Chapter 19: Personal Taxes

CHAPTER 10 PERSONAL TAXES § 1. Inheritance-tax laws. § 2. Fiscal and social aspects. § 3. Income taxes; general nature. § 4. Income taxation by the states. § 5. Obstacles to federal income taxation. § 6. Federal taxation of individual incomes. § 7. Important features. § 8. Development and yield. § 9. Corporate income and excess profits. § 10. Defective theory of corporate income taxation. § 11. A system of taxation. § 1. Inheritance-tax laws. There remain to be considered at least two important forms of taxation that are essentially personal in their unit of assessment, in contrast with the foregoing, which are (or should be, if consistent) essentially impersonal?- There are the inheritance and the income taxes. Property received by bequest or intestate inheritance for taxing purposes is usually viewed as essentially income accruing but once under peculiar conditions, and therefore taxable to the individual beneficiary. However, inheritance taxes still retain some traces of a legal origin in feudal times, when the estate reverted to the overlord until released upon the payment of certain dues, and the tax is collected in the course of the probating of wills under the direction of court officials.