The New York commission of 1870 proposed to limit the State taxes to a very few number of objects. That they be "levied on a comparatively broad basis--like real estate--with certainty, proportionality, and uniformity on a few items of property, like the franchises of all moneyed corporations enjoying the same privileges within the State, and on fixed and unvarying signs of property, like rental values of buildings"--such was the scheme proposed. The leading object to be attained was equality of burdens, and a second object of quite as great importance, was simplicity in assessment and collection. Granting that real estate, lands, and buildings were taxed on a full and fair market valuation, and that corporations contributed their share toward the expenses of the State, it remained to devise a tax that should reach all other forms of property that could be properly and easily assessed. This tax was to be known as the "building-occupancy" tax, and was to be levied on an additional assessment of a sum equal to three times the annual rent or rental value of all the buildings on the land.[12] Nearly thirty years later the Massachusetts commission proposed a modified form of this tax. An annual rental value of four hundred dollars was to be exempt from taxation, but ten per cent was to be levied on all rental values in excess of that amount. [Footnote 12: The New York commission of 1870 submitted two propositions on this point: 1. Tax the house or building as real estate separately, at the same rate of valuation as the land--that is, fifty per cent--and then assuming that the value of the house or building, irrespective of its contents, be such contents furniture, machinery, or any other chattels whatsoever, is the sign or index which the owner or occupier puts out of his personal property, tax the house or building on a valuation of fifty per cent additional to its real estate valuation, as the representative value of such personal property; or, in other words, tax the land separately on fifty per cent of its fair marketable valuation, and tax the building apart from the land, as representing the owner's personal property, on a _full_ valuation, as indicated by the rent actually paid for it or its estimated rental value. Or-- 2. Tax buildings conjointly with land as real estate at a uniform valuation; and then as the equivalent for all taxation on personal property, tax the occupier, be he owner or tenant of any building or portion of any building used as a dwelling, or for any other purpose, on a valuation of three times the rental or rental value of the premises occupied. Tenement houses occupied by more than one family, or tenement houses having a rental value not in excess of a fixed sum, to be taxed to the owner as occupier.--_Report_, p. 107.]