TAX ADMINISTRATION
A branch of local fiscal administration which is in far less satisfactory shape is that of taxation. In no department is “nullification,” as has been already shown, more constant and serious. The situation is complicated. In seventeen of the states, including every one north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers, and east of the Mississippi, except Illinois, Indiana and Maryland, the county as a whole has very little to do with assessments for the general property tax, the unit for assessment in that section being the town or township. That in nearly all these states the general property tax may be said to have broken down, would seem to be indicated by the establishment of a permanent state tax commission or commissioner in all of them except Pennsylvania. In thirty-one states in the South and West, the county is the unit of assessment, and in its favor it may be said that in this rôle it has proven a far more satisfactory performer than the town. The county is small enough to serve as a convenient unit for assessment operations and assessment records and furnishes the basis of a system of fewer units than if the town were the basis. Under the county plan, moreover, there are fewer opportunities for communities to compete against each other in their effort to escape their just share of the general burden of government. It is significant that most of the western states have seen the advantages of the county as the local unit of administration.
But the county, for all that, appears to be incapable of standing on its own feet in tax matters. Even under the most favorable circumstances there remains an important duty for a state commission to supervise the work of the county assessor or board of assessors to the end that the letter of the law may be obeyed with the utmost uniformity throughout the state. Such a commission must see that the county does injustice to neither individuals nor the state through inequal assessment and that the tax sales are in accordance with the law.
The county, in short, has a useful place in the general scheme of tax administration, but it must be a supervised unit.