TAXATION: Luxury Levy?

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With the 72nd Congress imminent, the nation's $600,000,000 deficit growing larger and tax collections smaller, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills and his corps are bestirring themselves to find new means of bringing more and badly-needed cash into the national till. Last week the White House let it be known that "a scheme for selective sales taxes is being considered officially." What this means is that President Hoover may propose to Congress a luxury tax. It also indicates that Treasury and President have decided that the extra billion dollars cannot be squeezed out of the higher income tax brackets, a measure favored by the American Federation of Labor and most politicians (TIME, Oct. 12).

Articles which may have to suffer imposition of the luxury tax are: automobiles (a tax eliminated in the 1928 Revenue Act over the protest of Secretary Mellon), theatre & cinema tickets (no tax now exists on tickets worth less than $3), matches, radios, cigarets. Criticism of luxury levy was not long forthcoming. "It is perfectly ridiculous!" scoffed fiscal-minded Senator McNary of Oregon.