Section IX. Taxes on Commodities; either Some Particular Commodities; or All Commodities Equally

Taxes on commodities may either affect some particular kinds, or all commodities equally.

When a tax is laid on any particular commodity, not on others, the commodity rises in price, or exchangeable value; and the dealer or producer is reimbursed for what he has advanced on account of the tax. If he were not reimbursed, he would not remain upon a level with others, and would discontinue his trade. As the tax is, in this case, added to the price of the goods, it falls wholly upon the consumers.

When a tax, in proportion to their value, is laid upon all commodities, there is this difference, that no one commodity rises in exchangeable value, or, as compared with another. If one yard of broad cloth was equal in value to four yards of linen, and if a duty of ten percent. on the value were laid upon each, a yard of cloth would still be equal to four yards of linen.

An ad valorem duty upon all commodities would have the effect of raising prices, or their value in relation to money.

The members of the community would come to market, each with the same quantity of money as before. One-tenth of it, however, as it came into the hands of the producers, would be transferred to the government. But it would again be immediately laid out in purchases, either by the government itself, or by those to whom the government might dispose of it. This portion, therefore, would come into the hands of the producers oftener by once, after the tax was imposed, than before. Before the tax was imposed, it came once into the hands of the producers, from those of the purchasers of goods. After the tax was imposed, it would come into the hands of the producers in the same manner: but it would go from them to the government, and from the government come back into the hands of the producers a second time.

The producers, in this manner, would receive for their goods, not only the whole ten-tenths of the money of the country, as before; but they would receive one-tenth twice, where they received it only once before. This is the same thing exactly as if they had received eleven-tenths, or as if the money of the country had been increased one-tenth. The purchasing power of the money, therefore, is diminished one-tenth; in other words, the price of commodities has risen one-tenth.

Upon whom the tax would, in that case, fall, is abundantly obvious. The purchasers would come with the same quantity of money as before. The purchasing power of that money, however, would be reduced one-tenth, and they would be able to command one-tenth less of commodities than before. The tax would, of course, fall upon purchasers.

As this argument has not produced, in some minds whose decisions I highly respect, the same conviction which it has in my own, I will endeavour to render it still more perspicuous, by recurrence to one of the simplest possible cases.

Let us suppose a community of 10 persons, with only two species of commodities, bread, and meat. Let us suppose that 5 of those persons have 5 loaves to dispose of, and that the other 5 have 5 pounds of meat, the value of a loaf the same as that of a pound of meat. Let us suppose that the exchange takes place, as in a more complicated state of things, by the intervention of money; and, as the simplest possible case, let us suppose that the whole of the goods is exchanged against the whole of the money; in other words that one exchange of the whole of the goods is performed by one operation of the money. If each loaf is worth 10 pence, and each pound of meat the same, it is necessary, under this supposition, that the 5 persons having the 5 loaves of bread should have 50 pence, and the persons having the 5 pounds of meat should have 50 pence.

It is obvious that the persons having the 5 loaves, going to market with 50 pence to buy the 5 pounds 9 of meat, will pay for it at the rate of 10 pence per pound, and that the persons with the meat, going to market for the bread, will pay for it at the rate of 10 pence the loaf. If we suppose that the production of the loaves and the meat is perpetually renewed, it is evident that the same exchanges, at the same money price, may take place for ever. All this, I think, is clear.

Let us then suppose, that government taxes these commodities 10 per cent, and observe attentively what happens. When the first loaf of bread is sold for 10 pence, one penny out of the 10 pence received is paid by the seller to the government, and when one pound of meat is sold, one penny out of the 10 pence received is in like manner paid to the government. By the time that one exchange of all the commodities is effected, one-tenth of the money has been paid to government. With the money, government, as fast as it received it, has come into the market to purchase the same goods. The former purchasers came with all the former quantity, namely, with 100 pence, government came with a tenth more. For the same quantity of goods, therefore, for which 100 pence were paid before, 110 pence have been paid now; it is therefore proved that the price of goods is raised at the rate of the tax. The reason is, that one portion of the money which only performed one operation, in effecting one exchange of the goods, now performs two operations.

The case would be precisely the same, if we supposed the rapidity of circulation to be much greater, and that each piece of money had to perform 10 operations in order to effect one exchange of the whole of the commodities. It is necessary to observe that this is the only correct meaning of the term rapidity of circulation. This is the only meaning in which rapidity of circulation has any effect upon the value of the money. This is strictly, therefore, the sense in which the term is here employed. If we suppose that in order to perform one exchange of the whole of the commodities, the money has to be exchanged 10 times, it is obvious, as before explained, that it exchanges each time for precisely one-tenth of the goods. Let us conceive that the bread and the meat, supposed in the former case, are 10 times as great, the loaves 50, and the pounds of meat 50, the money remaining the same, but performing 10 operations to effect one exchange of the whole. It is very obvious that the effect which we have just explained, as taking place, in consequence of the tax, upon the whole of the goods, when the whole was exchanged by one operation of the money, will now take place upon the one-tenth of the goods which is exchanged by one operation of the money; it will be raised one-tenth in money value; each tenth will be so raised; and therefore by necessary consequence the whole.