Revenue Laws Research Articles

Government of India, Ministry of Finance (Revenue Division) v. Taylor and Another.

British Commonwealth of Nations — Whether Revenue Laws of One Member Enforceable in Courts of Another — Indian Tax Claim against Liquidator of English Company — Action by Government of India in English Courts.Jurisdiction — Enforcement of Revenue Laws — Whether Enforceable by Action in Courts of Another State — Whether Rule Different in the British Commonwealth of Nations — Tax Claim by Indian Government against Liquidator of English Company — Whether Actionable in English Courts — Whether Alternatively Recoverable as “Liability” of Company in Voluntary Liquidation.

Some Tax Problems of Students and Scholars

This Article will deal with three areas of application of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 which affect particularly the scholar, the scientist, and the advanced student preparing for an academic career: The tax treatment of educational and research expenses, of awards and prizes made in recognition of scholastic or scientific achievements, and of scholarships and fellowships. The group whose special tax problems are discussed here is numerically small and has little voice in the legislative process which produces our revenue laws. The relative scarcity of case law would also indicate that its members do not often have the financial resources necessary to litigate their tax problems and the deficiency amounts involved would normally be relatively small. The Treasury ought to be aware of both these factors in preparing its regulations and rulings.

Kozicki v. Baltycka Spolka Rybna et al.

37Recognition of Acts of Foreign States and Governments — Extra-Territorial Effect of — Confiscatory and Revenue Laws — Disguised Confiscatory Measures — The Law of Sweden.

Master Amiruzzaman and Others v. The Crown.

Jurisdiction — Over Nationals Abroad, on Board Foreign Vessels, or in Service of Foreign Companies.171Jurisdiction — At the Maritime Frontier — Foreign Merchant Vessel in National Waters — Violation of Revenue Laws of Territorial State.

In re Delhi Electric Supply and Traction Co. Ld.

British Commonwealth of Nations — Whether Rule of Unenforceability of Foreign Revenue Laws Applies between Members of Commonwealth — Attempt to Prove Indian Taxes in Liquidation of English Company.Recognition of Acts of Foreign States — Foreign Revenue Laws — Whether Enforceable by English Courts — Position of Commonwealth Countries — Whether Foreign Tax Provable in Liquidation of English Company — Effect of s. 302 of Companies Act, 1948.

Korthinos et al. v. Niarchos et al.

32Recognition of Foreign Legislative Acts — Foreign Revenue Laws — Recognition of — Foreign Seamen Serving on Vessel Flying Foreign Flag — Payment of Wages in Port of United States — Whether Foreign Tax to be Deducted from Wages.

The House of Lords and Foreign Revenue Laws

The House of Lords and Foreign Revenue Laws

Čermak v. Bata Akciova Spolecnost.

Recognition of Acts of Foreign States — Enforcement of Revenue Laws — Exchange Regulations.

State of Minnesota v. Karp.

Recognition of Acts of Foreign States — Enforcement of Revenue Laws — As between States of the United States of America.

Evidence. Privileged Communications. Portions of Registrant's Selective Service File Held Admissible as Evidence in Action for Violation of Internal Revenue Laws

Evidence. Privileged Communications. Portions of Registrant's Selective Service File Held Admissible as Evidence in Action for Violation of Internal Revenue Laws

Opinion of Attorney General Jonathan Sewall of Massachusetts in the Case of the Lydia

Formal opinions of colonial courts or of colonial attorneys general are rare. Probably they were announced orally by the judges and other legal advisers and lived on only as traditions among the practicing attorneys. If written, they have generally perished with the personal papers of the officials. The opinions of Jonathan Sewall, Attorney General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from I767 to I769, are almost unknown. He had an outstanding reputation as a member of the Massachusetts bar, but very few of his papers have survived to justify that reputation. However, in a careful search of the in-letters of the Treasury Board in London one such opinion of Attorney General Sewall was found. It is the only formal full opinion of any colonial attorney general on a legal question connected with the enforcement of the British revenue laws in America that has come to light. Quite possibly it is the only one in existence. This opinion, printed below, is of great interest to students of American constitutional development and legal interpretation. Sewall had been directed by the Commissioners of Customs to institute an immediate prosecution of John Hancock on a criminal charge by an Information because Hancock would not permit tidesmen with no legal authority to wander at will over his vessels. This attempt to bring legal action against Hancock was part of a definite political plot by Governor Bernard and the Commissioners to get the Boston merchant. It is the first and only serious attempt to use an information filed by an attorney general instead of an indictment by a local grand jury as the basis for beginning a criminal prosecution. Sewall's refusal to adopt such a novel procedure in the case against Hancock was echoed many years later in the Fifth

Norddeutsche Lloyd Case.

