Happy Days

Before March 15 income tax installments were due, the Bureau of Internal Revenue blithely estimated that 6,000,000 glum people would make returns.-- This calculation began to go awry about ten days ago when tax offices far & wide began clamoring for more tax blanks. Hastily blanks were shunted to the places with the greatest shortages. The Bureau hastily boosted its estimates of returns to 6,500,000.

Also before March 15, the Treasury expected $840,000,000 in payments. This also was a misprision. By the end of last week when the Treasury had counted up income tax receipts for the first 20 days of March (during which the bulk of the first quarter's income tax payments are made) the total was $650,000,000--67% more than in the same period a year before, but short of expectations. It is now a question of whether the President's prediction of Federal Revenue for the fiscal year may not prove several hundred million dollars too big.

For several days observers had been wondering audibly whether the "crisis," to avoid which the President wanted a revamped Supreme Court (TIME, Feb. 15 et seq.), was the onset of violent inflation. Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, had issued a warning that rising prices must be checked by higher taxes and budget balancing. Although the forces of inflation had been unostentatiously at work for four years, not since 1933 had the U. S. public enjoyed such a good inflation scare. New Deal Congressmen who were already worried over the problem of passing the President's Supreme Court bill, shuddered at the suggestion that they should add to their troubles by having to up taxes.

"God knows," ejaculated Senator Pat Harrison, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, "taxes are high enough now."

*Only about half of those who are obliged to make returns have to pay tax, however. Prior to Depression the number making returns was about 4,000,000; during Depression it fell to around 3,225,000.

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