Status Updates From American Taxation, American...

"In a sense, Madison..may have been addressing long-dead political opponents from the North. Nobody had ever guilt-tripped Madison successfully. In 1829–30, however, he..not only refused to accept the power of a nonslaveholding majority to decide how to tax his “species of property,” but..revealed his resentment..that he should pay higher taxes because some northerner (or westerner) claimed to have cleaner hands."

"In the North, the property tax was essentially a local tax, with assessment and collection machinery that functioned even when the states were relying on..other revenue sources..In the South..property tax was essentially a state tax. With local governments relying on fees, fines, licenses, and poll taxes..there were no regular assessment and collection procedures apart from..ones..established for particular levies."

"The apportionment rule was a rule about slavery (“the whole number of free persons” plus “three-fifths of all other persons”), and most glosses on the term “direct taxes” assumed that it applied to slave taxes..The apportionment rule addressed the distribution of burdens between states, but direct taxes also distributed burdens within states, including between slaveholders and nonslaveholders in..southern states."

"The absurdity of article 8 lay elsewhere. The real estate apportionment
reintroduced the..dilemma that the requisition system..dodged: there could be no real estate apportionment without serious administrative capacity at the national level .. the impost had a unique advantage. As the only tax Congress could enact without serious economic inquiry, it was..the only tax they could enact without considering..slavery."

"Local governments were more democratic in the North than the South. In the North, local communities elected their own local officials. In the South, state officials appointed local officials. Northern states could levy more sophisticated taxes, Wolcott thought, because they could rely on the competence and discretion of their elected local officials, delegating the responsibility to assess and collect state taxes.."

"..poor men who were taxed..for their “polls” defended their interests least effectively. No reform of this era addressed the..basic regressivity..what is most striking about the Massachusetts tax system is not its equity, but
its sophistication. Massachusetts could tax “all personall & real estates” starting in the 1640s because its annually elected local officials were capable of assessing the value of property."

"Bacon’s Rebellion was about access to land by poor men and the coastal gentry’s unwillingness..to obtain increased supplies in the west. As a tax on the agricultural labor force, Virginia’s poll tax resembled a land tax that might have been levied on land that was cultivated—as opposed to a tax on the total holdings..Taxing labor rather than land favored the gentry by protecting large holdings of unimproved land."

"..anti-government rhetoric that continues to saturate [U.S.] political life is rooted in slavery rather than liberty. The American mistrust of government is not part of our democratic heritage. It comes from slave-holding elites who..knew..about democracy: that it threatened slavery. The idea that government is the primary danger to liberty..involved the “liberty” of some people to hold others as chattel property."