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LUXURY AND CONSUMPTION TAX It is hard to draw the line between a luxury tax and a consumption tax Clothing and shoes are necessaries of life and a tax on such articles is a tax on consumption When the tax applies to goods above a certain price it puts a premium on the cheaper articles and disrupts the trade in better goods which are more economical iu many cases because they give better service It also deprives highclass workmen of employment and in the cud it will create a preference for imported goods goodsWithiu Withiu the last three years Americans have learned the value of fine goods made in America Our mills and workshops have been able to demon ¬ strate that they produce wares as good as or better than any that were imported If American products of high quality are taxed out of existence or nearly so and their production is abandoned we shall be unable to resume their manufacture promptly at the end of the war because the plants for making them will have been changed and the skilled mechanics will have taken up other work Then we shall see the prestifjc of imported goods reestablished more firmly than ever before and all that our manufac ¬ turers of fine goods have gained ill the last three years will be lost lostCostly Costly jewelry is a luxury but its production has called into existence several skilled trades that should not be killed Most of the buyers of dia ¬ monds and pearls look upon them as investments and they have been profitable investments during the past twenty years because prices have steadily risen A tax of 50 per cent on precious stones would put a stop to their sale because the chance of reselling them after the war at a profit would be remote The trade in fine Jems and jewelry would come to a standstill and the government would collect little or no revenue from such a tax while the business would be destroyed Here again we would have a boom in imported goods after the war warCommercial Commercial reports from Paris prove that trade iu works of art and highclass jewelry is active and prosperous American diamond merchants would send the best of their stocks to Europe for sale to Americans and we would have an orgy of smuggling that it would be impossible to check Canada would also profit immensely by a prohibi ¬ tive lax on jewelry sales in this country We would lose the trade and our government would get little out of the tax on jewels of fine quality A far as watches and clocks are concerned they are necessaries of life to most Americans Such a tax would put a premium on peddling and smuggling much to the advantage of professional lawbreakers lawbreakersTax Tax the incomes of the rich Tax their personal expenditures more heavily than the surpluses they invest in liberty bonds and industrial enterprises That would be a real tax on luxuries that could be collected without discrimination It is not the tax on luxuries but the method of collecting it and the injuries to business that are objectionable New York Commercial
