The Cabinet

Anecdote

Last week Secretary Andrew William Mellon furnished Funnyman Harry Lauder with an anecdote than which Sir Harry and some 240,000 others had seldom heard a better. The anecdote: It seems that the U. S. Treasury Department and U. S. taxpayers had, between them, made many a mistake in the amounts of taxes payable for fiscal years from 1927 back to 1925 and beyond. These mistakes netted the U. S. a total overpayment of $103,858,687.78. Last week Secretary Mellon sent Congress the names--numbering some 240,000 and taking up 12,133 typed pages-- of the taxpayers who had overpaid and were owed specified refunds. Among the names was Sir Harry Lauder's. He was to get back $5,403.62 as soon as Congress should authorize Secretary Mellon's list.*

Other names, other refunds:

Aline T. MacLaughlin.......................................... 1 cent

Kenesaw Mountain Landis .................................. $2.51

Chief Justice Taft ................................................... 5.62

Secretary of War Davis .......................................... 7.93

Metropolitan Opera Co.......................................... 17.28

Williams Gibbs McAdoo ........................................ 19.62

Brig. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler.................. 76.19

David H. Blair, Commissioner of Internal Revenue... $152.85

Vincent Astor ........................................................ 159.00

Marquise Charlotte E. De Sers ("c/o Chauncey M. Depew")... 4,056.00

Duke of Marlborough ("c/o Harold S. Vanderbilt").............. 18,648.00

Charles P. Taft ....................................................................... ....... 56,900.00

United Cigar Stores................................................................. .... 443,050.00

R. H. Macy & Co. ..................................................................... 508,065.00

Standard Oil Co. of Indiana........................................................ 5,062,893.82

* This list included by no means all mistakes made in tax payments for 1927 and before. The Treasury Department's refund list is an annual publication. Last year, 287,000 persons and corporations received $174,120,177. Each year's list is compiled from audits by the Revenue Bureau and from decisions of the courts or the Federal Board of Tax Appeals.