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Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach To Professional Well-Being 1st Edition National Academies of Sciences
Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach To Professional Well-Being 1st Edition National Academies of Sciences
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Certain of the moral aspects of tax dodging have been dealt with
in an earlier connection.[63] Contrary as it may seem to the principle
of economic interest there is a good deal of carelessness and
stupidity in this field, and cases are occasionally found of property
that has been over-assessed. On the other hand more or less
deliberate dodging is indulged in very largely. So far as this practice
deserves the stigma of corruption it is a stigma which rests to a very
considerable extent upon the so-called class of “good citizens.”
Certain residents of “swell suburbs” who daily thank God that their
government is not so corrupt as that of the neighbouring city are
among the worst offenders of this kind. As directors of corporations
men of the same standing are sometimes responsible for
monumental evasions. Of course what was said with regard to the
reaction of business against state regulation holds good here also.
There are plenty of legitimate methods of protesting against unjust or
oppressive taxes,—before the courts, before legislatures, and by
open propaganda designed to influence party organisations. But the
furtive concealment or misrepresentation of taxable values is a
matter of entirely different moral colour, and it is the latter practice
that we now have to consider.
Tax dodging is so common and so well established that it has built
up an exculpatory system of its own. Instead of bringing his
conscience up to the standards set by the law the ordinary property
owner inquires into the practice of his neighbours, and governs
himself accordingly. Wherever business competition is involved the
threat of possible bankruptcy practically forces him into this course.
Yet withal our citizen is likely to be somewhat troubled in his mind
about his conduct, at least until he learns how shamelessly John
Smith who lives just a little way down the street has behaved. This
information quite restores his equanimity, and at the next
assessment he may outdo Smith himself. Thus the extra legal, if not
frankly illegal, neighbourhood standard tends constantly to become
lower. And not only taxpayers but tax officials themselves are
affected by local feeling and fall into the habit of closing their eyes to
certain kinds of property and expecting only a certain percentage of
the valuation fixed by law to be returned.
Back of such neighbourhood ideas on taxation there are at least
two lines of defence. One is that our present tax system is highly
illogical, bothersome, and burdensome. To a considerable extent,
unfortunately, this is the case, but it does not justify illegal methods
of seeking redress. Not much argument is required to convince the
ordinary property owner that all the inequities of the existing system
fall with cumulative weight upon his devoted head. His pocketbook
affirms this view more strongly perhaps than he would care to admit,
but anyhow the net result is that he feels himself more or less
pardonable for evading the burden as far as he can. The other
common excuse for tax dodging is supplied by the conviction that
much of the money raised by government is wasted or stolen. The
logic based upon this premise is most curiously inverted, but none
the less it sways the action of great multitudes. Politicians are a set
of grafters, says our taxpayer. The more money they get the more
they will waste and steal. I will punish the rascals as they deserve by
dodging my taxes, that is by becoming a grafter myself. Seldom,
however, is the latter clause clearly expressed. Yet the existence of
corruption on one side of the state’s activities is thus made the
excuse for corruption on another side whereby the state is mulcted
of much revenue which it might receive. Of course evasion results in
higher tax rates, which, by the way, fall crushingly upon the citizen
who makes full and honest returns, and thus part of the loss in
income to the government is made up. It seems clear, however, that
in the long run government income is materially reduced by the
feeling prevalent among taxpayers which has just been described
and the procedure based upon it. On the whole this is by far the
most serious single economic consequence of political corruption. It
is bad enough that public money should be stolen, that public work
should be badly done, and that politicians and contractors should
grow rich in consequence, but it is far worse that the state should be
starved of the funds necessary to perform its existing functions
properly and to extend its activities into new fields. In the regulation
of industry, in education, philanthropy, sanitation, and art, American
government is very far from achieving what it should do in the public
interest and what it could do more efficiently and cheaply than any
other agency. Yet our progress toward this goal is perpetually
hindered by the existence of waste and corruption on the one hand,
and the consequent peremptory shutting of the taxpayers’
pocketbooks on the other hand.
