Jan. 8 — The Baltimore girl who was one of the prize beauties at a recent fashion show has unwittingly opened up a new field of income-tax exploitation. In addition to a check for $500 she was the recipient of a gown valued at $1,000 given by a department store, and the local Collector of Internal Revenue has notified her to pay an income tax on the prize money and the dress as constituting earnings from beauty capitalized. On her appeal from the assessment the case was sent to the department at Washington for an opinion.
There is always more zest to the revenue collector in discovering a new source of taxable income than in fishing in the old streams. But if the principle if established of classifying prizes won by pretty girls as the earnings of capitalized beauty, shall we not logically have personal charm and popularity, athletic skill and even gold efficiency in winning amateur cups capitalized for the same purposes of taxation? Must the engaged girl declare her diamond ring as earnings and the street beggar his receipts? Are the golfers' sweepstakes to be exempt?
There will be a lot for the revenue collectors to do in following out these new lines of inquiry, but it will be congenial work as exemplifying the finer subtleties of income-tax interpretation. - New York World
