The Canadian Tax Report and the American Tax System

Abstract

A Canadian report comprehensively surveying the Canadian tax system and recommending a radically new model should receive substantial attention in the United States. It submits a fresh view of all the major problems that have vexed our law: capital gains, corporation income tax, es tate tax, income-splitting, and percentage depletion. While the recommendations, here outlined, will not please all American critics, they go to the heart of irrationalities, anomalies, and inequities abounding in the American law. Wholesale reform of the tax system based on disinterested nonpartisan or bi partisan study is less congenial to our legislative system than to the Canadian parliamentary one. But a search for con sensus and a package-deal approach have enough potential to warrant a place on a postwar legislative agenda.