Show THE FRENCH INCOME ia TAX the adoption of an income tax in france leaves the united states russia belgium hungary and portugal igal the exceptions to the rule of taxation of this sort the surprise therefore I 1 ie that fr franco cc has availed itself so tardily of Ks ia form of revenue since there are none of the embarrassments embarrass ments there which have attended efforts to impose the tax here A national I 1 income n of Is not to be despised in a country as marked for its frugality as for the wealth which is 19 its result sult the telegrams tell us that there are taxable families in france this is surp surprising since in a recent year the british income tax tat was paid bald by only persons and the british exemption ran even below the french which fixes the limit at 1000 since a french family is usually taken at four persons it would seem ag though the tax would reach nearly every home we have double frances population or wealth but it may bo be doubted that we have haive even the same number of taxable incomes from investments our earnings are larger but our savings less this explains why france IB Is such an exhaustless fount of capital its annual savings being reckoned alfrom at from to in good and bad years it la 19 a curious characteristic of frenchmen that the savings so hardly made are grudged to french enterprise with his savings the frenchman buys his own on reitus rentes or he buys something foreign in the aggregate frenchmen have as much invested abroad as they aa afave vb in their own national securities 1 of russian government securities alone they have 2000 arid abild E european Eu robean e north Axne american rican e they aby have a pitiful billion francs say I 1 the pertinence of these figures fig ures lies in the fact that this tax improves the outlook for american investments all foreign securities are on an equality an admission stamp p of 2 per cent and 5 per cent on coupons of alt a government and corporation stocks alike rentes are treated a shade better Nominal nominally lv they are not taxed but their coupons coupons are liable na as income time and the tax runs up to 4 per cent maximum there are plenty of sound american securities which can compete on terms of equality with either russians or rentes heretofore the obstacles to americans making their way with frenchmen have been that their maturities were too long tor for the french taste and their denominations too large the average holding of french railway stocks is only 25 shares and the railway bonds run down to francs say 89 it would seem that the present flood good of notes with short maturities and dehem ina hons lions 19 peculiarly adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the french investor it may be surmised that the tax upon foreign investments ants as designed as much to discourage e the overgrown lending to russia as to open the market to others to have levied this tax when dussias Rus sias finances seemed collapsing would have been to give alvo the last stroke france could not have afforded that but at the earliest moment it proposes a law adapted to turn its investors thought i 1 elsewhere too many eggs being in this particular basket if it has this effect tho the result to russia must be serious for there is no market worth speaking of in russia for russians no C country has such a diversity of securities 0 twenty eight varieties of Rust russians ians arc are quoted in paris and no country is so dependent for credit upon exterior markets on this account a french tax of 5 per cent on russian cou colons coupons Ons in the mar kot which is best informed and most sympathetic Is a serious matter with a corollary encouraging to ourselves new Y ev york times Ti roes |