Municipal Taxation in Relation To Speculative Land Values

Abstract

Whatever may be said of the ultimate basis of national or state and provincial taxation, municipal taxation, at least, is essentially based upon the fact that where increasing numbers of people find it necessary to live together in a more or less limited area, it is essential for elementary safety and comfort that they should undertake to maintain certain services in common. These needs expand with the increasing size of the civic centre and the developing wants of the citizens. After providing for the primary and more indispensable needs, there naturally arises the desire to provide for secondary and higher needs. Organized society, as Aristotle put it, comes into existence to make life possible and continues and develops in order to make life good. In any considerable centre of population it is plain that there must be cooperation in providing for the supply of those primary needs previously so easily satisfied, if felt at all, in the open freedom of the country. Chief of these are pure water, drainage and sanitation, suitable highways for constant traffic, equipment for the prevention of fires and for the general police protection of life and property. While these primary needs are in process of being met, various secondary needs emerge, such as the need for schools, libraries, parks, the regulation of buildings, and other measures to improve, on the one hand, the atmosphere of civic life and, on the other, its intellectual and artistic quality. In a modern community, making any claim to be ranked as civilized, its individual members cannot be left to make voluntary provision for the supply of these very essential needs, such provision must be placed at the service of every member of the community, whether he may or may not be able to make a proportionate contribution towards the necessary outlay. Thus the taxes which are levied to sustain the various civic departments cannot be regarded as payment for services rendered, on any basis of economic exchange, but as a necessary contribution towards a public charge which must be met as a civic duty. At the same time