"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "If they started in to indict everybody which is going to figure up their income tax wrong this year, Abe, the government would got to draft a couple of million grand-jurymen, and then lay off the workers on cantonments and put them to building jails."
"And labor is scarce enough as it is, Mawruss, when you figure the hundreds of thousands of sitsons of this country which has been taken out of active business life during the past sixty days while they were engaged in making up their income-tax returns," Abe said.
"Well, that will simplify things a whole lot next year, Abe," Morris declared, "particularly in the excessive-profits department, because owing to the time they spent in doping out what excessive profits they had last year, the business men of the country won't have any profits this year, excessive or otherwise."
"I should only make enough this year to pay a certified public accountant for fixing up my income-tax return next year, Mawruss, and I shall be satisfied," Abe said, "because who could tell, maybe next year, Mawruss, the government wouldn't stop at wanting to know what your income is and how you made it, but would also insist on knowing how you spent it after it was made, which if business is so bad next year on account of the war, Mawruss, it may be that the government, finding that they couldn't raise enough money with an income tax and an excessive-profits tax, will pass a law calling for a personal-extravagance tax."
"They could get a lot of revenue that way," Morris admitted.
"Yes, and they could get it coming and going," Abe said. "Take, for instance, the hotel and restaurant hat-check business, which I seen it in the papers that a partnership of hat-checkers got into a dissolution lawsuit the other day, and it come out that they made a quarter of a million dollars profit in less than five years, y'understand. Now in a case like that, Mawruss, the government couldn't tax them robbers an additional eight per cent., because hat-checking ain't a profession under 'A. INCOME FROM PROFESSIONS,' any more than burglary is. Neither could the government soak them highwaymen for an excessive-profits tax, because hat-checking ain't a business with an invested capital, not unless you count as capital, _Chutzpah_, gall and a nerve like a rhinoceros. So the only way the government could collect on tips to hat-checkers would be to tax the tipper fifty per cent. and put it up to the hat-checker to collect it at the source from the feller who is foolish enough to give up his money that way."