Excerpt from Federal Taxation of Life Insurance Companies: A Paper Read at the Meeting of Life Insurance Counsel Held at Atlantic City, May, 1917 If such a re-assessment is upheld, most of the companies that wrote deferred dividend policies will be obliged to pay very substantial sums in the way of additional taxes for the years in question. The 1916 Income Tax Act in effect doubled the amount of taxes which the insurance companies were called upon to pay under the law of 1913. The excuse or justification for the income tax laws referred to was that it was necessary to make up the decline in the revenue formerly obtained through customs duties, because of the reduction of our tariffs and the falling off in importations due to the war. This latter reason applied to the 1916 law only. The three acts referred to were in no sense war measures. During the early part of the present year, an Act was passed imposing a tax of eight percent, on net profits in excess of a certain sum. Whether mutual companies will be allowed to deduct $5,000.00 from net income and also eight percent, on their surplus, and compute this excess tax on the balance, remains to be seen. Judging the future by the past I hesitate to say what the officials of the Treasury Department will do. There is some consolation in the reflection that their action is not final. This Act was passed to secure revenues to strengthen our military and naval defenses when the grim shadow of war was looming large on our horizon and may be fairly said to be a war measure. At the time this paper is being written there is pending in Congress a measure which largely increases the normal tax imposed on life companies, increases the so-called excess profits tax from eight to sixteen percent, and imposes a tax of eight cents on each $100.00 of insurance written after it becomes a law. In addition, it has certain retroactive features that still further add to the tax burden. This is put forth as a war measure. How long it will continue in force, if passed, after peace is established, remains to be seen. This matter of Federal taxation of life companies, except in times of national stress, is of comparatively recent origin. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.