In general, however, specific exemptions of private property from any taxes lead to abuse of privileges, jealousies and popular dissatisfaction, which result in danger to government and harm to the people. Exemptions of property used for particular purposes, like a farmer's team, may be thought of as a bounty upon such means of production. But the effect is almost always to the disadvantage of the weak, and the practice gives a general encouragement to the disposition to escape taxes. Farmers, of all classes of people, are most interested in a fair and painstaking assessment of all forms of property. Their influence is most widely extended and far-reaching in its effects. The whole community should be led to realize the absolute necessity of fair taxation and prompt meeting of individual responsibility. Fraud in the treatment of taxes is a crime against society, whether it involves false swearing or not. It partakes of the nature of treason, and may well be subjected to severe penalties. Usually, however, a penalty in the shape of additional taxes and forfeiture of property by sale for taxes, with room for redemption at considerable expense, are sufficient to secure a proper assessment and collection, if the community are really in earnest in resisting the fraud.
_Indirect taxes._--The methods of indirect taxation by excise and custom duties have been familiar for ages. They are usually favored by politicians who dread the opposition of the people to taxation, because the collection is so incidental to ordinary expenditures as scarcely to be realized and never clearly measured. Few users of tobacco or strong drink have any distinct idea what portion of the cost represents the government revenue. Still less in drinking the cup of coffee, or sweetening it with sugar, does the person benefited weigh the tax he pays. It is doubtful if most of those who read this, actually know that sugar pays a tax, while tea and coffee do not, in our country.
So convenient is this mode of taxation that it forms the favorite mode of discrimination in favor of productive industries. A tariff of 50 per cent upon imported cloth may actually increase the price of similar cloths manufactured at home by nearly that amount, thus fostering cloth-making by a premium on the product, while only a few discover the added burden of the tax. Yet these modes of taxation are usually costly to the people. Even if free from complications with either preventing vice or fostering industry, they require a separate body of officials from those provided for direct taxation. They involve investment by every wholesale and retail dealer of extra capital in taxes, upon which extra interest and profit is expected. The actual consumer bears this extra burden with only partial realization of its bulk. If duties are high, the temptation to smuggling and fraud becomes great, and a force of officials must be stretched around the borders of a country to prevent it.