Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Taxation in Edwards County in 1894



I thought this public notice providing exact details of the items taxed under the category of personal property and real estate would give you an idea of how the funds were raised to support county government.

Note that school fees are assessed separately and that road funds are provided on a matching basis with some funding coming from the county taxes detailed here and some from precinct-based road assessments.

The specificity of what is taxed and how much an item is taxed is amazing. I also give the county credit for explaining things in a concise manner. This tax scheme seems more complicated than the combination of property (real estate only) taxes and sales tax used in most states today.

I don’t see whether any of this revenue is shared with the state or whether the state has it’s own sources of revenue.

Federal revenue is mainly generated by tariffs, which were the only source of funds originally raised by the federal government. Republicans (big business) liked tariffs because they were protective in nature. Democrats hated tariffs because it worked against farmers and “the little people” who paid higher prices for goods since foreign competition was limited. There is an internal revenue tax that was established to support the civil war and was used to pay pensions to wounded and aged union soldiers thereafter. Democrats were fighting to use the internal revenue funds for confederate soldiers, which was considered preposterous by Republicans.

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