And the Democratic New York World agreed that the farmer "is not carrying his share of the load of war taxation," and observes:
"An analysis of income tax returns for the fiscal year 1916, recently published, shows that, although farmers are the most numerous class of Americans engaged in gainful occupations, they were at the foot of the list proportionately among income tax payers. Outside of the notorious war profiteers, no element of our population has advantaged so greatly by war as agriculturists; yet in the year of which we speak only one farmer in four hundred paid a farthing's tax upon income. In this respect preachers and teachers showed a higher percentage."
There was some demand for extending the income tax downwards to cover smaller incomes, for example, we find the Council Bluffs' Nonpareil contending:
"The men of more moderate income should be required to pay at least a nominal income tax. This is a common country. It belongs to common people. And common people will esteem it a privilege to contribute their mites. One dollar per hundred on a thousand-dollar income would be both reasonable and just."
CRITICISM OF THE TAX
The attitude of the New York press is indicated by the Evening Sun and the Times. The New York Evening Sun (Rep.) said the committee "left so many rough edges upon their work." In the opinion of this newspaper, Mr. Kitchin "has given us a measure of class-taxation highly accentuated, and yet has failed to suit the McAdoo group, the most clear-minded adherents of the conscription-of-wealth idea. He has produced a confused series of taxes beyond the practical power of the ordinary busy citizen to master or comprehend, but has not combined these into a harmonious system." The morning Sun even went so far as to remark that "nothing that the Senate could do could make the Kitchin measure worse than it is." Yet it by no means criticized all the features of the bill. It objected to the proposed taxes on oil producers as discouraging the production of oil, and styled the plan to tax distributed corporation earnings at twelve percent. and undistributed earnings at eighteen percent. "simply a fool tax," which "will help to lock the wheels of every great industry in this country."
The foundation mistake of the bill, in the opinion of the New York Times (Ind. Dem.) was the "attempt to assess taxes upon the smallest possible number of persons and businesses, leaving a great majority of the people free from a levy direct or indirect." The Times thought that this policy was dictated by the desire "to leave the mass of voters free from grounds of complaint against the party in power." It insisted that there should be a consumption tax levying "upon the breakfast table and upon the purchases of a great mass of people." Such necessities as tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, should bear a tax, in the opinion of this and other newspapers. The number of those taxed was also kept comparatively small by the retention of the old income exemption limits, namely, $1,000 for bachelors and $2,000 for married men, with the normal tax rate placed at only six percent. on incomes up to $5,000.
WILSON'S TAX PROGRAM
An outline of what was expected from the people of the country as a financial contribution was given by Mr. Wilson in his May (1918) address to Congress, when he decided to ask its members to remain in Washington and prepare a new revenue bill. Mr. Wilson's call for immediate action in behalf of both the public and the Treasury Department was a summons to a universal duty in language which, it is remarked, "was never before used in a tax speech." He said in part:
"We can not in fairness wait until the end of the fiscal year is at hand to apprize our people of the taxes they must pay on their earnings of the present calendar year, whose accountings and expenditures will then be closed.