Federal Taxation of Large Incomes

Report Outline
Prospective Deficit and Threatened Tax Increase
The Rise and Fall of Surtax Rates
Concentration of Wealth in United States
Tax-Exempt Securities and Capital Gains
Taxation of Income in Foreign Countries
Special Focus

Prospective Deficit and Threatened Tax Increase

The budget for the fiscal year 1932, submitted by President Hoover at the opening of the last session of Congress, estimated federal revenues during that year at $4,085,119,937 and federal expenditures at $4,054,519,200, indicating a surplus at the close of the year of $30,600,727. The deficit for the current fiscal year was estimated at $180,076,657.

At the end of the first six weeks of the congressional session. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon estimated the deficit at the close of the current fiscal year at “not less than $375,000,000,” due to emergency appropriations for unemployment and drought relief and the failure of government revenues to come up to the Treasury's expectations. At the end of the session, when the bill for 50 per-cent loans on adjusted service certificates had been passed over the President's veto, the deficit for the fiscal year 1931 was estimated at not less than $500,000,000.

Appropriations during the final session of the Seventy-first Congress totaled $5,180,107,522-a peace-time record. This total includes emergency appropriations, available for expenditure during the current fiscal year, and the regular appropriations for the fiscal year 1932. The size of the deficit on June 30, 1931, will depend in part upon the amount of the emergency funds actually laid out by that date, and in part upon the size of the government's collections under the income tax returns for the depression year 1930, filed during the current month.