A Few lnteresfing Tqx Fqcts

A bunch of interesting facts on the always interesting subject of taxes have come to hand, so let's combine a few highlights in this piece.

For instance, the Houston Chronicle recently printed a big editorial that supplied the following figures, which may give the business reader some fat to chew over. According to the Chronicle, the United States collected more taxes in the last ten years than it did in the previous 150. It says that the average taxes collected by this government between 1796 and 1945 were $1,700,000,000 a year, while in the ten years since 1945 the average has been $49,400,000,000 a year. In the 150 years mentioned, the total taxes collected by the Federal Government were $252,800,000,fi)0, which included the War of. t8L2, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and both World Wars. In the tqn years since 1945 the Government collected $494,100,000,000, or nearly .twice as much as in all our previous history.

Those are the Chronicle figures, no doubt reliable. But it should be remembered that the income taxes that rest so heavy on American shoulders, get a lot of help in providing the capacious maw of the Treasury with fodder. Take liquor. It appears that many do, and a pretty penny it costs them. The excise tax figures for the fiscal year ending June 30th show that at the rate of $10.50 a gallon tax, hard liquor poured into the tax collector's strong box $2,062,242,000, passing the two billion mark for the first time. Add the peak yields on beer and wine and we find