Consideration of the theory underlying tax dodging reveals certain
broad lines of correction. In proportion as our tax system
approximates greater justice, the evasion which defends itself on the
ground of the inequities of the present system will tend to disappear.
To show how this may be done is beyond the limits of the present
study. Suffice it to say that the work which reformers and students of
public finance are now doing on inheritance, income, and corporation
taxes, on the taxation of unearned increment, on various applications
of the progressive principle, and so on, should eventuate in the
tapping of much needed new sources of income, and thus facilitate
the correction of present unjust burdens. The introduction of
economical methods and the elimination of the grosser forms of
corruption in the field of government expenditure will weaken the
excuses offered for evasion on the ground of public waste and graft.
There is an overwhelming mass of evidence to show that the
American taxpayer, once convinced of the necessity of a given public
work and further assured that it will be honestly executed, is
generous to the point of munificence. The annals of our cities are full
of the creation of appointive state boards composed of men of the
highest local standing and intrusted with the carrying out of some
great single project,—the erection of a city hall building, the
construction of a water works and filtration plant, or of a park system.
Very few such commissions are grudged the large sums of money
necessary for their undertakings. If every ordinary branch of our
government enjoyed public confidence to a similar degree such
special boards would no longer be needed, and ample funds would
be forthcoming from taxpayers for all our present functions and for
other new and worthy functions which might be undertaken greatly to
the public advantage. Finally our system of tax administration, like
our system of government regulation of business, needs
strengthening. Larger districts and centralised power in the hands of
the assessors will help to lift them above the neighbourhood feeling
which is responsible for so much evasion. Higher salaries will bring
expert talent and backbone sufficient to resist the pressure brought
to bear by large interests. As a matter of fact the first threat of a virile
execution of the laws wipes out a considerable part of the tax
dodging in a community.
There would also seem to be much virtue in the plan for the
reduction of the tax rate advocated by the Ohio State Board of
Commerce.[64] Given a community with a high general tax rate it
may be the case, for example, that only about fifty per cent of true
value is being returned. Everybody knows it; everybody is sneakingly
ashamed of it. Still fundamental honesty is supposed to exist in the
man who does not cut the percentage below say, forty; the really
mean taxpayer is he who risks twenty-five per cent on what he feels
obliged to return and conceals whatever he can into the bargain.
Under such circumstances it is proposed to take the heroic step of
reducing the tax rate to one-half its existing figure or even less.[65] If
this can be done it is hoped that taxpayers can be induced to return
their property at full value, and that much personal property will
come out of the concealment into which it has fled under the menace
of a high general property tax rate. In support of this argument cases
are cited where a reduction of the personal property tax rate alone
has brought in much larger returns and converted into a source of
revenue a form of taxation which everywhere under high rates shows
a tendency to dwindle to practically nothing.
As against the plan it may be said that taxpayers are habitually
suspicious and extremely likely to regard any change whatever as
certain to increase their burdens. Many of them would see nothing in
the proposition beyond a tricky device to screw up their valuations
under the pretext of low rates with the intention of falling upon them
later with rates as high or higher than before. Unless the reform were
fully understood and then backed up by the most vigorous
administration there would be grave danger that revenues would
materially suffer. Given these conditions essential to success,
however, the plan would seem decidedly worth trying. A community
willing to take the plunge, it is pointed out, would enjoy large
advantages over its less enterprising competitors in the advertising
value of a low tax rate, particularly as a means of inducing new
industries to locate in its midst. The reform would probably not
increase revenue, indeed it does not aim to do so, but it would yield
a moral return of immense value. Self respect would be restored to
many otherwise thoroughly good citizens, and public opinion, to the
tone of which the taxpaying class contributes largely, would be lifted
to higher planes. Under the present vicious system there must be a
considerable number who realise secretly and more or less vaguely
the inherent kinship between their conduct and that of the corrupt
political organisation under which they live, and who in consequence
remain inactive and ashamed when movements for better things in
city, state, or nation, are on foot.