The collection of taxes was vested in the sheriff, who was ex-officio the county collector, as he is today. This officer had powers of imprisonment and distraint. The commissioners appointed by the County Court as assessors were allowed $1 per day, and the sheriffs were authorized to keep 1% of their collections before making their reports to the county treasurers.
This crude fiscal system devised by Sargent remained in effect without substantial modification until 1815. In that year a law was passed providing for a distinct territorial tax and specifying that county taxes should be levied upon the same property and objects enumerated as were within the territorial schedule.[67] County taxes, however, could not exceed one-half of the territorial tax. Henceforth, there was to be commonwealth taxation, as distinguished from purely local taxation. The territorial schedule comprised a general list of ratable objects with fixed valuations. Land was divided into six classes, each class having three qualities. The bases of classification were proximity to the city of Natchez and distance from the Mississippi, Chickasawhay and Tombigbee Rivers. Thus, class number one contained all lands lying within eight miles of the city of Natchez, the first quality of which was rated at $12 per acre; the second, at $8; and the third, at $3. Class number two contained all land lying within fourteen miles of the Mississippi River, with valuations according to quality ranging from $2 to $7. In short, valuations decreased in proportion as the distances from commercial centres and water courses increased; lands, lots and buildings within any city, borough or town were subject to a uniform ad valorem tax of 2 mills; and merchandise and bank stock, to an ad valorem tax of 2½ mills. Capitation taxes of 50 and 62½ cents respectively were levied on each slave and free white male above the age of twenty-one. Slave traders were taxed $5.00 on each slave imported into the Territory, a tax containing the germs of the privilege license system. The schedule was further strengthened by a tax of $1.25 on every pleasurable carriage.
It was provided that assessing and collecting officers were to be appointed by the Governor, rather than by the County Court, as heretofore—a change probably due to the differentiation between commonwealth and county taxation.
We may, for the lack of a better designation, call the period from 1817, the date of Mississippi's admission into the Union, to the outbreak of the Civil War, the period of ante-bellum Statehood. Such a division in fiscal history would seem to be perfectly artificial, yet it is justified by the fact that during this period the tax system of the State underwent substantial change. The increased expenses of State administration, an accumulation of State indebtedness, minuter differentiation in industry, giving rise to more numerous classes of wealth and progress in democratic thought—all demanded an extension of the State's fiscal system.
Personal property became as important an object of taxation as real property. The personal property list was no longer limited to slaves, pleasure carriages, moneys arising from the sale of merchandise, and bank stock, but also included gold and silver plate, pianos, weapons, watches or clocks, cattle in excess of twenty head, saddle and carriage horses, merchants' and brokers' capital and money loaned at interest.[68]
This taxation of personal property, usually rated, was supplemented by the privilege license system, with charges partly rated and partly apportioned. Thus, in 1857 auctioneers and peddlers were taxed 3 per cent. on the amount of their sales; saloon-keepers, one-fourth of one per cent. on all sales of vinous and spirituous liquors by the gallon; trading in slaves, horses and mules, 3 per cent. on the amount of their sales; keepers of ferries, toll bridges or turnpikes, one-fourth of one per cent. on all receipts; circuses $25 for each day's performance; nine-pin alleys or any like contrivance, $25 each; theatres or places for theatrical performances, $35 each. Even the poll tax was widened into its application so as to include free negro as well as free white males between the ages of twenty-one and fifty years.
Contemporaneously with this external expansion, the tax system of the State underwent internal changes. Land classifications were abolished, and annual income was rejected as a device of valuation.[69] A method was substituted which is in vogue today, viz: Assessment according to intrinsic value, to be determined by the owner or person in charge on oath, taking into consideration improvements, proximity to navigation, towns, cities, villages or roads, and any other circumstances that may tend to enhance value. The distinction between commonwealth and county taxes was preserved, but not in the same form as the older distinction between territorial and county taxes.
County police boards were now authorized to "order a certain [variable] rate per centum on the amount of the assessment of the State tax," and "to levy a special tax for the erection or repair of the court house, jail or other county buildings."[70] Under the territorial regime, it will be recollected, the county tax could never exceed half the territorial tax.
This period of ante-bellum Statehood was also marked by a radical change in the machinery of assessment and collection. During the territorial period assessing and collecting officers were appointed by the County Courts or by the Territorial Governor; during this period they were chosen directly by the people who were directly responsible for their conduct.[71] The county sheriff was ex-officio the county collector, but the assessor was a separate officer with distinct functions. Both were biennially elected, and the compensation of each was fixed at 5% on the amount of the state tax assessed and collected. This per centum remuneration could not exceed a fixed sum; the assessor's maximum being fixed at $500 per annum and the collector's at $3000. The fiscal machinery thus set in motion during the period of ante-bellum Statehood is patterned on substantially the same model today.
Although this period witnessed the establishment of some of the main features of the modern system of State and local taxation in Mississippi, it cannot be designated as transitional, in the sense Prof. Ely uses the term. There was no change from the taxation of specific kinds of property at varying rates to the taxation of the collective mass of property at one uniform rate. More specific kinds of property were taxed, but there was no disposition to bunch property under a common category at a uniform rate. The objects taxed were as specific and the rates as variable as ever. The period was marked by an extension of the tax system, not by its leveling-out.