according to revenues, this is, formally considered, possible, but revenues are something wholly particular, not, like immovable goods, something objective, knowable and cognisable; in this way, therefore, singular possession is not to be burdened according to justice, because as singular possession it does not itself have the form of the objective.
But the objective, immovable goods, is to be assessed, although here too particularity always plays a part, according to the value which they have according to their possibility of producing; but because at the same time possession is present in the form of particularity, as skill, not everything is comprised under the former, and if the products of immovable goods are burdened enormously, the value of the product does not settle into equilibrium, for the quantity, on which the value depends, always remains the same, and in the degree that production decreased, the revenues of the state would also decrease; all the more would it have to be burdened in rising progression, and in this progression the revenue would behave inversely. Skill is therefore at the same time to be taxed, but not according to what it takes in, this is something particular, peculiar to it; but according to what it spends; for what it buys makes the passage through the form of universality out of its particularity, or becomes commodity; and on account of the same circumstance, namely that either the quantity remains the same, then this article does not change the value, and this labouring class becomes impoverished; or, what then follows, less is produced, then the revenues become less, and whatever branch the impost throws itself upon, the case is the same; therefore [it] must extend itself to the most manifold possible particularity of it; although through this the same likewise follows, that less is used, this is precisely the external means by which acquiring limits itself, and in the imposts the government has a means of having influence [upon] this limiting, or extending, of singular parts.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.