Book Store Foreword Ninety-five per cent of the tax laws of the State of Oklahoma have been rewritten by the Legislatures since Statehood, and more than seventy per cent of the tax laws have been rewritten since the Harris-Day Revision of 1910. Under the territorial system all taxes were levied on ad valorem basis. The plan of raising public revenues inaugurated by the Oklahoma Constitution and which the Legislatures for ten years have gradually molded into our present system, has employed all known methods of taxation enumerated in Section twelve, Article ten of the Constitution of Oklahoma, which provides for levy and collection of "license, franchise, gross revenue, excise, income, collateral and direct inheritance, legacy, and succession taxes; also graduated income taxes, .graduated collateral and direct inheritance taxes, graduated legacy and successive taxes; also stamp, registration, production or other specific taxes." The sweeping changes so inaugurated have required a reconstruction of the entire machinery employed in valuing, assessing, returning and collecting the public revenues. The old system employed township and municipal assessors, the respective boards of county commissioners and the State Equalization Board. The new system provides, in lieu of this machinery, county assessors, county excise boards, the State Board of Equalization and certain functions exercised by the State Auditor, Corporation Commission, and Secretary of State. Elaborate machinery is provided whereby complaints of illegal or erroneous exercise of the power of assessment and taxation of property are reviewed, and an entire new procedure provides for review of complaints of aggrieved persons. New laws have been written providing the special city and county municipal assessments, including laws provid 0/6/47. Claitor 629758 ing for irrigation and drainage improvements, as well as amendments to city and town municipal street and sewer and sidewalk improvement laws. Changes have been made in assessing and taxing corporate properties, including taxes on railroads, transmission companies, mining companies, pipe line companies, public service corporations and kindred concerns. Laws have been enacted providing for inheritance taxes, graduated land tax, corporation license tax, and taxation of in comes. The compilation here presented has reviewed the entire tax legislation of the State expurgated repealed provisions, and classified and assembled the live tax laws of this State. A feature of the work is the annotation to each respective section of all decisions of the State Supreme Court construing the statutory law. In compiling the text care has been exercised in determining what provisions of the statutory law are now in force. In some instances sections clearly repealed or obsolete have been retained because of their historic value. In other instances uncertainties have been resolved in favor of the doubtful section, and the section retained for what value or validity it may still possess. All tax or license laws are retained in the text. License acts enacted purely to promote sanitary, pure food, health regulations, and kindred subjects, not having the usual characteristics of revenue measures, are omitted from the text. Very few provisions in the statutes or session acts are held to be within these exceptions. Credit is acknowledged for use of notes and citations to the compilers of the Revised Laws of 1910, and to Bunn's Oklahoma Supplement. Oklahoma City, January 5th, 1918. J. E. BENNETT. |