Tax Refunds

As required by law the Treasury last week made public the voluminous list of taxes it had refunded for the fiscal year 1929 to thousands of corporations and citizens the country over. Newsmen in Washington scribbled down columns of local names and figures, telegraphed them to home papers. So great was the public curiosity about private financial affairs that the New York Times printed eight pages solid with taxpayers' names and their refunds.

Two principal causes of refunds resulting from overtaxation: 1) court rulings settling disputed intricacies of the revenue law, already complex beyond ordinary comprehension; 2) overpayments due to miscalculation by honest taxpayers. According to the Treasury, a vast majority of taxpayers figure and pay their taxes on the safe side, trusting the Treasury to return the change rather than inviting the Treasury's suspicion of them as tax-dodgers.

Refunds amounted to $190,164,359 last year. Large as this sum may seem, it was relatively small, for the Treasury at the same time collected $405,855,475 in back and additional taxes. The refunds amounted to only about 3% of gross tax collections, a margin of error which caused the Treasury no concern.

Largest refund: Carnegie Steel Co. (U. S. steel subsidiary), $25,847,259. Insurance companies collected some 35 millions from the Treasury as a result of a recent Supreme Court interpretation of income from tax-exempt securities held by such companies.

Because the Treasury does not publish the whys and wherefores of each refund, many a senator has made loud complaint against the secret system of refunds. In the past one of the loudest complainants has been Senator James Couzens of Michigan. This year's list carries a tax refund of $989,883 for him. No explanations were necessary because, as everyone knows, the U. S. had sued Senator Couzens for $10,000,000 as unpaid taxes on his profits from the sale of his Ford Motor Co. stock, had not only lost its case but had been ordered to return to the Senator $989,883 in taxes he had already paid.

Sample tax refunds: Mary Pickford Fairbanks ($10,163), John Davison Rockefeller ($157,227). Mortimer Schiff ($429,804), estate of William Jennings Bryan ($8,253), California Wine Association ($23,116), Thomas Alva Edison ($923), Edna Ferber ($3,791).

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