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Show ! 'it One Of The "Inequities" j r;j In his terse, direct address to Congress on the neces- ?& sity of larger taxes the President said pointedly: fcc "The present tax laws are marred by inequities Pf$ which ought to be remedied. Indisputable facts, W- every one, and we cannot alter or blink them. To Jr state them is argument enough." f ' X . Every one knows some of the "inequities" which mar & the present tax laws. The largest and most glaring sin-" sin-" r. gkritem,to which the President possibly refers, is the. v v , fix-u ack taxation on cotton. l J. ' X-r In another place he said: "We shall naturally turn, therefore, 1 1 suppose, ? to war profits and incomes' and luxuries for the- 1 k additional taxes." IS. Present cotton prices are created by the war. Over I'X one-half of all the cotton raised is now used directly for 1 4 war, and a very large part for ammunition alone. Noth-S- " ing else could explain why cotton, for example, should have been selling in the last six months for from three I ', ' to five times' its price of three years ago, when wheat is r fixed at about two times. The cotton growers will have, jl! this year an excess profit of a. billion to a billion and a ''Ml- half of dollars. ' Practically none of this is now reached -'fa ky Federal taxation. The normal, .price of cotton is vllrf around $50 a bale. If tHe average of all prices of cornel corn-el &" modities has risen 100 percent since 1914, then a fair ,'lj price for cotton is around $100.abale. .And if we put an V; ' average tax of, say, 50 per cent on all the excess of prices W'k ' directly caused by war needs, then a fair tax on cotton 1 1 -. 1 would be, say, $25 a bale, and say, 80 per cent of all ex- cess in selling price over $100 a bale; that is to say, over I , 20 'cents a pound. I If the cotton crop this year were twelve million bales, ' 1 v this would yield a revenue of $300,000,000 flat, and if the ' B?r average .price for the year were around 30 cents, a tax " ' of 80 per cent on the excess oyer the average rise of oth- ' er prices would yield around $480,000,000 more, or, say, a round three-quarters of a billion in all. -- 'The golden rule of taxation we all know: Do unto oth- " ers as ye wolu,d be done by.. In other words, since we "JM all wish to bear an equal share of the burden: From each H, according to his means. If, in general, we attempt to collect 80 per cent of all -H excess profits, the cotton planters, who were not taxed H at all on the billion or piore of their exqess profits last H year? will gladly pay their full share. And they will wel- B come the opp6rtunity. New York Times. , k. |