AMERICAN SUPERTAX

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 41, 19 February 1943, Page 5

AMERICAN SUPERTAX

ROOSEVELT’S PROPOSALS OUTLINED INSTANCES OF INEQUITY (Recd. 9 p.m.) Washington, Feb. 17. President Roosevelt has written a letter to Senator Doughton, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging the Congress ’co levy a-special supertax on all net incomes above 25,000 dollars. He promised that if such a tax was levied he would immediately rescind the executive order limiting salaries to 25,000 dollars after the imposition of taxes.

Mr. Roosevelt asked that such special supertax be levied on all excess income, regardless of source, including income from securities at present exempt. He added that if Congress disapproved of the Treasury recommendation of a 100 per cent, tax thereon, he hoped Congress would impose a minimum tax of 50 per cent, with steeply graduated rates to 90 per cent. Mr. Roosevelt said the legality of his executive order wfcs attested by the Attorney-General before its issuance, and explained that the regulation was so worded that it affected only gross salaries exceeding 62,700 dollars, which after taxes, were reduced to 25,000 dollars net. He expressed the opinion that it was a gross inequity for a man to receive a salary exceeding 67,200 dollars while the Government was drafting men into the armed forces for 600 dollars a year. He also believed it to be a gross inequity that a corporation president should receive a salary of 500,000 dollars a year while workers in ’the same corporation were denied increased wages under the provisions of the law.