Taxes, curiously, are assessed on the total fortune, actual or surmised, of the taxpayer. This has the disadvantage of not attracting great consumers to the island. Monsieur de Rothschild, if he owned a pretty cottage on Guernsey that had cost some 20,000 francs, would pay an annual 1.5 million francs in tax. It must be added that if he lived there only five months in the year he would pay nothing. It is the sixth month that is to be dreaded.
