The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-26
CHroAGo MAKES CONFESSION.
4 Pretty Poor Place, With Nobody Max
 ing Any Money, and Mighty Few Have
From the Chicago Times.l

ing Any MOney, ana hlBniy HeW nave Much.
 From the Chicago Times.l
 How many people in Chicago received net incomes last year exceeding $4,00O?
 That is a question the collector of in-
 ternal revenue, w. J. Mize, is trying to devise means to answer. So far he has been able to obtain very little data. MT. Mize has consulted a good many bank CTS, mortgage brokers, town assessors, and the county treasurer as to their opinion of the probable number in the city liable to pay the income tax. None of them will dignify their estimates with any higher name than a mere guess because they have no means of making a closer approximation. But these guesses range from 1000 to 95,OOO with the average somewhere in the neighborhood of from 1500O to 10000.
 "There are in Cook county" said MT. Mize, "something like 13,500 corpora tions that may be liable to the tax. This is a rough estimate, made in this way: We took the records of corpora tions in the recorders office, averaged the number to the page, and multiplied it by the whole number of pages. Then we took a sample number of pages and picked out those corporations, such as clubs building and loan associations, and others that under the law are ex- empt and averaged these. This num- Der deducted from the whole number left 13,500. But of these all may not have made profits during the last year enough to bring them within the law.
 "Outside of Chicago in the eighteen other counties. comprised in this dis trict, there are probably 1000 corpora tions. So that our estimate on cor porations is somewhere near an approx imation.
 "But when it comes to individuals we are all at sea. Nobody pretends to make more than guess l have asked several town assessors, the county treasurer, some mortgage brokers and bankers what their estimates are. 1 can't give you the estimates made by any one of these men individually, be- cause they were given to me confiden- tially. But they ranged from 1000 to 35 ,O00 Most of them were from 15 ,000 to 10000. Outside of Cook county think 5000 or 4,OOO in the district is a liberal estimate"
 A number of bank presidents and bank cashiers were asked yesterday to give estimates on the number of indi- viduals in Chicago liable to pay in- come tax Very few of them cared to give figures. Ther was no data, they said, on which an estimate could be based The year had been one of such financial changes and disturbances that tests which would apply in normal times would not apply now. Many men doing a large business had done it this year without profit or at loss.
 Franklin M. Head of the American Trust and Savings bank said: Prices have been constantly going down, so fast in many lines as to wipe out all profits. So that a great many busi- | nesses, instead of showing a net profit on which the income tax could be lev jed will show net loss. The number of individuals from this class who will | be liable to the income tax will be very much smaller than is generally SUD- posed.
 "Of salaried men the number who re- | eeive more than $4,OOO a year is very much less, I believe, than is currently | Every large concern has a few men who get salaries above that, | but when you have added them all to- gether there are not so very many of | them.
 q don't want to hazard a guess as to | how many individuals are liable to the | Income tax. but l believe the receipts rom this source will fall below what | las been expected"
 Lyman J. Gage did not think that, lside from corporations and persons whose income was derived from their interest in corporations, the number of Income tax payers would much exceed ,5OO.