Nullification shows itself also in the administration of the tax law. Most of the states derive a portion of their revenues from the general property tax. But the power of taxation lies in the legislature and no state has its own local agents directly and fully responsible to a central authority for fixing the valuations upon which the levy is based. The county (except where state revenues are derived from distinct sources) is required to contribute its proportionate share to the central treasury and is left to do the right thing by the state, with such supervision as will be hereafter noted. The people of the county are allowed to select their own assessors, on the theory that a man on the ground knows valuations better than any outside impartial person and that no one is more competent to select such a man than his own neighbors. And so it happens, just as in the case of the sheriffs, that the local tax officers are confronted with conflicting obligations. They must take their choice, on the one hand, between strict observance of the law and unpopularity, with the probable loss of their jobs at the end of their term, and popularity with prospects of possible political advancement and a more or less assured living, on the other. Inasmuch as there is never any question as to which of these courses is the more practical and immediately profitable, the tax assessors of the county invariably find it infinitely to their personal advantage to serve the locality that pays their salaries. Assessors in the sister counties do likewise; with the ultimate result that general competition arises among the counties as to which shall value property lowest and thus pay the smallest proportion of the state’s tax. The system is ideally designed to reward dishonesty and perjury and punish faithful obedience to the law. For, as a former New York State Tax Commissioner has said, “Under assessment is the rule throughout the state, and in nearly all the tax districts intentionally and purposely so.” The range of these assessments is well known to be anywhere between twenty-five and ninety per cent. of the full value of the property. And the assessors “make their own laws as to the basis of assessing property, in deliberate violation of the statutes and then proceed to make oath to the assessment rule that they have assessed all property at its full value.” That what is true of New York is equally true of most other states where an analogous system prevails, is the testimony of tax authorities.