This latter part of profit is evidently a subject not taxable directly.It is the compensation, and in most cases it is no more than a very moderate compensation, for the risk and trouble of employing the stock.The employer must have this compensation, otherwise he cannot, consistently with his own interest, continue the employment.If he was taxed directly, therefore, in proportion to the whole profit, he would be obliged either to raise the rate of his profit, or to charge the tax upon the interest of money; that is, to pay less interest.If he raised the rate of his profit in proportion to the tax, the whole tax, though it might be advanced by him, would be finally paid by one or other of two different sets of people, according to the different ways in which he might employ the stock of which he had the management.If he employed it as a farming stock in the cultivation of land, he could raise the rate of his profit only by retaining a greater portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of a greater portion of the produce of the land; and as this could be done only by a reduction of rent, the final payment of the tax would fall upon the landlord.If he employed it as a mercantile or manufacturing stock, he could raise the rate of his profit only by raising the price of his goods; in which case the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the consumers of those goods.If he did not raise the rate of his profit, he would be obliged to charge the whole tax upon that part of it which was allotted for the interest of money.He could afford less interest for whatever stock he borrowed, and the whole weight of the tax would in this case fall ultimately upon the interest of money.So far as he could not relieve himself from the tax in the one way, he would be obliged to relieve himself in the other.
The interest of money seems at first sight a subject equally capable of being taxed directly as the rent of land.Like the rent of land, it is a net produce which remains after completely compensating the whole risk and trouble of employing the stock.
As a tax upon the rent of land cannot raise rents; because the net produce which remains after replacing the stock of the farmer, together with his reasonable profit, cannot be greater after the tax than before it, so, for the same reason, a tax upon the interest of money could not raise the rate of interest; the quantity of stock or money in the country, like the quantity of land, being supposed to remain the same after the tax as before it.The ordinary rate of profit, it has been shown in the first book, is everywhere regulated by the quantity of stock to be employed in proportion to the quantity of the employment, or of the business which must be done by it.But the quantity of the employment, or of the business to be done by stock, could neither be increased nor diminished by any tax upon the interest of money.If the quantity of the stock to be employed, therefore, was neither increased nor diminished by it, the ordinary rate of profit would necessarily remain the same.But the portion of this profit necessary for compensating the risk and trouble of the employer would likewise remain the same, that risk and trouble being in no respect altered.The residue, therefore, that portion which belongs to the owner of the stock, and which pays the interest of money, would necessarily remain the same too.At first sight, therefore, the interest of money seems to be a subject as fit to be taxed directly as the rent of land.
There are, however, two different circumstances which render the interest of money a much less proper subject of direct taxation than the rent of land.
First, the quantity and value of the land which any man possesses can never be a secret, and can always be ascertained with great exactness.But the whole amount of the capital stock which he possesses is almost always a secret, and can scarce ever be ascertained with tolerable exactness.It is liable, besides, to almost continual variations.A year seldom passes away, frequently not a month, sometimes scarce a single day, in which it does not rise or fall more or less.An inquisition into every man's private circumstances, and an inquisition which, in order to accommodate the tax to them, watched over all the fluctuations of his fortunes, would be a source of such continual and endless vexation as no people could support.
Secondly, land is a subject which cannot be removed; whereas stock easily may.The proprietor of land is necessarily a citizen of the particular country in which his estate lies.The proprietor of stock is properly a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.He would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition, in order to be assessed to a burdensome tax, and would remove his stock to some other country where he could either carry on his business, or enjoy his fortune more at his ease.By removing his stock he would put an end to all the industry which it had maintained in the country which he left.
Stock cultivates land; stock employs labour.A tax which tended to drive away stock from any particular country would so far tend to dry up every source of revenue both to the sovereign and to the society.Not only the profits of stock, but the rent of land and the wages of labour would necessarily be more or less diminished by its removal.
The nations, accordingly, who have attempted to tax the revenue arising from stock, instead of any severe inquisition of this kind, have been obliged to content themselves with some very loose, and, therefore, more or less arbitrary, estimation.The extreme inequality and uncertainty of a tax assessed in this manner can be compensated only by its extreme moderation, in consequence of which every man finds himself rated so very much below his real revenue that he gives himself little disturbance though his neighbour should be rated somewhat lower.