Treasury Regulations

“ We must note that the pertinent Treasury regulations provide that the replies to the questions included on Form 730 are to be compiled each month 'from the daily records required by §§ 44.4403 1 and 44.6001-1.' Treas. ”

“ The Treasury promulgated a regulation under the Revenue Act of 1918 covering treatment of discounts and premiums, which, with immaterial changes, has remained in force under all the revenue acts and appears as article 545 of Regulations 65 applicable to the Revenue Act of 1924. ”

“ It shall be lawful for collectors of internal revenue to receive for internal taxes and all public dues certified checks drawn on National and State banks, and trust companies during such time and under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe. ”

“ Plainly, the regulation was applicable. The ban against deductions of amounts spent for 'lobbying' as 'ordinary and necessary' expenses of a corporation derived from a Treasury Decision in 1915. T.D. 2137, 17 Treas.Dec., Int.Rev., pp. 48, 57, 58. That prohibition was carried into Art. 143 of Treasury Regulations 33 (Revised, 1918) under the heading of 'Expenses' in the section on 'Deductions'. [16] Beginning in 1921 the regulation was entitled 'Donations.' (Art. 562, Treasury Regulations 45.) And in the regulations here in question Art. ”

“ The Exchequer, i.e., the department concerned principally with the collection of the taxes, is in fact, though not in name, a branch of the Treasury Board. Within the Treasury, and immediately under the direction of the Chancellor, is drawn up the annual budget, embodying a statement of the contemplated expenditures of the year and a programme of taxation calculated to produce the requisite revenue. The Treasury exercises general control over all other departments of the public service, e.g., the Post-office and the Board of Customs, in which public money is collected or expended. ”

“ The question is whether this statute precludes the subjection of the deputy internal revenue collectors to the civil service rules. The Administration contends on the authority of “the highest legal opinion the Treasury Department could get,” that it does. ”

“ Confirmation of these views, if any be needed, may be found in the almost unbroken practice of the Treasury Department. Take, for example, the Treasury circular of the twenty-sixth of November, 1846, and it will be found that it fully justifies the conclusion to which we have come. ”

“ VI. The cost of exchange, insurance, and conveyance of specie abroad, as well as the commission for the payment of the coupons will be borne by the Government. The Directors of the Treasury will come to a previous arrangement with the Ministers of Finance with regard to all these operations, but the Minister will decide whether the despatch of these sums is to be effected in specie or by letters of exchange.
Art. VII. The Treasury will not be allowed to employ any funds, disposable or not, in operations of credit, commerce, industry, &c.
Govenment not to diminish yield of hypothecated taxes. ”

“ The proper order of the leading measures of finance has always been a subject of contention. Grave differences of opinion exist, even to this day, concerning the necessity and expediency of the legal- tender provision. The judgment of many whose financial sagacity is entitled to respect is, that if the internal tax had been first levied, and the policy adopted of drawing directly upon the banks from the Treasury for the amounts of any loans in their hands, the resort by the government to irredeemable paper might at least have been postponed and possibly prevented. ”

“ That no power has been expressly conferred upon Congress by the Constitution to make the Treasury notes of the government a legal tender between private individuals in discharge of pre-existing debts, must be admitted. ”

“ In that year, Congress enacted a law authorizing the Treasury to withdraw the greenbacks from circulation. The paper money party set up a shrill cry of protest, and kept up the fight until, in 1878, it forced Congress to provide for the continuous re-issue of the legal tender notes as they came into the Treasury in payment of taxes and other dues. ”

“ It is true that such an agency is in many respects convenient to the Treasury, but it is not indispensable. A limitation of the expenses of the Government to its actual wants, and of the revenue to those expenses, with convenient means for its prompt application to the purposes for which it was raised, are the objects which we should seek to accomplish. ”

“ Authority, it is conceded, exists in Congress to pass laws providing for the issue of treasury notes, based on the national credit, as necessary and proper means for fulfilling the end of the express power to borrow money, nor can it be doubted at this day, that such notes, when issued by the proper authority, may lawfully circulate as credit currency, and that they may, in that conventional character, be lawfully employed, if the act authorizing their issue so provides, to pay duties, taxes, and all the public exactions required to be paid into the national treasury. ”

“ Financial measures, of various kinds, for borrowing money to supply the wants of the treasury, beyond the receipts from taxation and the sales of the public lands, have been adopted by the government since the United States became an independent nation. Subscriptions for a loan of twelve millions of dollars were, on the 4th of August, 1790, directed to be opened at the treasury, to be made payable in certificates issued for the debt according to their specie value. ”

“ While the Sub-Treasury system lasts Congress should authorize the Secretary to deposit customs, as well as internal revenue receipts, in the national bank depositaries, in time of stringency, when the Government’s receipts exceed its disbursements, and it has more than a sufficient working balance. ”

“ Successive revenue statutes have been enacted without substantial change in the applicable sections. Congress seemingly has been satisfied with the Decisions of the Treasury and with the interpretation of its own meaning implicit in them. ”

“ In order to meet every demand upon the Treasury without delay or peradventure and in order to keep the Treasury strong, unquestionably strong, and strong throughout the present anxieties, I respectfully urge that an additional revenue of $100,000,000 be raised through internal taxes devised in your wisdom to meet the emergency. ”

“ We see no good reason for disturbing the long-settled practice of the Treasury Department. Its contemporary interpretation is consistent with the language of the act; and its practice was, in substance, embodied in the Revenue Act of 1918, February 24, 1919, c. ”

“ Under existing legislation it is in the power of the Treasury Department to maintain that essential condition of national finance as well as of commercial prosperity—the parity in use of the coined dollars and their paper representatives. The assurance that these powers would be freely and unhesitatingly used has done much to produce and sustain the present favorable business conditions. ”