The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-05-14
Luxury Buying At
 Rate Of Bil1iOnYearlY

New York, May 14Luxury buy ing in New York is now going on at the rate ofs$ ,9o0seUeaoDe year, judged by the amount of buxzry taxes--ag gregHdfng StN5oa 600 a month--wh1ch are being collected by William III. Ed wards, United States Collector of In ternal Revenue for Manhattan In February, according to the Collector. the government received from his of fjca $309oso GOO more in fuxury taxes than was paid in any previous month in the history of the department. The month of April probably will exceed them all The receipts, he says, have been mount ting higher and higher for six months,
 What some people call the orgy of spending has not exhausted itself, D said Mr. Edwards recently but my men, in their talks with merchants and others who pay the~gEeat bulk of the taxes, have been todd that the peak of exHayagance seems to have been reached and that period of re- 1 trenc42znent is close at hand
 We hear a lot about the income and exscess profits tax which fa4ls due i in the spring of every year and about l the haIdshigos of meeting it, but the fact is that the SkHdfest tax, and one which is least felt 5y the public and of which we hear very little, is the luxury Mnpost. The poorer chap who buys his girl an ice cream soda doesn't grun1b4e at the penny or two
 tax any more than does the rich youth who presents his fnancee with | a diamond tiara or a. touring car. Neither misses it as the item is so | small as compared with the expen- l dieure- "A kings ransom was spent for l candy last December but the biggest revenue came from dealers in jew elry, furS and automobiles. The thea 1 ters showed that in January they
 did an unusually prosperous business
 When persons start to econonaizE | they usually cut out amUSeu1ents bu1 l in January, in the borough of Man hattan alone, s7Ss, ,SSl4S was paid 1T taxes. Multiply that by ten and yoJ
 will get some idea of how mucl
 Father Knickerbocker and his guest are paying to be entertained at jus
 the theatres. There are no indications
 of any panic in these figures Th4 man who sza5n- Always be a, bull or
 the great U- S. AA-' seems to be win
 d1czted-
 ~An interesting thing about tn, 1uxury tax is that more revenue i
 being derived from ice cream soda:
 
 penny or two of tax than there i
 from the sale of motor cars, dia
 moz11s and other luxuries- Druggist
 paid 8, large sum on expensive per fumes and cosmetics Every manu
 facturer, producer or importer is re quiFed to make such returns as vii clearly show each taxable transaction
 in the sale of certain goods and thes
 are verified by revenue officers Sec
 ton 9e4 of the Revenue Act of 191 provides that 'on and after May 191S' the tax of 10 per cent sha]
 be levied and collected luxuries i including many kinds of expensN articles in daily nse. In the sale 0
 these articles the dealer acts as
 collection agent for the governmen Other taxes are paid in the form c I stamps.
 "One of the reasons for the faIlin s off in the receipts of income and e1 cess profits taxes this year was tn s l deduction which the taxpayer mad
 for sums whc1h he paid to the gov 2 ernEnent for luxury, proprietary an 2 other taxes Here is an Illustration