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Show There is real humor in the statement that Uncle Sam's tax collectors are eyeing the tax-exempt income of "cooperatives" "cooper-atives" in the United States. Cooperatives, like labor unions, came into existance to meet a very real need. They provide an organization that could bargain for members in an endeavor to stabilize or find markets for products and labor. They were granted certain tax exemptions because they are not originally commercial enterprises. Their profits, earned in competition with highly-taxed business, are largely beyond the reach of Federal income tax laws. They are now big business with an annual turnover tunning into hundred of million of dollars. Taxpayers corporations cor-porations are asking the Bureau of Internal Revenue how they can reorganize on a co-op basis and escape income and excess profits taxes. And here is the joke: The government itself is the biggest big-gest offender in the tax exemption racket with its multi-billion-dollar government owned electric monopoly. If this purely commercial activity, which is in' no way connected with the function of governing, was taxed, the United States Treasury would be in a better position to ask taxation of all tax-exempt associations and organizations. |