Tax Selling Time

"What am I bid for 24 shares of Crane Simplex preferred?"

"What am I bid for 894 shares of Fowler & Union Horse Nail Company common?"

"What am I bid for 700 shares of Jungle Pines Corporation of Florida ... for 500 shares of Kreuger & Toll ... for 20 shares of Insull Utility Investments second preferred ... for a $1,000 judgment against Brent B. Neal ... for 135 shares of the Valley Forge Hotel Company ... for 20 shares of Sunset Stores?"

It was tax-selling time at Adrian Muller & Son's regular weekly auction sale of stocks, bonds and other securities in Jersey City. The auctioneer listlessly listened for bids (usually only one), cried "Going --going--fair warning--gone!" Each time he thumped his fist on the stand there was a sale. Presumably every sale meant a loss and every loss meant a deduction from the seller's income tax returns.

Adrian Muller & Son is a venerable Manhattan firm but it maintains auction rooms in Jersey City so that its clients may avoid the New York State transfer tax. Adrian Muller founded the firm in 1837 but since his son died some 40 years ago there have been no Mullers in Adrian Muller & Son. Head of the house today and always listed as auctioneer is Miss Helen M. Collins, an efficient, matronly woman. When asked whether she is known as Miss or Mrs., she snaps: "I am known as H. M. Collins."

The annual last-minute spasm of tax selling swelled the volume of business on the New York Stock Exchange one day last week to 3,000,000 shares, more than triple the daily average for the month. But in Washington a House committee was roughing out a bill which was intended to stop forever the hole in the Federal income tax laws which permits citizens to make year-end sales of depreciated securities to establish capital losses for tax purposes only.

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