Excess Profits Duty and Corporation Profits Tax. By J. Gault.
(Effingham Wilson ; Stevens and Son. 16s. net.)—The author of this useful treatise has tried to rearrange in an intelligible order the sections of the various Acts relating to Excess Profits Duty, appending to each section notes of reported cases. The subject, owing in part to its inherent difficulty and in part to the hasty and careless drafting of the Acts during the war, is extremely complex and obscure, but Mr. Gault has simplified it to some extent.—In this connexion we may mention a report prepared for the American Economic Association on The Taxation of Excess Profits in Great Britain by IL M. Haig and G. E. Holmes, and issued as a supplement to the American Economic Review. (Princeton. 2 dollars 50 c.).—The report was intended to assist the American revenue authorities in deciding whether taxes on special profits should or ought to be continued in normal times. Dr. Haig made a close study of the question in England in 1919 and discussed it with many well-informed men, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. McKenna. He appears to have been favourably impressed by our revenue administration and by the way in which the Excess Profits Duty was levied, contrasting it to our advantage with the United States Government's methods of raising a tax on profits. On the whole, he sums up in favour of such a tax for America, provided that it could be recast on British lines.
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