Twenty-four “Merchants and others” complain about excessive taxation. On sales of $200,000 worth of merchandise, they point out that wholesalers pay the enormous sum of $2,000, not including corporation or city taxes. The petitioners decry that "if this tax is persisted in, it will destroy the Wholesale business, which it has already seriously crippled"; in addition, another $2,000 in taxes is imposed at the retail level. Complaining that land owners and slave owners pay only one-tenth this amount, the petitioners “humbly pray that the equitable principle of the Constitution, that ‘no species of property, from which a tax may be collected, shall be taxed higher than any other species of property of equal value’ shall be extended to Merchandise as well as to other kinds of property.”
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Repository: Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee
