﻿THE PRESENT

43

tax exemption privileges of the certificates were the
same as those of other issues, with the further ad-
vantage that a ruling of the Commissioner of In-
ternal Revenue permitted certificates owned by cor-
porations to be included in “ invested capital ” in
the calculation of the excess profits tax.20

The offering was extraordinarily successful. On
November 30, 1917, when the books were closed,
subscriptions had reached some $691,000,000. The
Secretary of the Treasury spoke with satisfaction of
the response, and expressed the hope as to the fu-
ture that “ the Federal Reserve Banks and banks
and trust companies throughout the country will
keep interest alive in issues of this character.
Their advantages are obvious to tax-payers and
investors and they are a great aid to the financial
operations of the Government. In this way the
work which has been done in connection with the
first issues will not be lost even though the de-
mand for the certificates , at this time has been
greater than could be immediately gratified.” 21

The sharp reduction in the Treasury’s resources
upon the payment of maturing certificate issues on
December 15, 1917, encouraged further recourse to
the same device, and on December 17, 1917, the
Treasury announced a new offering of certificates
in anticipation of tax receipts of unspecified
amount, to be dated January 2, 1918, and to mature
June 25, 1918, and in all other respects identical

20	Commercial and Financial Chronicle, December 22, 1917,
P- 240SI December 29, 1917, p. 2497.

21	Treasury announcement of November 30, 1917, in Balti-
more Sun, December 1, 1917.