Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. Chapter 3. The Federal Income Tax
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本章全面概述了美国的联邦所得税，探讨其社会和经济影响、历史演变以及内在的复杂性。 首先，本章强调了富裕美国人看似不理性的行为，这些行为都是由利用税收漏洞和避税策略所驱动的。 这些行为，例如策略性地安排结婚时间、从事无利可图的商业冒险或暂时搬迁到国外，都说明了税法对个人决策的普遍影响。
本章强调了所得税的巨大经济影响力，它几乎影响着每一家企业和个人。 本章突出了个人报税表的庞大数量，以及通过所得税产生的巨额政府收入，巩固了所得税作为公众意识中“税”的地位。 作者提到，在威尼斯圣马可大教堂的一块牌匾上，注明了捐款“可根据美国所得税进行抵扣”。
一个中心主题是对所得税制度的批判，认为它既不合逻辑也不公平。 作者认为，累进税率被无数漏洞所破坏，使得富人得以避免支付其应有的份额。 该文本强调了纸面上高税率与高收入者实际支付的低得多的有效税率之间的差距。 本章断言，税法如同迷宫一般，包含数千页的法律、法规和法院判决，创建一个普通公民在没有昂贵的专业建议的情况下无法驾驭的体系，从而导致一种不民主的状态。
本章接着深入探讨了所得税的历史演变，从古代的人头税追溯到佛罗伦萨和法国早期对所得税的尝试，两者都充斥着腐败和效率低下。 本章随后重点介绍了英国在1798年颁布的第一个现代所得税。 英国也面临着来自税收的大量批评和问题，但最终习惯和经济需求使税收得以保留，并导致其他国家也建立了自己的所得税制度。 本章回顾了美国最初的犹豫，表现为失败的提案和宪法挑战，包括1894年的一起最高法院案件。 最终，在1913年，第16修正案使所得税合法化，开始了税率和例外情况的螺旋式上升。 本章记录了战争期间不断增加的税率、20年代随后的放松（以及针对资本收益的特殊规定），以及将普通产业工人带入新的税收等级的革命性战时时期。
本章仔细审查了具体的漏洞，例如免税市政债券、资本利得条款、股票期权、免税基金会以及极具争议的石油百分比损耗补贴。 本章阐明了这些条款如何通过允许富人将普通收入转化为资本收益、递延税款或扣除超出实际成本的费用来使他们受益。
作者还研究了差旅和娱乐费用的抵扣所带来的复杂性，强调了1963年后法规中根深蒂固的荒谬和庸俗。 本章还提到了由于缺乏对智力工作和创意艺术家的折旧津贴以及收入波动，而产生的对他们的歧视。
本章最后讨论了改革的潜在途径，包括彻底废除所得税（被认为在政治上不可行）以及实施替代税收制度，如增值税、消费税、使用者税、支出税和联邦彩票。 最终，作者认为，最有希望的前进方向是简化税法、消除漏洞，并解决有利于富人并需要大量依赖昂贵的专业税务咨询的系统性复杂性。 本章以呼吁建立一个更加公平和透明的所得税制度作为结束，该制度能够反映国家的价值观和优先事项。
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the Federal Income Tax in the United States, examining its social and economic impact, historical evolution, and inherent complexities. It begins by highlighting the seemingly irrational behaviors of wealthy Americans, all driven by exploiting tax loopholes and avoidance strategies. These behaviors, such as strategically timing marriages, engaging in unprofitable business ventures, or temporarily relocating abroad, illustrate the pervasive influence of tax law on individual decisions.
The chapter emphasizes the significant economic reach of the income tax, affecting virtually every business and individual. It highlights the sheer volume of individual tax returns filed and the vast proportion of government revenue generated through income taxes, solidifying its position as the "tax" in the public consciousness. The author mentions, in one case, a plaque in Venice’s Basilica of San Marco acknowledging contributions being “deductible for U.S. income tax purposes.”
A central theme is the critique of the income tax system as being neither logical nor equitable. The author argues that the progressive tax rates are undermined by numerous loopholes, allowing the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. The text highlights the discrepancy between the high tax rates on paper and the much lower effective rates paid by high-income earners. The chapter asserts that the labyrinthine nature of the tax code, encompassing thousands of pages of laws, regulations, and court rulings, creates a system that ordinary citizens cannot navigate without expensive professional advice, leading to an undemocratic state of affairs.
The chapter then delves into the historical evolution of income tax, tracing its origins from ancient head taxes to early attempts at income taxation in Florence and France, both fraught with corruption and inefficiency. The chapter then highlights Britain's enactment of the first modern income tax in 1798. Britain faced its fair share of criticism and problems stemming from the tax but ultimately habituation and economic need kept the tax in place and led to other nations instituting their own. The chapter recounts the U.S.'s initial reluctance, marked by failed proposals and constitutional challenges, including an 1894 supreme court case. Eventually, in 1913, the 16th Amendment legalized income tax, setting off an upward spiral for rates and exceptions. It chronicles the increasing rates during wartime, the subsequent easing in the 1920s (and special provisions for capital gains), and the revolutionary wartime era that brought the average industrial worker into a new tax bracket.
The chapter scrutinizes specific loopholes, such as tax-exempt municipal bonds, capital gains provisions, stock options, tax-free foundations, and the highly controversial percentage depletion allowance for oil. It elucidates how these provisions benefit the wealthy by allowing them to convert ordinary income into capital gains, defer taxes, or deduct expenses beyond their actual costs.
The author also examines the complexities surrounding deductions for travel and entertainment expenses, highlighting the absurdities and philistinism ingrained in the post-1963 regulations. It touches on the perceived discrimination against intellectual work and creative artists due to the lack of depreciation allowances for their mental capacities and income volatility.
The chapter concludes by discussing potential avenues for reform, including the abolition of the income tax altogether (deemed politically unviable) and the implementation of alternative tax systems such as value-added taxes, excise taxes, user taxes, expenditure taxes, and federal lotteries. Ultimately, the author suggests that the most promising path forward lies in simplifying the code, eliminating loopholes, and addressing the systemic complexity that favors the wealthy and requires extensive reliance on expensive professional tax advice. The chapter ends with a call for a more equitable and transparent income tax system that reflects the country's values and priorities.
中英文字稿 
第三章 联邦所得税
本章节介绍关于联邦所得税的重要内容。为了让内容更易于理解，我们将逐步解析该税种的基本原则以及其对个人和企业的影响。
1. **联邦所得税的定义**：联邦所得税是美国政府对个人和企业的收入征收的一种税。这是政府收入的一大来源，用于支持公共服务和国家支出。
2. **征税的对象**：所有赚取收入的个人都需要按规定缴纳所得税。无论收入来源于工资、薪金还是投资，所得税都是必需的。同样，企业也需要对其利润纳税。
3. **税率和税级**：联邦所得税采用累进税率系统，即收入越高，所需缴纳的税率就越高。纳税人被划分为不同的税级，不同级别有不同的税率。
4. **扣除和减税**：在计算应缴税额时，纳税人可以申请各种扣除和减税项目如标准扣除或逐项扣除，以减少应税收入。
5. **报税程序**：每个纳税年度结束后，纳税人需要提交联邦报税表，报告其收入和缴税情况。税务部门会根据报税表核算税金，多缴的可能退回，少缴的则需补交。
6. **所得税的重要性**：所得税为国家提供财政支持，对社会各项事业如基建、教育、国防等的开展至关重要。
通过上述内容，我们了解了联邦所得税的基本概念、征税对象、税率体系以及其在国家财政中的作用。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Chapter 3 The Federal Income Tax
毫无疑问，近年来，许多富有而看似聪明的美国人做了一些事情，在一个天真的观察者看来，可能显得怪异，甚至近乎疯狂。其中一些人即便继承了财富，却仍对政府的各个形式和表现进行抨击，但他们展示出对州和市政府的融资极为感兴趣，并为此捐献了巨额资金。高收入者与相对低收入者之间的婚礼往往在12月底最常进行，而在1月最少。某些特别成功的人士，尤其是在艺术领域的，会被他们的财务顾问紧急且坚决地告知在剩余的日历年内不要再进行任何有报酬的工作，他们往往也会听从这个建议，即便有时这个建议是在5月或6月已经给出的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
1. Beyond a Doubt, many prosperous and ostensibly intelligent Americans have in recent years done things that, to a naive observer, might appear outlandish, if not actually lunatic. Even of inherited wealth, some of them given to the denunciation of government in all its forms and manifestations, have shown themselves to be passionately interested in the financing of state and municipal governments, and have contributed huge sums to this end. Weddings between persons with very high incomes, and persons with not so high incomes, have tended to take place most often near the end of December, and least often during January. Some exceptionally successful people, especially in the arts, have been abruptly and urgently instructed by their financial advisors to do no more gainful work under any circumstances for the rest of the current calendar year, and have followed this advice, even though it sometimes came as early as May or June.
演员和其他从事个人服务的高收入者，一次又一次地成为了沙石生意、保龄球馆和电话应答服务的拥有者，毫无疑问，为这些平淡的生意增添了几分活力。而电影行业的人们，似乎按照某种规划好的放弃与复归的节奏，经常放弃自己的故土，去国外生活十八个月，然后在第十九个月又回归。石油投资者则在得克萨斯州的土地上开凿了无数的投机性油井，冒着远远超出正常商业判断的风险。在飞机上、出租车里或餐馆中旅行的商人们，也被人们一次又一次地看到，他们在小笔记本上 compulsively 作记录，如果被问起，他们会称其为日记。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Actors and other people with high incomes from personal services, have again and again become the proprietors of sand and gravel businesses, bowling alleys, and telephone answering services, doubtless adding a certain illan to the conduct of those humdrum establishments. Motion picture people, as if fulfilling a clockwork schedule of renunciation and reconciliation, have repeatedly abjured their native soil in favor of foreign countries for periods of eighteen months, only to embrace it again in the nineteenth. Petroleum investors have peppered the earth of Texas with speculative oil wells, taking risks far beyond what would be dictated by normal business judgment. Businessmen traveling on planes, riding in taxis, or dining in restaurants, have again and again been seen compulsively making entries in little notebooks that, if they were questioned, they would describe as diaries.
然而，他们并不是塞缪尔·皮普斯或菲利普·霍恩的精神后裔，他们只是在记录一切的花费。而企业的所有者和部分所有者安排了与未成年子女共享他们的所有权，不论孩子多么年幼。实际上，至少在一个合作协议的例子中，协议的签署被推迟，直到其中一位合伙人的孩子出生。几乎所有人都知道，这些奇怪的行为直接可以追溯到联邦所得税法的各种规定。由于这些规定涉及出生、婚姻、工作以及生活风格和地点，它们反映了法律在社会方面的影响范围。但由于这些影响仅限于富人的事务，它们并不能体现出法律在经济上的广泛影响。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
However, far from being spiritual descendants of Samuel Peeps or Philip Hone, they were writing down only what everything cost. And owners and part owners of businesses have arranged to share their ownership with minor children, no matter how young. Indeed, in at least one case of partnership agreement has been delayed pending the birth of one partner. As hardly anyone needs to be told, all these odd actions are directly traceable to various provisions of the federal income tax law. Since they deal with birth, marriage, work, and styles and places of living, they give some idea of the scope of the law's social effects. But since they are confined to the affairs of their well to do, they give no idea of the breadth of its economic impact.
在1964年，一个典型的最近年份中，大约有六千三百万份个人所得税申报，因此，常常有人说所得税法是最直接影响最多人的法律也就不足为奇了。并且，由于所得税收入占政府总收入的近四分之三，它被认为是我们最重要的单一财政措施也就可以理解了。在截至1964年6月30日的财政年度中，来自所有来源的总收入为1120亿美元。其中，大约五百四十五亿美元来自个人所得税，二百三十三亿美元来自公司所得税。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Inasmuch as almost sixty-three million individual returns were filed in a typical recent year, 1964, it is not surprising that the income tax law is often spoken of as the law of the land that most directly affects the most individuals. And, inasmuch as income tax collections account for almost three-quarters of our government's gross receipts, it is understandable that it is considered our most important single fiscal measure. Out of a gross from all sources of $112 billion for the fiscal year, that ended June 30, 1964. Roughly fifty-four and a half billion came from individual income taxes and twenty-three and a third billion from corporation income taxes.
在大众的观念中，它就是税务。经济学教授威廉·J·舒尔茨和C·洛厄尔·哈里斯在他们的书《美国公共财政》中表示这一观点。而作家大卫·T·巴塞林则指出，税务的经济影响如此广泛，以至于在美国事实上形成了两种截然不同的货币：税前钱和税后钱。无论如何，没有哪个公司是在不认真考虑所得税的情况下成立的，公司的任何事务也不可能在一天之内处理完而不考虑到所得税。几乎没有哪个收入群体的人不会时不时想到它。当然，有些人因为未能遵守税务规定而导致财富或声誉，甚至两者皆失。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the popular mind, it is the tax. The economics professors William J. Schulz and C. Lowell Harris declare in their book American Public Finance. And the writer David T. Baselin has suggested that the economic effect of the tax has been so sweeping as to create two quite separate kinds of United States currency, before tax money and after tax money. At any rate, no corporation is ever formed, nor are any corporations affairs conducted for as much as a single day without the lavishing of earnest consideration upon the income tax, and hardly anyone in any income group can get by without thinking of it occasionally. While some people, of course, have had their fortunes or their reputations or both, ruined as a result of their failure to comply with it.
