The financial reports of this period do not classify the receipts from the several taxes, and for the general property tax and the poll tax one must rest content with the assessments to get an idea of their importance in the tax system. The amount received from license taxes in 1861 was $43,097. No similar statistics are available for 1862. In 1863 the tax on sale of merchandise produced $21,892.53; the tax on distilleries, $34,383.30; and the taxes on other occupations, $13,932.38. - In 1864 the tax on sales of merchandise brought in $54,315.76; the liquor receipts tax. $67,423.35; while the license tax on distillers produced $43,883.28, and the taxes on other callings only $13,392.62. More than 62 per cent of the taxes, other than ad valorem, in 1864 were thus obtained from the liquor business. The act of November, 1864, was very productive, the revenue in 1865 on account of it being $308,582.39. The license tax on distillers and other callings contributed $172,279, the merchandise and income tax, $136,303.

1 Laws of 1862, p. 50.

The laws imposing the gross receipts taxes especially were not strictly drawn, and this fault and the disorganization of conditions generally resulted in evasion and in the imperfect assessment and collection of all taxes.1 As to the tax on professions, which is the tax nearest to income taxation in the financial history of Texas, Governor Throckmorton later said that its yield was small and that it operated oppressively and unequally. He recommended a minimum exemption with a graduated but moderate rate on the remainder.2

In estimating the burden of taxation account must be taken of the taxes levied and collected by the Confederate States' govern-ment. In the administration of the Confederate taxes there was a chief collector for the state and assessors and collectors for the districts into which the state was divided for purposes of taxation. Texas was one of the two states, Florida being the other, which did not permit their tax officers to serve in the same capacity for the Confederate government. It was also one of the two states, Mississippi being the other, which did not assume their quota of the Confederate direct taxes.3 Confederate taxation was much heavier and more rigorously collected than was state taxation, and it amounted for the four years 1861-1864 to the huge sum of $37,486,854.43. Only $26,904.64 of this amount was collected in specie.4

1 Message of Governor Murrah, October 20, 1864; Executive Record No. 280.

2 Message, August 18, 1866.

3 Smith, The History of the Confederate Treasury, p. 25.

4 Condensed account of G. J. Durham, collector of Confederate tax for Texas, in the Weekly Southern Intelligencer, August 11, 1865.