Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s

Smiley, Gene; Keehn, Richard H.

doi:10.1017/s0022050700041061

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…But some of the avoidance they sought to reduce may have utilized the Liberty bonds. Work by Smiley and Keehn (1995) supports Mellon's argument.…”

Section: How Were Nominal Rates Kept Down During the War?mentioning

confidence: 69%

Capitalizing Patriotism: The Liberty Loans of World War I

Kang

Rockoff

2006

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In World War I the Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, hoped to create a broad market for government bonds, the famous Liberty Loans, by following an aggressive policy of "capitalizing patriotism." He called on everyone from Wall Street bankers to the Boy Scouts to volunteer for the campaigns to sell the bonds. He helped recruit the nation's best known artists to draw posters depicting the contribution to the war effort to be made by buying bonds, and he organized giant bond rallies featuring Hollywood stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. These efforts, however, enjoyed little success. The yields on the Liberty bonds were kept low mainly by making the bonds tax exempt and by making sure that a large proportion of them was purchased directly or indirectly by the Federal Reserve. Patriotism proved to be a weak offset to normal market forces.

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“…But some of the avoidance they sought to reduce may have utilized the Liberty bonds. Work by Smiley and Keehn (1995) supports Mellon's argument.…”

Section: How Were Nominal Rates Kept Down During the War?mentioning

confidence: 69%

Capitalizing Patriotism: The Liberty Loans of World War I

Kang

Rockoff

2006

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“…Source: Authors, from Piketty and Saez (2003). mention a number of debates among politicians about the opportunity of taxation (Smiley and Keehn 1995); and even though important steps were realized, notably with the implementation in 1913 of the first permanent federal income tax, many rebellions and even instances of organized tax-avoidance took place. The higher-income class, whose members "received more of their income as interest and dividends and less as wages and salaries" (Smiley and Keehn 1995, p. 298), lobbied for lower taxes.…”

Section: Addressing Inequalities In a Period Of Turmoil: Small's mentioning

confidence: 99%

Albion W. Small’s Neglected Progressive Views: Reducing Inequalities for a Reasonable Capitalism

Chassagnon

Vallet

2019

J Hist Econ Thought

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This paper sheds light on Albion Small’s views on the inequalities resulting from capital concentration. As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, Small sought ways to reduce social injustice, which in his view was key to avoiding class conflict and preserving democracy. He emphasized the need to devise social policies with a view to ensuring the equality of opportunities for all to realize what Small termed their “interests”—through the combination of their labor with “tool-capital.” Small entrusted the State with the central role of fighting capital inequalities through social policies, the treatment of inequalities dealing with morals. He embraced the then-fashionable idea of reasonable capitalism, as expounded by fellow progressive scholars, the likes of Richard T. Ely, John Dewey, or John R. Commons, who all sensed that such an economic system would survive only if it improves the social well-being as well as the self-development of all individuals.

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“…But some investigators found unexpected continuity in economic policy from the Wilson administration through the 1920s (Radner 1971;Murray 1978;Metzer 1985). Recently, economists Gene Smiley and Richard Keehn argued from statistical analysis that the need to stem tax avoidance, not political ideology, motivated the Mellon tax reforms (Smiley and Keehn 1995).…”

Section: Russell C Leffingwell Assistant Secretary In President Woomentioning

confidence: 99%

Selling Scientific Taxation: The Treasury Department's Campaign for Tax Reform in the 1920s

Murnane

2004

Law and Social Inquiry

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Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s

Cited by 19 publications

References 1 publication

Capitalizing Patriotism: The Liberty Loans of World War I

Capitalizing Patriotism: The Liberty Loans of World War I

Albion W. Small’s Neglected Progressive Views: Reducing Inequalities for a Reasonable Capitalism

Selling Scientific Taxation: The Treasury Department's Campaign for Tax Reform in the 1920s

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