The Individual Income Tax Act of 1944

T HE federal income tax taxpayer has become rather accus- tomed to frequent changes in the law fixing the amount of his tax.The first income tax statute enacted after the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment was that of October 3, 1913.This was a rather badly drafted and clumsily organized law as was not unnatural considering that it represented the first attempt by Congress to frame a general income tax law since the Civil War period.Less than three years thereafter this was supplanted by the income tax act of September 8, 1916.This remained in force, with some amendments made during 1917, until the Revenue Act of 1918 (enacted during February, 1919) became effective.This representedthe first general revision of the system of income taxation since the Act of October 3, 1913.The form that the income tax provisions were given in that Act remained substantially unchanged in the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926, although some rather important amendments of substance were made especially in the provisions dealing with tax-free exchanges and the treatment of capital gains.The present organization of the materials in the income tax chapter of the Internal Revenue Code dates back to the Revenue Act of 1928.It was repeated in the Acts of 1932, 1934, 1936 and 1938, some of which involved also changes of substance.In 1939 there was enacted the Internal Revente Code, which was intended to include all the general and permanent federal laws relating exclusively to internal revenue in force on January 2, 1939.Since then changes affecting liability with respect to income taxes have generally taken the form of amendments to the appropriate sections of the Code.There were minor amendments thereof by Revenue Acts enacted during 1939.1940, and 1941.More important were those made by the Revenue Act of 1942, the Revenue Act of 1943 (which became law during February, 1944), the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943, and the Individual Income Tax Act of 1944.The foregoing survey is not complete since it ignores a great deal of legislation involving piecemeal amendments of particular sections of particular Revenue Acts.Neither does it include such important changes as were effected by *Professor of Law, University of Minnesota.'This will be hereinafter referred to in the text as the 1944 Act.