ITEMS OF INTEREST April 19, 1913 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

A comprehensive plan of leasing and future purchase of official residences for American ambassadors and ministers in foreign capitals has been presented to the Senate in a bill by Senator Bacon. Ten thousand dollars is to be allowed for a one-year lease and twenty thousand dollars for furnishing of residences in the capitals of Great Britain, Germany, France, and Russia; eight thousand dollars for a lease, and fifteen thousand dollars for furnishing is allowed for Austria, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and Brazil; seven thousand dollars is the rental and twelve thousand dollars the furnishing fund for Spain, Belgium, Cuba, Argentina, Netherlands, and Luxemburg; four thousand dollars rent and eight thousand dollars furnishing is allowed for Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Roumania, Servia and Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Panama, and Venezuela; three thousand dollars rent and seven thousand dollars furnishing are allotted for Norway, Greece and Montenegro, Persia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay, and Morocco.

Included in the Democratic tariff revision bill introduced in Congress on the 7th inst., is an income tax section which would require every resident of the United States who earns more than four thousand dollars a year to pay a tax of 1 per cent on his income in excess of the exemption, adding a surtax of 1 per cent additional on income in excess of twenty thousand dollars; 2 per cent additional on income in excess of fifty thousand dollars, and 3 per cent additional on income in excess of one hundred thousand dollars. The bill also would reenact the present corporation tax law imposing a 1 per cent tax on the earnings of corporations, stock companies, insurance companies, and the like, but it would exempt partnerships. Estimating the loss of revenue from the new tariff rates at eighty million dollars a year, the revenue from the income tax will be estimated at a like amount.

Hundreds of corporations will be relieved from paying the federal corporation tax by a decision of the Supreme Court to the effect that corporations leasing all their property and having no income except that yielded by the lease, are not "doing business," and therefore are not subject to the tax. About six hundred claims, involving seven hundred thousand dollars paid into the treasury under the corporation tax act, turned upon the decision in this case. Besides the many railroads leasing their property in a similar way, nearly one hundred telegraph companies are said to have leased property to one operating company. Justice Day announced a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Hughes and Lamar concurred, holding the company was "doing business."

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

ITEMS OF INTEREST

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access