GEORGE F. TUCKER, NOTES ON THE UNITED STATES STATUTES," ETC. AUTHORS OF THIRD EDITION. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1895. LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY a29,169 Copyright, 1894, 1895, BY JOHN M. GOULD AND GEORGE F. TUCKER. University Press: PREFACE. THE Income Tax law, incorporated in the recent Act of Congress entitled "An Act to reduce taxation, to provide revenue for the Government, and for other purposes," is new in certain of its clauses, especially in those relating to property acquired by gift and inheritance, and those relating to appeals and to corporations; but in other respects it retains the words, phrases, and clauses, which, in the income tax laws of the time of the Civil War, acquired a settled meaning under the rulings. of the courts and the practice of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The aim of the pre sent treatise is to elucidate the new statute from the decisions and practice affecting the older laws, so far as changes of statutory phraseology have not changed or superseded them. It is believed that most of the decisions and rulings here stated will be adopted and followed by the courts and departments in passing upon the present Act. The Index shows that quite a large body of law has been collected in a small compass. The English law (5 & 6 Vict. c. 35) is very exhaustive. It contains one hundred and ninety-four sections, several schedules, and carefully prepared rules upon the method of assessment and general procedure. While the first income tax laws passed in this country were war measures, they were probably suggested by the English law, which had been in existence about twenty years before the passage of the first American statute. The decisions upon the English law, most of which are collated in Ellis's Income Tax Acts, are not always satisfactory as a means of construing our own earlier statutes. They may, however, prove of some value in interpreting the present act. It has not been thought advisable to give copious extracts from the English adjudications, as the technical differences in phraseology between the two Acts were deemed a source of probable embarrassment, while any |