几年前，一位美国游客在远离美国的威尼斯发现一个令人意外的细节：在圣马可大教堂的维护基金捐款箱上，有一个黄铜牌子，上面写着这些捐款可以在美国所得税中扣除。很多对所得税的关注都基于这样的观点，即这种税收制度既不合逻辑也不公平。可能最普遍和最严重的指责是，税法的核心几乎就是一个谎言。也就是说，税法规定对收入征收陡峭的累进税率，然后又提供一系列方便的逃税途径，使得几乎没有人，无论多么富有，真的需要支付最高税率或接近最高税率的税款。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As far afield as Venice, an American visitor a few years ago was jolted to find on a brass plaque affixed to a coin box for contributions to the maintenance fund of the Basilica of San Marco, the words deductible for U.S. income tax purposes. A good deal of the attention given to the income tax is based on the proposition that the tax is neither logical nor equitable. Probably the broadest and most serious charge is that the law is close to its heart something very much like a lie. That is, it provides for taxing incomes at steeply progressive rates, and then goes on to supply an array of escape hatches so convenient that hardly anyone, no matter how rich, need pay the top rates or anything like them.
在1960年，那些报告收入在20万到50万美元之间的纳税人平均缴纳了约44%的税。而即使是那些报告收入超过100万美元的少数人，缴纳的税也远低于50%。这个比例恰好接近一个单身纳税人在收入为4.2万美元时应该缴纳的税率，而且通常也确实缴纳了。另一个常听到的说法是，所得税就像是美国伊甸园中的一条蛇，提供了诸多诱人的小幅逃税机会，以至于每年四月都会导致全国性的道德滑坡。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For 1960, taxpayers with reportable incomes of between $200,000 and $500,000 paid, on the average about 44%, and even those few who reported incomes of over a million dollars paid well under 50%, which happened to be just about the percentage that a single taxpayer was supposed to pay, and often did pay, if his income was $42,000. Another frequently heard charge is that the income tax is a serpent in the American Garden of Eden, offering such tempting opportunities for petty evasion that it induces a national fall from grace every April.
另一派评论家认为，由于《1954年国内税收法典》结构复杂，基本法规长达一千多页，而补充说明的法院裁决和国内税务局的规定花费高达17,000美元。因此，所得税不仅导致一些荒谬的现象，比如未出生合伙人生产的砂砾演员，还形成了一种异常情况，即公民可能无法自己遵守的法律。评论家们指出，这种状况导致了一种不民主的局面，因为只有富人才能负担得起以合法方式最大限度地减少税款所需的昂贵专业建议。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Still another school of critics contends that because of its labyrinthine quality, the basic statute, the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, runs to more than a thousand pages, and the court rulings and Internal Revenue Service regulations that elaborated come to $17,000. The income tax not only results in such idiocies as gravel producing actors in unborn partners, but is in fact that anomaly, a law that a citizen may be unable to comply with by himself. This situation, the critics declare, leads to an undemocratic state of affairs, for only the rich can afford the expensive professional advice necessary to minimize their taxes legally.
在托托，几乎没有人愿意为所得税法辩护，尽管大多数公正的研究者都同意，这项法律在实施的五十年间，实际上促进了财富的大规模良性重新分配。谈到所得税，我们几乎所有人都希望进行改革。然而，作为改革者，我们大多无能为力。主要原因是这个课题极其复杂，导致许多人一听到就感到头脑空白，同时，一些小团体会对他们所受益的特定条款进行具体、专业且积极的支持。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The income tax law in Toto has virtually no defenders, even though most fair-minded students of the subject agree that its effect over the half-century that it has been in force has been to bring about a huge and healthy redistribution of wealth. When it comes to the income tax, we almost all want reform. As reformers, however, we are largely powerless. The chief reasons being the staggering complexity of the whole subject, which causes many people's minds to go blank at the very mention of it, and the specific, knowledgeable, and energetic advocacy by small groups of the particular provisions they benefit from.
像任何税法一样，我们的税法在某种程度上对改革免疫。人们通过避税手段积累的财富经常被用于抵制取消这些手段的努力。这种影响，加上国防开支和其他不断上升的政府成本在财政部的强烈要求，即使不考虑像越南战争这样的战争，已经形成了两个显著的趋势，以至于它们几乎成为了一种政治上的自然法则。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Like any tax law, ours had a kind of immunity to reform. The very riches that people accumulate through the use of tax avoidance devices can be, and constantly are, applied to fighting the elimination of those devices. Such influences, combined with the fierce demands made in the Treasury by defense spending and other rising costs of government, even leaving aside hot wars, like the one in Vietnam, have brought about two tendencies so marked that they have assumed the shape of a natural political law.
在美国，提高税率和引入避税措施相对容易，而降低税率和消除避税措施相对困难。然而，这种“自然规律”在1964年被颠覆：当时由肯尼迪总统最初提议、约翰逊总统推动的一项法案，分两阶段降低了个人所得税率，从最低20%降到14%，最高从91%降到70%；企业最高税率则从52%降到48%。总的来说，这是美国历史上规模最大的一次减税。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the United States, it is comparatively easy to raise tax rates and to introduce tax avoidance devices, and it is comparatively hard to lower tax rates and to eliminate tax avoidance devices. Or so it seemed until 1964, when half of this natural law was spectacularly challenged by legislation originally proposed by President Kennedy and pushed forward by President Johnson that reduced the basic rates on individuals in two stages, from a bottom of 20 percent to a bottom of 14 percent, and from a top of 91 percent to a top of 70 percent, and reduced the top tax and corporations from 52 percent to 48 percent, all in all, by far the largest tax cut in our history.
同时，然而，另一半自然法则依然完好无损。确实，肯尼迪总统提出的税务改革方案包含一系列重大改革计划，旨在消除避税手段，但反对改革的声音如此强烈，以至于肯尼迪本人很快放弃了大部分提议，几乎没有一项被实施。相反，新法律实际上延续或扩大了一两个避税手段。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Meanwhile, however, the other half of the natural law remains immaculate. To be sure, the proposed tax changes advanced by President Kennedy included a program of substantial reforms to eliminate tax avoidance devices, but so great was the outcry against the reforms that Kennedy himself soon abandoned most of them, and virtually none of them were enacted. On the contrary, the new law actually extended or enlarged one or two of the devices.
