If securities are to be taxed, the methods adopted should avoid a double taxation, and an attempt to reach capital outside of the State. It is evident that a State, like Massachusetts, which taxes the foreign holder of shares in its corporations as well as the shares of foreign corporations held by its own citizens, is inviting a dangerous reprisal from other States. "Wherever the owner may be, if the corporation is chartered within the State the Commonwealth collects the tax on the shares. Wherever the corporation may be, if the owner is within the State the Commonwealth also collects the tax (in theory of law at least)." If this be the best possible system, and it is supposed Massachusetts assumes it to be, general double taxation would follow its adoption by the other States. The effort to carry this rule into practice proves its injustice as well as futility. The most searching and inquisitorial methods of seeking such property will not avail to reach a good part of it, and this results in adding inequality of burden to its other difficulties. Evasion is too simple a process to be unused, and the heavier the rate of tax the greater will be the resort to evasion and even to perjury, express or implied. The fundamental cause of the failure lies in this, "the endeavor to tax securities, which are no more than evidences of ownership or interest in property, and which offer the easiest means of concealment and evasion, by the same methods and at the same rate as tangible property situated on the spot." This inherent difficulty can be cured only by abandoning the attempt to tax directly securities or evidences of debt, representing ownership or interest in property beyond the limits of the taxing authority. In the case of the securities of home companies they may be readily taxed at the source, but in the case of foreign corporations it is only by methods almost revolting in their injustice and treatment of the taxpayer that even a partial success can be secured. The dependence upon the sworn statement or declaration of the taxpayer is known to be extremely faulty and to offer a premium on untruthfulness. So long as this dependence is retained in whole or in part in a system for taxing personal property, the results must be unsatisfactory. The most judicious, even if it seems the most radical, remedy is to abandon the taxation of securities. Certainly it would be well to put an end to the Massachusetts plan of taxing securities representing property outside of the State, for that involves double taxation wherever it has been possible to impose the tax. What can be reached only by methods at all times trying and difficult, and sometimes very demoralizing, should not be permitted to remain a permanent feature of the revenue system of a State.