On the general principles of taxation, as illustrating the advantages of a perfect income tax

Abstract

There are few branches of political economy more interesting in themselves, or of more importance at the present time, than the subject of taxation, and yet there is scarcely any on which greater errors are prevalent. I shall, in the first instance, direct your attention to some of those errors, involving general principles; which,in fact, arise from a wrong way of looking at the subject, and which are, consequently, sources at an infinite number of minor errors in the cases where these mistaken principles come to be applied.