面对现实吧，Clitis，我们生活在一个税收的时代。《代理权》这本短篇小说集里的一位律师对另一位律师说：一切都是税收。而这位传统的律师只能在象征性的镜子中进入。在美国生活中所得税无处不在，但奇怪的是，在美国小说中很少有提到它的。不过，这种情况可能反映了这个话题缺乏文学优雅性，也可能反映了全国对所得税的一种不安感。这种不安感是因为我们创造出这个东西，却无法让它消失。它的存在不是完全好也不是完全坏，而是一种如此巨大、离谱且道德上模棱两可的东西，以至于想象力无法将其包容。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Let's face it, Clitis, we live in a tax era. Everything's taxes, one lawyer says to another in Lewis Auchincloss' book of short stories called Powers of Attorney, and the second lawyer, a traditionalist, can enter only a token's mirror. Considering the omnipresence of the income tax in American life, however, it is odd how rarely one encounters references to it in American fiction. This submission probably reflects the subject's lack of literary elegance, but it may also reflect a national uneasiness about the income tax, a sense that we have willed into existence and cannot will out of existence, a presence not wholly good or wholly bad but rather so immense, outrageous, and morally ambiguous that it cannot be encompassed by the imagination.
人们可能会问，这一切到底是怎么发生的呢？所得税只有在工业化国家中才能真正有效，因为这些国家有大量的工资和薪水收入者。而且直到本世纪之前，所得税的历史相对而言都很短暂而简单。古代普遍征收的税种，比如让玛丽和约瑟夫在耶稣出生前赶往伯利恒的那种，是人头税，每个人都需支付固定金额，而不是按收入征税的所得税。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
How in the world, one may ask, did it all happen? An income tax can be truly effective, only in an industrial country, where there are many wage and salary earners, and the annals of income taxation up to the present century are comparatively short and simple. The universal taxes of ancient times, like the one that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem just before the birth of Jesus, were invariably head taxes, with one fixed sum to be paid by everybody, rather than income taxes.
在1800年之前，只有两次重要的尝试来建立所得税制度，一次是在15世纪，另一次是在18世纪的法国。总的来说，这两次尝试都是统治者为了榨取其臣民的努力。据最著名的所得税历史学家埃德温·R·A·塞利格曼的观点，佛罗伦萨的尝试由于腐败和低效的管理最终失败。而18世纪法国的税收制度很快便充满了各种问题，并导致了对较不富裕阶层的不平等和完全随意的征税，这无疑助长了导致法国大革命的激烈情绪。由路易十四于1710年实施的旧制度税率最初为10%，后来该税率被减半，但为时已晚。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Before about 1800, only two important attempts were made to establish income taxes, one influenced during the 15th century and the other in France during the 18th. Generally speaking, both represented efforts by grasping rulers to mulk their subjects. According to the foremost historian of the income tax, the late Edwin R. A. Seligman, the Florentine effort withered away as a result of corrupt and inefficient administration. The 18th century French tax, in the words of the same authority, soon became honeycombed with abuses, and it generated inter-completely unequal and thoroughly arbitrary imposition upon the less well-to-do classes, and as such, it undoubtedly played its part in whipping up the murderous fervor that went into the French Revolution. The rate of the Ancien Regime tax, which was enacted by Louis XIV in 1710, was 10%, a figure that was cut in half later, but not in time.
这个革命政权消除了税收以及其执行者。在这个警示性例子的影响下，英国于1798年制定了所得税，以帮助资助其参与法国大革命战争。从某些方面来说，这可以被看作是第一个现代所得税。首先，它采用累进税率，年收入低于60英镑的税率为零，而超过200英镑的则为10%。此外，它的复杂程度也很高，共有124个条款，长达152页。该税收引起了普遍和迅速的不满，批评它的小册子纷纷出现。其中一本小册子，以2000年为背景，回顾了古老的残酷行径，称旧时的所得税征收者为毫无慈悲的雇佣兵和粗暴者，充满了傲慢与自以为是的无知所能表现的无礼。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The revolutionary regime eliminated the tax along with its perpetrators. In the face of this cautionary example, Britain enacted an income tax in 1798 to help finance her participation in the French Revolutionary Wars, and this was, in several respects, the first modern income tax. For one thing, it had graduated rates, progressing from zero on annual incomes under 60 pounds to 10% on incomes of 200 pounds or more, and for another, it was complicated, containing 124 sections which took up 152 pages. Its unpopularity was general and instantaneous, and a spate of pamphlets denouncing it soon appeared. One pamphlet here, who purported to be looking back at ancient barbarities from the year 2000, spoke of the income tax collectors of old as merciless mercenaries and brutes, with all the rudeness that insolence and self-important ignorance could suggest.
在三年内，由于逃税现象普遍，该税每年仅仅带来约六百万英镑的收入，最终于1802年被废除。这是在《亚眠条约》签署之后发生的。然而在接下来的1813年，由于英国财政情况再度紧张，议会颁布了一项新的所得税法。这项法律可以说是超前的，因为它包括了对收入源头进行预扣的规定。也许正因为如此，这项新税比之前的税更加不受欢迎，即使它的最高税率只有之前的一半。在1803年7月于伦敦市举行的一次抗议集会上，多位发言者表达了对所得税的极度敌视，甚至表示，如果这样的措施是为了拯救国家而必要，他们宁愿无奈地选择让国家消亡。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
After yielding only about six million pounds a year for three years, in large part because of widespread evasion, it was repealed in 1802, after the Treaty of Amiens, but the following year, when the British Treasury again found itself in straightened circumstances, Parliament enacted a new income tax law. This one was extraordinarily far ahead of its time, in that it included a provision for the withholding of income at the source, and perhaps for that reason, it was hated even more than the earlier tax had been, even though its top rate was only half as high. At a protest meeting, held in the City of London in July 1803, several speakers made what, for Britain's, must surely have been the ultimate commitment of enmity toward the income tax. If such a measure were necessary to save the country, they said, then they would reluctantly have to choose to let the country go.
尽管经历了一次又一次的挫折，甚至在长时间的完全遗忘中，英国的所得税逐渐开始繁荣发展。这也许主要是因为大家慢慢习惯了这一制度，这在所有国家的所得税发展过程中都很常见。反对声音最激烈、最无所顾忌的时候往往是在开始时，而随着时间的推移，税制越来越稳固，反对者的声音则变得越来越微弱。在滑铁卢战役胜利后的第二年，英国取消了所得税；1832年，该税种以一种不温不火的方式重新出现；而在十年后，罗伯特·皮尔爵士又热情地推动了其实施，此后所得税便一直保留至今。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yet gradually, despite repeated setbacks, in even extended periods of total oblivion, the British income tax began to flourish. This may have been, as much as anything else, a matter of simple habituation, for a common thread runs through the history of income taxes everywhere. Opposition is always at its most reckless and strident at the very outset, with every year that passes, the tax tends to become stronger, and the voices of its enemies more muted. Britain's income tax was repealed the year after the victory at Waterloo, was revived in a half-hearted way in 1832, was sponsored with enthusiasm by Sir Robert Peel a decade later, and remained in effect thereafter.
在十九世纪下半叶，基本税率在5%到不到1%之间波动，而到1913年时，税率仅为2.5%，并对高收入设置了一个适度的附加税。然而，美国对高收入征收高税率的理念最终影响了英国，到二十世纪六十年代中期，英国的最高税率已经超过了90%。在世界其他地区，或者至少在经济发达国家，一个又一个国家在十九世纪期间效仿英国，实行了所得税。法国在革命后不久也颁布了所得税，但随后又废除了这一税制，在十九世纪下半叶的几年里没有所得税，却仍然运行良好。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The basic rate, during the second half of the nineteenth century, varied between five percent and less than one percent, and it was only two and a half percent, with a modest surtax on high incomes as late as 1913. The American idea of very high rates on high incomes eventually caught on in Britain, though, and by the middle nineteen sixties, the top British bracket was over ninety percent. Elsewhere in the world, or at least in the economically developed world, country after country took the cue from Britain and instituted an income tax at one time or another during the nineteenth century. Post-revolutionary France soon enacted an income tax, but then repealed it and managed to get along without one for a number of years in the second half of the century.
最终，收入的损失变得难以忍受，法国不得不恢复征税，这项税收成为法国经济中的一个固定项目。所得税是意大利统一后首批成果之一，无论如何都是其中最重要的成果之一，而在德国统一之前，多个独立的邦就已经开征所得税。到1911年，奥地利、西班牙、比利时、瑞典、挪威、丹麦、瑞士、荷兰、希腊、卢森堡、芬兰、澳大利亚、新西兰、日本和印度也都开征了所得税。而美国方面，现在美国收入税的巨额征收到处令各国政府羡慕，其纳税人的顺从也是如此，但在设立所得税方面，美国一直落后，并且多年来一再取消这项税收。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Eventually, though, the loss of revenue proved to be intolerable, and the tax returned to become a fixture of the French economy. An income tax was one of the first, if not one of the sweetest fruits of Italian unity, while several of the separate states that were to combine into the German nation had income taxes even before they were united. By 1911, income taxes also existed in Austria, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, Greece, Luxembourg, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and India. As for the United States, the enormous size of whose income tax collections and the apparent decility of whose tax payers are now the envy of governments everywhere, it was a laggard in the matter of instituting an income tax, and for years was an inveterate backslider in the matter of keeping one on its statute books.
在殖民时期，确实存在一些类似于所得税的税收制度。例如，在罗德岛，有一段时间要求每个公民对十个邻居的收入和财产状况进行估测，以此作为税收评估的依据。然而，这种制度效率低下且容易被滥用，所以并没有持续很长时间。第一个提出联邦所得税建议的人是麦迪逊总统的财政部长亚历山大·J·达拉斯。他在1814年提出这一建议，但几个月后1812年战争结束，政府对财政收入的需求有所缓解，结果这项建议遭到了强烈反对，以至于在南北战争期间才再次被提及，那时南北双方都通过了所得税法案。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It is true that in colonial times there were various revenue systems bearing some slight resemblance to income taxes. In Rhode Island, at one point, for example, each citizen was supposed to guess the financial status of ten of his neighbors in regard to both income and property in order to provide a basis for tax assessments, but such schemes being inefficient and subject to obvious opportunities for abuse were short-lived. The first man to propose a federal income tax was President Madison's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander J. Dallas. He did so in 1814, but a few months later the War of 1812 ended, the demand for government revenue eased, and the Secretary was hooted down so decisively that the subject was not revived until the time of the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy enacted income tax bills.
在1900年之前，任何地方的新所得税几乎都在战争的刺激下才会被颁布。国家所得税主要是作为战争和国防的措施，并且直到最近才大体保持这种性质。1862年6月，由于公众对每天增加200万美元的公共债务的担忧，国会勉强通过了一项法律，规定采用累进税率征收所得税，最高税率达到10%。7月1日，林肯总统签署了这项法律，同时还签署了一项惩罚一夫多妻制的法案。次日，纽约证券交易所的股票价格出现了下跌，这下跌可能与一夫多妻制法案无关。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Before 1900, very few new income taxes appeared to have been enacted anywhere without the stimulus of a war. National income taxes were, and until quite recently largely remained, war and defense measures. In June of 1862, prodded by public concern over a public debt that was increasing at the rate of $2 million a day, Congress reluctantly passed a law providing for an income tax at progressive rates, up to a maximum of 10%, and on July 1st, President Lincoln signed it into law, along with a bill to punish the practice of polygamy. The next day, stocks in the New York Stock Exchange took a dive, which was probably not attributable to the polygamy bill.
“我的收入要交税。这真是太棒了。我从未感到自己如此重要。” 马克·吐温在《内华达州弗吉尼亚城领地企业报》中写道。他是在支付了1864年的第一笔所得税账单后发表的这种感慨，那笔税额为36.82美元，其中包括因迟交而增加的3.12美元罚款。尽管很少有纳税人如此热情，但这项法律一直有效直到1872年。然而，该法经过了一系列的税率削减和修订，其中之一是在1865年取消了累进税率，因为认为对高收入征收10%的税，而对低收入征收较低的税率，对富人是不公平的。年度税收收入从1863年的200万美元攀升到1866年的7300万美元，然后急剧下降。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I am taxed on my income. This is perfectly gorgeous. I never felt so important in my life before," Mark Twain wrote in the Virginia City Nevada Territorial Enterprise, after he had paid his first income tax bill for the year 1864, $36.82, including a penalty of $3.12 for being late. Although few other tax payers were so enthusiastic, the law remained in force until 1872. It was, however, subjected to a succession of rate reductions and amendments, one of them being the elimination in 1865 of its progressive rates on the arresting ground that collecting 10% on high incomes and lower rates on lower incomes constituted undue discrimination against wealth. Annual revenue collections mounted from $2 million to 1863 to $73 million in 1866, and then descended sharply.
在19世纪70年代初期开始的二十年间，除了偶尔有一些民粹主义者或社会主义者提出这种专门针对城市富人的征税建议之外，美国人几乎没有考虑过征收所得税的想法。然而到了1893年，国家明显依赖于一个过时的税收体系，该体系对商人和专业人士施加的负担太少，于是总统克利夫兰提出了征收所得税的建议。此举立刻引发了尖锐的抗议。俄亥俄州参议员约翰·谢尔曼（谢尔曼反垄断法的起草者）称这个建议是社会主义、共产主义和邪恶的行为。另一位参议员则阴沉地提到了带着书本的教授、带着计划的社会主义者和带着炸弹的无政府主义者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For two decades, beginning in the early 1870s, the very thought of an income tax did not enter the American mind, apart from rare occasions when some populist or socialist agitator would propose the establishment of such attacks designed specifically to soak the urban rich. Then in 1893, when it had become clear that the country was relying on an obsolete revenue system that put too little burden on businessmen and members of the professions, President Cleveland proposed an income tax. The outcry that followed was shrill. Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the father of the Sherman Antitrust Act, called the proposal socialism, communism and devilism, and another senator spoke darkly of the professors with their books, the socialists with their schemes, and the anarchists with their bombs.
