Franklin D. Roosevelt

Supplemental Budget Message to Congress.

March 03, 1936

On January 3, 1936, in my annual budget message to the Congress, I pointed out that without the item for relief the budget was in balance. Since that time an important item of revenue has been eliminated through a decision of the Supreme Court, and an additional annual charge has been placed on the Treasury through the enactment of the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act.

I said in my budget message:

". . .the many legislative Acts creating the machinery for recovery were all predicated on two interdependent beliefs. First, the measures would immediately cause a great increase in the annual expenditures of the Government-many of these expenditures, however, in the form of loans which would ultimately return to the Treasury. Second, as a result of the simultaneous attack on the many fronts I have indicated, the receipts of the Government would rise definitely and sharply during the following few years, while greatly increased expenditure for the purposes stated, coupled with rising values and the stopping of losses, would, over a period of years, diminish the need for work relief and thereby reduce Federal expenditures. The increase in revenues would ultimately meet and pass the declining cost of relief.

"This policy adopted in the spring of 1933 has been confirmed in actual practice by the Treasury figures of 1934, of 1935, and by the estimates for the fiscal years of 1936 and 1937.

"There is today no doubt of the fundamental soundness of the policy of 1933. If we proceed along the path we have followed and with the results attained up to the present time we shall continue our successful progress during the coming years."

If we are to maintain this clear-cut and sound policy, it is incumbent upon us to make good to the Federal Treasury both the loss of revenue caused by the Supreme Court decision and the increase in expenses caused by the Adjustment Compensation Payment Act. I emphasize that adherence to consistent policy calls for such action.

To be specific: The Supreme Court decision adversely affected the budget in an amount of one billion and seventeen million dollars during the fiscal year 1936 and the fiscal year 1937. This figure is arrived at as follows:

Deficit to date (expenditures chargeable to processing

taxes less processing taxes collected) in excess of that

contemplated in the 1937 budget $281,000,000

Estimated expenditures to be made from

supplemental appropriation approved in

the Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1936 296,000,000

Estimated expenditures to be made under the

Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act 440,000,000

Total additional deficit 1936 and 1937, due

to Supreme Court decision and adjusted farm program $1,017,000,000

For the purposes of clarity, I divide the present total additional revenue needs of the Government into the permanent and the temporary ones.

Permanent Treasury income of five hundred million dollars is required to offset expenditures which will be made annually as a result of the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act recently enacted by the Congress and approved by me; and an additional sum recurring annually for nine years will be required to amortize the total cost of the Adjustment Compensation Payment Act.

The net effect of paying the Veterans' Bonus in 1936, instead of 1945, is to add an annual charge of one hundred and twenty million dollars to the one hundred and sixty million dollars already in the budget.

We are called upon, therefore, to raise by some form of permanent taxation an annual amount of six hundred and twenty million dollars. It may be said, truthfully and correctly, that five hundred million dollars of this amount represents substitute taxes in place of the old processing taxes, and that only one hundred and twenty million dollars represents new taxes not hitherto levied.

I leave, of course, to the discretion of the Congress the formulation of the appropriate taxes for the needed permanent revenue. I invite your attention, however, to a form of tax which would accomplish an important tax reform, remove two major inequalities in our tax system, and stop "leaks" in present surtaxes.

Extended study of methods of improving present taxes on income from business warrants the consideration of changes to provide a fairer distribution of the tax load among all the beneficial owners of business profits whether derived from unincorporated enterprises or from incorporated businesses and whether distributed to the real owners as earned or withheld from them. The existing difference between corporate taxes and those imposed on owners of unincorporated businesses renders incorporation of small businesses difficult or impossible.

The accumulation of surplus in corporations controlled by taxpayers with large incomes is encouraged by the present freedom of undistributed corporate income from surtaxes. Since stockholders are the beneficial owners of both distributed and undistributed corporate income, the aim, as a matter of fundamental equity, should be to seek equality of tax burden on all corporate income whether distributed or withheld from the beneficial owners. As the law now stands our corporate taxes dip too deeply into the shares of corporate earnings going to stockholders who need the disbursement of dividends; while the shares of stockholders who can afford to leave earnings undistributed escape current surtaxes altogether.

This method of evading existing surtaxes constitutes a problem as old as the income tax law itself. Repeated attempts by the Congress to prevent this form of evasion have not been successful. The evil has been a growing one. It has now reached disturbing proportions from the standpoint of the inequality it represents and of its serious effect on the Federal revenue. Thus the Treasury estimates that, during the calendar year 1936, over four and one-half billion dollars of corporate income will be withheld from stockholders. If this undistributed income were distributed, it would be added to the income of stockholders and there taxed as is other personal income. But, as matters now stand, it will be withheld from stockholders by those in control of these corporations. In one year alone, the Government will be deprived of revenues amounting to over one billion three hundred million dollars.

A proper tax on corporate income (including dividends from other corporations), which is not distributed as earned, would correct the serious twofold inequality in our taxes on business profits if accompanied by a repeal of the present corporate income tax, the capital stock tax, the related excess profits tax and the present exemption of dividends from the normal tax on individual incomes. The rate on undistributed corporate income should be graduated and so fixed as to yield approximately the same revenue as would be yielded if corporate profits were distributed and taxed in the hands of stockholders.

Such a revision of our corporate taxes would effect great simplification in tax procedure, in corporate accounting, and in the understanding of the whole subject by the citizens of the Nation. It would constitute distinct progress in tax reform.

The Treasury Department will be glad to submit its estimates to the Congress showing that this simplification and removal of inequalities can, without unfairness, be put into practice so as to yield the full amount of six hundred and twenty million dollars—the amount I have indicated above as being necessary.

Turning to the temporary revenue needs of the Government, there is the item of five hundred and seventeen million dollars, which affects principally the current fiscal year. This amount must in some way be restored to the Treasury, even though the process of restoration might be spread over two years or three years.

In this case also the formulation of taxes lies wholly in the discretion of the Congress. I venture, however, to call your attention to two suggestions.

The first relates to the taxation of what may well be termed a windfall received by certain taxpayers who shifted to others the burden of processing taxes which were impounded and returned to them or which otherwise have remained unpaid. In unequal position is that vast number of other taxpayers who did not resort to such court action and have paid their taxes to the Government. By far the greater part of the processing taxes was in the main either passed on to consumers or taken out of the price paid producers. The Congress recognized this fact last August and provided in Section 21(d) of the Agricultural Adjustment Act that, in the event of the invalidation of the processing taxes, only those processors who had borne the burden of these taxes should be permitted to receive refunds. The return of the impounded funds and failure to pay taxes that were passed on result in unjust enrichment, contrary to the spirit of that enactment. A tax on the beneficiaries unfairly enriched by the return or nonpayment of this Federal excise would take a major part of this windfall income for the benefit of the public. Much of this revenue would accrue to the Treasury during the fiscal years 1936 and 1937.

The other suggestion relates to a temporary tax to yield the portion of five hundred and seventeen million dollars not covered by the windfall tax. Such a tax could be spread over two years or three years. An excise on the processing of certain agricultural products is worth considering. By increasing the number of commodities so taxed, by greatly lowering the rates of the old processing tax and by spreading the tax over two or three years, only a relatively light burden would be imposed on the producers, consumers or processors.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Supplemental Budget Message to Congress. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/208617

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