Since the value of material wealth is the capitalization of the rentals at the prevailing rate of interest, a general, ad valorem, property tax, so far as it applies to material wealth, and if it were accurately assessed, would take an approximately equal proportion of wealth-incomes.

He had already assessed andgravely ordering it written uppaid his own fine on this occasion without a murmur, as he always did, and he was now quite sober and ready to resume his place on the bench.

Among the latter it is a common practice to send so many slaves each day to earn a certain fixed sum by carrying burdens, pulling in boats, or other laborious employment; and those who return at night without the sum thus arbitrarily assessed as the value of their day's work, are severely flogged for their presumed idleness.

The country was torn up at that time by a struggle between people and government over constitutional rights, and it had reached a point where a country parish had refused to pay taxes illegally assessed, as they claimed.

The methods and machinery of assessment were (and still are) essentially local and simple, and have proved to be inadequate to reach or justly assess the larger and more complex corporate enterprises when their equipment and business extend beyond town, then county and, finally, state lines.

About a third of the states no longer make the physical plant the basis of taxation, except that in most of them some part or kinds of real estate are taxed locally.[10] Telegraph companies are still locally assessed in most states, but in over a third of the states are taxed either on gross receipts, or on mileage of wire.

The taxes upon these trees are very high; the latter are, as in Egypt, numbered and separately assessed.