在房子里，一位来自宾夕法尼亚州的国会议员这样坦率地表达了他的观点。所得税——一种让人厌恶的税，通常只有在战争时期才敢被政府征收。无论从道德还是实际方面来看，这种税收都让人极不愉快。它不属于一个自由的国家，而是有针对性的立法。你们想要奖励不诚实，并鼓励作假吗？征收这种税将腐化人民，并带来间谍和告密者。这将需要大批拥有审讯权力的官员。主席先生，一旦通过这项法案，民主党就等于签下了自己的死亡证明。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
All over in the house, a congressman from Pennsylvania laid his cards on the table in the following terms. An income tax. A tax so odious that no administration ever dared to impose it except in time of war. It is unutterably distasteful, both in its moral and material aspects. It does not belong to a free country. It is class legislation. Do you desire to offer a reward to dishonesty and to encourage perjury? The imposition of the tax will corrupt the people. It will bring in its train the spy and the informer. It will necessitate a swarm of officials with inquisitorial powers. Mr. Chairman passed this bill and the Democratic Party signs its death warrant.
他们提出的提案引发了这些强烈反对意见，内容是对超过四千美元的收入征收两个百分点的统一税率，并于1894年被立法通过。虽然民主党幸存下来，但这项新法律却没有。在法律实施之前，它被最高法院撤销，理由是违反了宪法中关于直接税必须根据人口在各州之间分配的规定。有趣的是，这一点在内战时期的所得税中从未被提及，因此，所得税问题再次陷入停滞，这次停滞持续了十五年。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The proposal they gave rise to these fulminations was for attacks at a uniform rate of two percent on income in excess of four thousand dollars, and it was enacted into law in 1894. The Democratic Party has survived, but the new law did not. Before it could be put into force, it was thrown out by the Supreme Court, on the ground that had violated the constitutional provision forbidding direct taxes unless they were apportioned among the states according to population. Curiously, this point had not been raised in connection with the Civil War income tax, and the income tax issue was dead again, this time for a decade and a half.
在1909年，著名权威Jerome Helerstein描述过的美国历史上最具讽刺意味的政治事件之一发生了。当时，第十六条宪法修正案被提出，这个修正案最终赋予了国会不经各州分配就可以征税的权力。令人意外的是，这一提案最初竟由所得税的坚定反对者——共和党人提出，他们认为这样做是一个政治策略，自信地认为该修正案永远不会被各州批准。令他们失望的是，这项修正案在1913年被批准通过。同年，国会制定了一项累进税制，对个人征收1%到7%不等的税率，同时对企业净利润征收1%的统一税率。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In 1909, by what attacks authority named Jerome Helerstein has called, one of the most ironic twists of political events in American history, the constitutional amendment, the sixteenth, that eventually gave Congress the power to levy taxes without apportionment among the states was put forward by the implacable opponents of the income tax, the Republicans, who took the step as a political move, confidently believing that the amendment would never be ratified by the states. To their dismay, it was ratified in 1913. In later that year, Congress enacted a graduated tax on individuals at rates ranging from one percent to seven percent, and also a flat tax of one percent on the net profits of corporations.
自从那时起，所得税一直伴随着我们。总的来说，自1913年以来，所得税的历史大致呈现为税率不断上升，以及定期出现的特别条款，以减轻高收入者支付这些税率的不便。第一次显著的税率上升发生在第一次世界大战期间，到1918年，最低税率为6%，而适用于超过一百万美元的应税收入的最高税率达到了77%，这远远高于之前任何政府对任何金额的所得税征收标准。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The income tax has been with us ever since. By and large, its history since 1913 has been one of rising rates and of the seasonable appearance of special provisions to save people in the upper brackets from the inconvenience of having to pay those rates. The first sharp rise took place during the First World War, and by 1918 the bottom rate was six percent, and the top one, applicable to taxable income in excess of a million dollars, was seventy-seven percent, or far more than any government had previously ventured to exact an income of any amount.
战争结束后，社会逐渐恢复正常，这个趋势也发生了逆转，随后迎来了一个富人和穷人都享受低税率的时代。税率逐步降低，直到1925年，标准税率从1.5%开始，最高不超过25%。此外，国家的大多数工薪阶层都被免除了纳税义务，因为他们可以享受个税减免：单身人士享受1500美元的免税额，已婚夫妇享受3500美元，而每个抚养人可以额外享受400美元的减免。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But the end of the war and the return to normalcy brought a reversal of the trend, and there followed an era of low taxes for rich and poor alike. Rates were reduced by degrees until 1925, when the standard rate scale ran from one and a half percent to an absolute top of twenty-five percent, and furthermore a great majority of the country's wage earners were relieved of paying any tax at all, by being allowed personal exemptions of fifteen hundred dollars for a single person, thirty-five hundred dollars for a married couple, and four hundred dollars for each dependent.
这并不是事情的全貌。 在二十世纪二十年代，特殊利益条款开始出现，这受到政治势力复杂性的推动，并自那时起这些条款间歇性地增加。1922年通过的第一项重要条款，确立了资本收益获得优惠待遇的原则。这意味着，通过投资增值获得的收入首次被征税，其税率低于通过工资或服务获得的收入税率，当然，这种差别待遇直到今天仍然存在。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This was not the whole story. Ford was during the twenties that special interest provisions began to appear, stimulated into being by the complex of political forces that has accounted for their increase at intervals ever since. The first important one, adopted in 1922, established the principle of favored treatment for capital gains. This meant that money acquired, through a rise in the value of investments was for the first time, taxed at a lower rate than money earned in wages or for services, as of course it still is today.
然后在1926年出现了一个法律漏洞，这个漏洞无疑比其他任何漏洞都让那些无法从中获利的人感到更加痛苦和沮丧。这个漏洞就是石油的百分比折旧补贴。它允许一个正在生产的油井的拥有者从其应税收入中扣除高达其油井年总收入的27.5%，而且即使他已经多次抵扣了油井的原始成本，仍然可以年复一年地继续这样扣除。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then in 1926 came the loophole that has undoubtedly caused more gnashing of teeth among those not in a position to profit by it than any other. The percentage depletion allowance on petroleum, which permits the owner of a producing oil well to deduct from his taxable income up to twenty-seven and a half percent of his gross annual income from the well, and to keep deducting that much year after year, even though he has deducted the original cost of the well many times over.