Jurisdiction — On the High Seas — Jurisdiction on Vessels — Revenue Laws — German Law.

Ilgovskiv. Shprinski.

Recognition of Acts of Foreign States — Enforcement of Revenue Laws — The Law of Palestine.

Aliens (Non-Discrimination Clause) Case.

Aliens — Legal Position of — Applicability of Revenue Laws to Aliens — Equal Treatment of Aliens and Subjects (“Non-Discrimination Clause”) — Aliens and Political Rights.

The Concept of Excess Profits under the Revenue Acts of 1940-42

Congress has developed a concept of excess profits during the past three years, vague on some points but fairly definite on others. It is not expressed in summary form anywhere in the four revenue laws that have initiated and revised the excess profits tax; the present paper is an attempt to distill it out and compare it with concepts designed for peacetime taxation.1 Implicit Distinction Between War Profits and Other Profits.-Although the tax law makes no formal distinction between profits due to the war and all other profits, it is evidently intended to reach only the former. The taxpayer .is given the option to use either the base-period method or the invested-capital method, whichever results in the smaller tax.2 As a consequence, the tax is not imposed on profits on the grounds that they are larger than they need to be to induce the firm to carry on at its existing level of output. If excessive profits in this sense were being received in the base period, they can be received in wartime free of the excess profits tax. Further evidence of the desire to tax only profits that are due to the war lies in the refinement of the base-period concept, discussed below, to approximate the peacetime earning power inherent in the corporation as it stood just before the defense effort of the United States got well under way. Moreover, even an increase in profits over the level of the base period is exempt if that level was very low in terms of per cent of invested capital. Specifically, the taxpayer's option referred to above means that the law exempts any increase in profits over those of the base period up to the point where the wartime earnings are 5? (ranging up to 8% for smaller firms) of invested capital. This provision might reflect

In re Nessim

Extradition — Conditions of — Common Crimes — Meaning of — Whether Comprising Offences against Revenue Laws.

Irascible Comments on the Revenue Laws

EPTEMBER 20 the President of the United States signed the Revenue Act of 1941, an act of which one damning thing may and should be said. It is an act drawn in the tradition of the last twenty years and giving no evidence of a genuine attack upon the basic fiscal problems of the nation. We have had a federal income tax since 1913 and a federal estate tax since I9I6. In the early I920's both of these crystallized into the form which they hold today. The basic estate tax act is still the act of 1926. The income tax law has been changed at almost every session of Congress since its original enactment but remains much the same. For almost twenty years the changes have been of a purely tinkering type. Rates for a time were lowered; since the depression they have been raised steadily and, to some, alarmingly. Exemptions have been reduced. Minor reforms and trivial changes have been all too frequent as treasury officials and congressional advisers attempted by strictly ad hoc legislation to meet with minimum ingenuity the tax avoidance devices evolved by private counsel. Occasionally somewhat larger changes have been attempted, such as the short-lived undistributed profits tax against corporations.' Even these reforms, however, have been designed with far too great particularity. Where more sweeping alterations might have been largely successful, these small-scale efforts have sometimes failed entirely and been withdrawn, as was the undistributed profits tax, and sometimes succeeded in stopping one leak only to have other leaks spring up around the patch. Now, in 1941, with a record-breaking national debt, a business structure subject to extraordinary and often incalculable stresses, and the heaviest fiscal demands in the history of the nation, Congress has been content again to apply its old panacea: exemptions have been lowered, rates raised, and new nuisance taxes enacted. Is it not time that the entire structure be reexamined to consider what major changes could be effected more equitably to distribute and effectively to raise the tremendous and growing levies which this present demands?

The Impact of the Law of Powers upon Our Internal Revenue Laws

The Impact of the Law of Powers upon Our Internal Revenue Laws

Administration of Internal Revenue Laws. The Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure

Administration of Internal Revenue Laws. The Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure

Archaeology and Ethnology

MR. GRIGSON'S anthropological investigations were undertaken largely owing to the suggestion of the late Sir Montague Butler; but his immediate objective in his contact with them was the remedy of certain grievances, more especially those caused by the application in a primitive State, of criminal, civil and revenue laws framed for British Indian districts some centuries more advanced. He found that it was by observation of their ceremonies and rituals and their daily occupations, as well as by inquiry into their family and social organization—in short through thorough-going anthropological investigation, by which science is the richer in this volume—that he was best able to arrive at their genuine and inmost opinions of, and attitude towards, the methods by which their affairs were being administered. Hence he was able, as Prof. Hutton says in his introduction, to introduce certain reforms.