INCOME TAX WAR-PROFITS AND EXCESS-PROFITS TAXES INCLUDING STAMP TAXES CAPITAL STOCK TAX BY GEORGE E. HOLMES CHICAGO CALLAGHAN AND COMPANY PREFACE In the short time which has elapsed since the appearance of the first edition of this book a great development has taken place in our system of income taxation. The Revenue Act of 1918 is a remarkable improvement in form and in substance over the former law. But improvement is to be found not only in the statute. The Treasury Department has made vast strides in administrative progress. In the stress of collecting revenues at rates so high that they fairly threatened the solvency of many taxpayers, old departmental customs have been changed and old rules discarded. A new, more efficient, and withal a fairer, system of collecting revenue has been evolved. In a year of great deeds, the achievement of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and his able assistants is worthy of unqualified admiration. The language of the regulations reflects the new order, in its expression of a firm but reasonable and thoughtful purpose to exact from each taxpayer what the law requires an expression which will no qoubt have pronounced psychological effect on the great body to which it is addressed. The tax burden of the present is tremendous, but taxpayers may rest assured that while it will be placed where the law indicates, it will be placed carefully, intelligently and with due consideration of the merits of each case. The author has been under no inconsiderable stress in the preparation of the present edition of this book, since less than a month has elapsed between the passage of the law and the day it must go to press to be of timely value: and less than three weeks have elapsed since the issuance |