无论20世纪20年代对美国人民来说是否是一个黄金时代，对美国纳税人来说，这绝对是一个黄金时代。然而，随着大萧条和新政的到来，税率提升和免税额减少的趋势显现，这种趋势在二战期间达到了联邦所得税制真正的变革时期。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Whether or not the twenties were a golden age for the American people in general, they were assuredly a golden age for the American taxpayer. The Depression and the New Deal brought with them a trend toward higher tax rates and lower exemptions, which led up to a truly revolutionary era in federal income taxation, that of the Second World War.
到1936年时，主要由于公共支出的大幅增加，高收入阶层的税率几乎是20年代末的两倍，而且最高税率达到了79%。同时，在低收入阶层，个人免税额被削减到一个人的收入即使只有1200美元，也需要缴纳少量税款的程度。事实上，当时大多数产业工人的收入并不超过1200美元。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
By 1936, largely because of greatly increased public spending, rates in the higher brackets were roughly double what they had been in the late twenties, and the very top bracket was seventy-nine percent, while at the low end of the scale, personal exemptions had been reduced to the point where a single person was required to pay a small tax, even if his income was only twelve hundred dollars. As a matter of fact, at that time, most industrial workers' incomes did not exceed twelve hundred dollars.
在1944年和1945年，个人所得税的税率达到了历史最高点，最低档为23%，最高档为94%。同时，企业所得税自1913年最初的1%逐步上升，有些公司甚至需要缴纳高达80%的税。不过，关于战时税收，革命性的变化并不是这些非常高的税率和高收入。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In 1944 and 1945, the rate scale for individuals reached its historic peak, twenty-three percent at the low end and ninety-four percent at the high one, while income taxes on corporations, which had been creeping up gradually from the original 1913 rate of one percent, reached the point where some companies were liable for eighty percent. But the revolutionary thing about wartime taxation was not the very high rates and high incomes.
确实，到1942年，当收入最高的人群的税收负担快速增加时，一种新的避税方法出现了，或者说之前的方法得到了扩展——为了享受资本收益优惠政策，持有股票或其他资产的期限从18个月缩短到了6个月。真正具有革命性变化的是工业工资的增长和对普通工薪阶层征收较高的税率，这让工薪阶层首次成为政府收入的重要来源。突然间，所得税变成了一种大众税收。并且这一状况一直持续至今。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Indeed, in 1942, when this upward surge was approaching full flood, a new means of escape for high-bracket taxpayers appeared, or an old one widened, for the period during which stocks or other assets must be held in order to benefit from the capital gains provision was reduced from eighteen months to six. What was revolutionary was the rise of industrial wages and the extension of substantial tax rates to the wage-earner, making him, for the first time, an important contributor to government revenue. Abruptly, the income tax became a mass tax. And so it has remained.
尽管大中型企业的税率稳定在52%的固定税率，但在1945年至1964年之间，其整体收入并没有显著变化。也就是说，基本税率没有发生显著变化。在1946年至1950年期间，曾有过临时性减免，减免幅度在基本税率金额的5%到17%之间。在1950年之前，税率范围从20%到91%不等。在朝鲜战争期间有过小幅上升，但1954年后税率又恢复到了以前的水平。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Although taxes on big and middle-sized businesses settled down to a flat rate of fifty-two percent, its unindividual income did not change significantly between 1945 and 1964. That is to say, the basic rates did not change significantly. There were temporary remissions, amounting to anywhere from five percent to seventeen percent of the sums due under the basic rates during the years 1946 through 1950. The range was from twenty percent to ninety-one percent until 1950. There was a small rise during the Korean War, but it went right back there in 1954.
在1950年，另一条重要的逃税途径出现了，即所谓的限制性股票期权。这使得一些企业高管可以将他们部分收入以较低的资本利得税率征税。这个重要的改变，在税率表中是看不见的，但它延续了战时开始的趋势，即中低收入群体承担了更多的税收负担。看起来似乎有些矛盾，我国的所得税演变过程是从依靠高收入群体且税率较低，到依靠中低收入群体且税率较高。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In 1950, another important escape route, the so-called Restricted Stock Option, opened up, enabling some corporate executives to be taxed on part of their compensation at low capital gains rates. The significant change, invisible in the rate schedule, has been a continuation of the one begun in wartime, namely the increase in the proportion at tax burden carried by the middle and lower income groups. Paradoxical, as it may seem, the evolution of our income tax has been from a low rate tax relying for revenue on the high-income group to a high rate tax relying on the middle and lower middle income groups.
美国内战时期的税收政策，只影响了1%的人口，明显是对富人的征税。1913年的税收也是如此。即使在1918年，第一次世界大战造成财政紧张的高峰时期，全国超过一亿人口中，只有不到四百五十万美国人需要提交所得税申报表。到1933年，经济大萧条最严重的时候，仅有三百七十五万个申报表被提交；而到了1939年，在总人口达1.3亿的情况下，占据九成税收的仅有70万名富有的纳税人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Civil War Levy, which affected only one percent of the population, was unmistakably a rich man's tax, and the same was true the 1913 levy. Even in 1918, at the height of the budget squeeze produced by the First World War, less than four and a half million Americans, of a total population of more than a hundred million, had to file income tax returns at all. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, only three and three-quarters million returns were filed, and in 1939, an elite consisting of 700,000 taxpayers, of a population of 130 million, accounted for nine-tenths of all income tax collections.
在1960年，大约有3200万纳税人，占全国人口的六分之一以上，他们缴纳了税收总额的九分之九。而这一税收总额非常可观，总计约355亿美元，相比之下，1939年还不到10亿美元。历史学家萨利格曼在1911年写道，全世界的所得税历史基本上都在演变，以根据支付能力来征税。令人好奇的是，如果他还活着，基于美国此后的经验，他可能会对自己的说法做些什么样的补充。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
While in 1960, it took some 32 million taxpayers, something over one-sixth of the population, to account for nine-tenths of all collections, and a whopping big nine-tenths it was, totaling some thirty-five and a half billion dollars, compared to less than a billion in 1939. The historian Saligman wrote in 1911 that the history of income taxation the world over consisted essentially of evolution toward basing it on ability to pay. One wonders what qualifications he might add, on the basis of the American experience, since then, if he were still alive.
当然，中等收入人群比过去支付更多税款的一个原因是他们的人数大大增加。国家社会和经济结构的变化与所得税结构的变化一样，是造成这种转变的重要因素。然而，实际上，1913年原始的所得税制度更注重根据公民支付能力来征税，而不像现在的所得税制度那样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Of course, one reason people with middle incomes pay far more in taxes than they used to, is that there are far more of them. Changes in the country's social and economic structure have been as big a factor in the shift as the structure of the income tax has. It remains probable, though, that, in actual practice, the Aboriginal income tax of 1913 extracted money from citizens with stricter regard to their ability to pay than the present income tax does.
