survive can be attacked. This is a much more direct way of forwarding the interests of tax reform than teaching the students in universities or attempting to interest the whole people of a community. The people usually follow a few leaders in whom they have confidence. Such a complicated subject as taxation could scarcely be elucidated to a whole community. I commend to the consideration of this conference the chamber of commerce and other similar organizations as a means of furthering tax education, tax readjustment, and the proper expenditure of public funds." MR. GEORGE T. BOUTON, of New Jersey: I had the honor of being on the tax board of New Jersey two years ago and we made some removals. The state board of New Jersey never had any hesitation in asking information from other state boards, and if you will correspond with our secretary at Trenton I have no doubt the commissions under which these men were removed will be furnished and also the law under which they were removed. MR. C. A. JONES, of Ohio: Answering the question of the gentleman from New York relative to the removal of elected assessors: As I suppose most of you know, Ohio, after a two years' trial of the appointive assessor system, has gone back to the elective assessor, and we are to have under the elective system this year in Ohio the largest duplicate in the history of the state. The new law, passed in the early part of 1915, as introduced in the legislature made the county auditor the chief taxing official of each county and gave him the power to remove for inefficiency, without any hearing or without any particular stir about the matter, any assessor whom he considered inefficient. It also gave this power to the state tax commission, but the legislature refused to leave this power to the state tax commission or to give that body any such power. Several county auditors have exercised the power of removing one or two elective assessors this year without any particular protest. The section reads: "The country auditor may summarily remove any appointed assessor or assistant assessor when, in his judgment, the public interest so requires. He may also remove any elected assessor for want of moral character, inefficiency, incompetency, neglect or breach of duty, or malfeasance in office, giving to him a copy of the charges against him, and an opportunity to be publicly heard thereon upon not less than ten days' notice. The decision of the county auditor therein shall be final. The county auditor may suspend without pay such assessor during the pendency of such proceedings for his removal." Whether or not the people will re-elect the removed assessors a year from this fall is, of course, a question on which I cannot pass, as it has not yet come before the people. The tax commission of Ohio, however, under this new law has the power to order the reassessment of any district in the state or to equalize the value of the property of any district in the state, so that we think we have pretty adequate power under the situation anyway. I think our commission would be pretty strongly opposed to giving the governor power to remove assessors. We rather feel that he has enough work of his own. We have about 2,200 elective tax assessors in Ohio. As to publicity, we have had a whole lot of experience with that in the last two or three years. We had a political campaign waged around this question. The newspapers have been interested and more than half of them will give the tax commission any publicity on tax matters that it asks within reason. Just before the assessment this year we prepared a very brief statement of the duties of the taxpayer and sent it to every paper in the state. By an actual census more than half the papers in the state published the statement complete without any modification or revision. It made about a column or a little more and we distributed this information also in a little circular everywhere we could. Many of the county auditors had it printed and distributed it to each individual taxpayer along with the blanks, and we think that it was a great aid in getting a fair return of property. Our county auditors hold with the assessors a meeting in the county seats every year. SEVENTH SESSION THURSDAY MORNING, AUGUST 31, 1916 CHAIRMAN-E. B. HOWARD, OKLAHOMA 1. UNIFORM PUBLIC ACCOUNTING AND STATE SUPERVISION THEREOF Fred O. Blue, State Tax Commissioner, Charleston, 2. THE ATTITUDE OF TAXPAYERS' ASSOCIATIONS TO PUBLIC EXPENDITURES Herbert J. Hagerman, Former Governor of New Mexico and President New Mexico Taxpayers' Association 3. THE ASHEVILLE BOARD OF TRADE'S PLAN FOR THE GENERAL PROPERTY TAX W. Vance Brown, Asheville, North Carolina 4. THE STATE INCOME TAX VERSUS THE CLASSIFIED PROPERTY TAX Charles J. Bullock, Professor of Economics, Harvard 331 UNIFORM PUBLIC ACCOUNTING AND STATE SUPERVISION THEREOF FRED O. BLUE State Tax Commissioner of West Virginia, Charleston, W. Va. Without uniform public accounting and state supervision thereof there can be no uniformity in public fiscal affairs throughout a state, nor the same degree of efficiency attained in the public service as is attained in a well-organized private business concern. I. Among other reasons for uniform public accounting are the following: (1) Disclosure of conditions and ascertainment of information so that conditions may be studied and necessary remedies provided and applied. (2) The legislature, by a general act, may provide remedies for evils affecting scores, if not hundreds, of public fiscal units. (3) The several fiscal units throughout a state are brought into closer relation with one another, so that they all work together in harmony and with greater accuracy. (4) A stimulus to the several fiscal units to excel in the conduct of public fiscal affairs; and the assistance the several fiscal units can be to one another when accounting is uniform and the same methods used throughout a state. (5) Public business is continually growing and expanding. Public funds are collected and expended to meet newly arising economic and social conditions. Therefore, it is necessary that a system of accounting and methods be prescribed and applied to meet these new conditions as well as the old. (6) Local officers are elected or appointed for certain definite periods. They are frequently selected without experience in public affairs, and particularly without experience in matters of public accounting. Quite naturally such persons cannot devise proper systems of accounting. By the time such officers become familiar with their duties and public accounting they may be succeeded by others who are likewise without experience. (7) An officer or private individual having business to transact in several fiscal units finds no embarrassment in doing so under a uniform system; when he is familiar with the method of transacting business in his own unit he finds the same business transacted in the same manner in other units. II. Among other reasons for state supervision are these: (1) There can be no satisfactory private or local supervision of public fiscal affairs so as to attain uniformity. (2) A system must be prescribed and enforced by a central head if uniformity is to be attained; in the very nature of things there can be no uniformity throughout a state when a system of accounting and compliance therewith are left to officers whose jurisdictions are entirely local (3) There will not be uniformity in examinations of fiscal bodies when public fiscal accounts are examined by private accountants. (4) Private accountants are not vested with authority to enforce their findings against public fiscal bodies. The general experience is that the report of a private accountant is filed and no suitable action taken thereon to enforce the findings thereof. (5) Examination by a private accountant does not have or carry the weight or prestige of examination by a state official whose only duties are examining accounts of and supervising public fiscal bodies. (6) A private accountant may be highly skilled in the work of examining and auditing commercial accounts and yet not qualified to examine and audit public accounts unless he has made special study of public fiscal bodies. The reason is that in individual transactions men have an inherent right to contract and employ their personal funds. Public fiscal bodies are creatures of law with no inherent rights; their powers are conferred and defined by law; they can expend no moneys unless specifically authorized to do so. It is, there |