A Suitable Suit

A furor in the business world over the publication of the amounts of income tax payments made by individuals and corporations came to a head, and the doctor was sent for with his lancet.

Attorney General Stone hastened to Washington, was confronted with the two apparently conflicting passages in the law:

Section 257 (b) directs that Collectors of Internal Revenue "shall cause to be prepared and made available to public inspection" names and addresses of all tax payers with the tax paid by each person.

Section 1018 (reenacting a section of the previous law) forbade any person to print or publish in any manner not provided by law any part of an income tax return: Penalty, $1,000 fine and one year in prison--or less.

Mr. Stone was perplexed and formally remarked: "Just what purpose Congress had in mind in reenacting this provision after it had made it the duty of Commissioners to make available for public inspection the amount of income tax paid by each tax payer can only be surmised. The provision, however, is expressly made a part of the present Tax Law, and it appears clearly to be the duty of the Department of Justice to have an appropriate case presented in the courts so that the full force and effect of this provision may be judicially determined. This will be done, at an early, convenient date.

"The truth of the matter probably is that Congress had nothing in mind: it apparently intended to open to publication the amounts of individual taxes, but forgot, on the journey from Section 257 to Section 1018, that the latter might conflict with their intentions in part.

Mr. Stone, therefore, holding that the tax information in question is legally open to public inspection, but may not be otherwise published, prepared a suitable suit against a suitable newspaper. The press as a whole was not frightened by the prospect and continued to publish the information discovered at the tax offices.

Meanwhile, in Cleveland, a different point of law had been brought up. A lawyer asked an injunction to prevent the Collector of Internal Revenue from publishing his tax return on the grounds that it was his private property. A federal judge ruled that his tax return belonged not to him but to the Government and denied the petition.

In Maryland, a tax collector gave the desired information to inquirers, but began a practice of making public the names of the information seekers.