The Struggle for Tax Equity in 1876

Today is the limit allowed by law to the taxpayer for the payment of his dues to the public fund, before being enrolled on the delinquent list and having ten percent added to his burden. It is to be deplored that there should be, every year, so large a delinquent list returned to the Sheriff for forced collection, and so large an amount annually going under the hammer, and in many instances falling to the county, which is thus forced, to that extent, to pay its own taxes. There must be some screw loose somewhere in the machinery of the revenue collection, or some defective procedure of judicial ruling which leads property owners thus to presume, as it were, upon a practical immunity from tax-paying.

Three modifications of the revenue law are needed. First, the costs of sale should be reduced to the minimum. Second, the certificate of purchase and tax-deed should bind the property irrespective of subsequent transfers of ownership or conflict of previous title. Third, within a reasonable time after the expiration of the limit of redemption, say seven years from the date of the deed, the statute of limitations should operate to give absolute validity to a tax deed uncontested within that period. The absentee property-holder derives certain benefits from the improvements that are developed around his property and toward which he contributes no share. He is thus enabled to reap where he has not sown.