Report Outline
Conflicts Between Federal and State Tax Systems
The Search for New Sources of Revenue
Recent Trends in State and Local Taxation
Taxation of Income and Intangibles
Special Focus
Conflicts Between Federal and State Tax Systems
The taxation situation in many states and municipalities reached a critical stage early in 1932. In Wisconsin an emergency increase in the state income tax was adopted by the state legislature. In Ohio an additional tax was levied on gasoline to meet emergency needs. The Indiana legislature met in special session July 7 to deal with the financial difficulties of the state, and nearly all of the legislatures that have been in session this year have sought to devise new means of raising revenues and methods of bolstering up existing tax levying and collecting systems.
While the needs of the emergency are causing first concern, there appears also to be under way a general movement to revise existing tax systems and to formulate a plan of taxation that will provide adequate revenues for the federal government, the states, and the local governments, with a minimum of duplication and a maximum of efficiency in collection.
“There is nothing inherently wrong in the use by both the federal government and the states of the same sources of revenue,” said Ogden L. Mills, Secretary of the Treasury, in a speech, April 29, 1932, before the Bar Association of New York City. “But when it is done without agreement or understanding between the competing jurisdictions and without restraint of a superior power, it may easily result in a combined burden heavy enough to cripple the source.” |
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