Mop Up

Fortnight ago when the Supreme Court smashed AAA it left three related questions unanswered:

1) What should become of some $200,000,000 of taxes which litigious processors in recent months deposited with U. S. courts pending a final decision on AAA?

2) Could those who had paid approximately $1,200,000,000 in processing taxes directly to the Government recover them, now that AAA has been found unconstitutional ?

3) Is the Bankhead Cotton Control Act unconstitutional along with AAA?

Last week the Supreme Court might have mopped up all these subsidiary questions, the first two in acting on the case of Louisiana rice millers who obtained a temporary injunction against payment of processing taxes (TIME, Dec. 2), the third in deciding the case of a Texan who sued a railroad which refused to transport his cotton because the Bankhead Act's taxes had not been paid on the shipment.

Actually the Court mopped up only Question No. 1. It ordered that processing taxes paid in escrow to the courts be returned. On the right of processing tax payers to sue for recovery the court was silent. The Bankhead Act case was dismissed on technical grounds.

Net result is that approximately $200,000,000 of impounded processing taxes will be repaid to processors. This money will not come out of the U. S. Treasury because it never reached the Treasury. New suits will have to be carried to the Supreme Court before it is known whether those who actually paid processing taxes to the Government can recover them.

The Bankhead Act's validity will not be officially settled before the Supreme Court decides the suit brought by the State of Georgia (Governor Eugene Talmadge).

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