The Legal Battlefield of Income Tax Administration.

Abstract Tax officials in 1923, realized that an income tax law could not be administered in the courts. In succeeding years efforts were made asserted to take tax administration out of the courts. It is no mere coincidence that successive failures to reach goal in tax administration has been accompanied by increasing distrust of the taxing process and by tax evasion and avoidance bordering on a national scandal. It is insistence on litigation rather than settlement that has made evasion easier and sanctioned avoidance beyond the pale of responsible citizen ship. It was the incompatibility of two functions of the commissioner of Internal Revenue which gave rise in the first instance to a need for an independent reappraisal of his assessments. The commissioner must protect the revenue and simultaneously protect the taxpayer against the commissioner's own functionary, that is, the Income Tax Unit, which is busy protecting the revenue for the commissioner. After several months' work, the law having been interpreted and inscribed in regulations, the adviser body was disbanded. Business tax interpretations straightaway began their relentless march to the courts.