无论我们的所得税法有什么缺陷，它无疑是世界上执行得最好的所得税法。如今，所得税无处不在，从东方到西方，从南极到北极。几乎过去几年新成立的几十个国家都采用了所得税制度。一本名为《外国税收与贸易简报》的刊物的编辑沃尔特·H·戴蒙德提到，早在1955年，他还能随口说出二十几个不对个人征税的大大小小的国家的名字。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Whatever the faults of our income tax law, it is beyond question the best-obeyed income tax law in the world, and income taxes are now ubiquitous, from the Orient to the Occident, and from Pole to Pole. Practically all of the dozens of new nations that have come into being over the past few years have adopted income tax measures. Walter H. Diamond, the editor of a publication called Foreign Tax and Trade Briefs, has noted that as recently as 1955 he could rattle off the names of two dozen countries, large and small, that did not tax the individual.
但是，在1965年，他能随口说出的国家名字只有几个：英属殖民地百慕大和巴哈马、袖珍共和国圣马力诺和安道尔、三个富含石油的中东国家：马斯喀特和阿曼苏丹国、科威特和卡塔尔，以及两个对外国居民征收所得税但对本国公民免税的国家：摩纳哥和沙特阿拉伯。即使是共产党国家也征收所得税，尽管所得税仅占它们总收入的一小部分。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But that in 1965 the only names he could rattle off were those of a couple of British colonies, Bermuda and the Bahamas, a couple of tiny republics, San Marino and Andorra, three oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, and two rather inhospitable countries, Monaco and Saudi Arabia, which tax the incomes of resident foreigners but not those of nationals. Even communist countries have income taxes, though they count on them for only a small percentage of their total revenue.
俄罗斯对不同职业实行不同的税率：店主和宗教界人士的税率较高，艺术家和作家处于中等水平，工人和手工艺人的税率最低。美国在税收征管上的高效性有很多证据，例如，我们的行政和执法成本每征收100美元的税款仅需约44美分，而加拿大的成本是我们的两倍多，英国、法国和比利时是我们的三倍多，在其他一些地方更是多出许多。美国这种高效的税收征管让外国的税务人员感到望尘莫及。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Russia applies different rates to different occupations, shopkeepers and ecclesiastics being in the high tax bracket, artists and writers near the middle, and laborers and artisans at the bottom. Evidence of the superior efficiency of tax collecting in the United States is plentiful. For instance, our costs for administration and enforcement come to only about 44 cents for every hundred dollars collected, as against a rate more than twice as high in Canada, more than three times as high in England, France and Belgium, and many times as high in other places. This kind of American efficiency is the despair of foreign tax collectors.
在他担任职务的后期，莫蒂默·M·卡普兰这位从1961年1月到1964年7月的美国税务局局长，与六个西欧国家的主要税收管理者进行了磋商，他反复听到的问题是：你们是怎么做到的？你们那边的人喜欢纳税吗？当然不喜欢。但是，正如卡普兰当时所说，我们拥有很多欧洲人没有的优势。首先，我们有传统。美国的所得税不是由于君主们想通过压榨臣民来填满自己的财库，而是来源于民选政府为了满足公众利益的努力而发展起来的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Toward the end of his term in office, Mortimer M. Kaplan, who was Commissioner of Internal Revenue from January 1961 until July 1964, held consultations with the leading tax administrators of six Western European countries, and the question he heard again and again was, how do you do it? Do they like to pay taxes over there? Of course they do not. But, as Kaplan said at the time, we have a lot going for us that the Europeans haven't. One thing we have going for us is tradition. American income taxes originated and developed not as a result of the efforts of monarchs to fill their coffers at the expense of their subjects, but as a result of the efforts of an elected government to serve the general interest.
不久前，一位经常出差的税务律师观察到，大多数国家很难严肃地讨论所得税问题，因为那里的所得税不被认真对待。然而，在我们这里（美国），所得税被认真对待。这部分是因为我们有一个强大而专业的所得税执法机构，即国税局（Internal Revenue Service）。毫无疑问，宾夕法尼亚州国会议员在1894年所担心的官员数量庞大的情况已经出现了，而且有人会补充说，这些官员还有他曾担心的调查权力。到1965年初，国税局大约有60,000名员工，其中包括6,000多名税务官员和12,000多名税务代理人。这18,000名人员有权调查每一个人的收入来源及每餐涉及的详细事务，并且可以对违反者施以重罚，因此，他们的权力可以合理地被称为调查性的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A widely travelled tax lawyer observed not long ago. In most countries it is impossible to engage in a serious discussion of income taxes because they aren't taken seriously. They are taken seriously here, and part of the reason is the power and skill of our income tax police force, the Internal Revenue Service. Unquestionably, the swarm of officials, feared by the Pennsylvania Congressman in 1894, has come into being, and there are those who would add that the officials have the inquisitorial powers he also feared. Because of the beginning of 1965, the Internal Revenue Service had approximately 60,000 employees, including more than 6,000 revenue officers and more than 12,000 revenue agents, and these 18,000 men possessing the right to inquire into every penny of everyone's income and into matters like exactly what was discussed at an expense account meal and armed with a threat of heavy punishments, have powers that might reasonably be called inquisitorial.
美国国税局除了实际的税款征收之外，还从事许多其他活动，其中一些活动表明该机构以公平的方式行使其专制权力，甚至可能显得有些仁慈。值得注意的是，他们额外的活动中有一项是大规模的纳税人教育项目，这有时会让官员们自豪地宣称国税局运营着世界上最大的大学。作为这个项目的一部分，他们发布了几十种出版物，详细解释了法律的各个方面。他们特别自豪于其中最通用的一本蓝色封面的小册子《联邦所得税》，这本小册子每年都会发布，而且在1965年时可以在任何地方税局以40美分的价格购买。这本书由于非常受欢迎，以至于经常被私人出版商重新印刷，并以一美元或更高的价格卖给不知情的人，同时还得意洋洋地指出这是官方政府出版物。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But the IRS engages in many activities besides actual tax collecting, and some of these suggest that it exercises its despotic powers in an equitable way, if not actually in a benevolent one. Notable among the additional activities is a taxpayer education program on a scale that occasionally inspires an official to boast that the IRS runs the largest university in the world. As part of this program, it puts out dozens of publications, explicating various aspects of the law, and it is proud of the fact that the most general of these, a blue-covered pamphlet entitled Your Federal Income Tax, which is issued annually and in 1965 could be bought for 40 cents at any district director's office, is so popular that it is often reprinted by private publishers who sell it to the unwary for a dollar or more, pointing out with triumphant accuracy that it is an official government publication.
由于政府出版物没有版权，所以这是完全合法的。美国国税局（IRS）每年十二月还会举办关于技术问题的研习班，以启发即将为个人和公司准备纳税申报的庞大税务从业人员、会计师和律师群体。国税局还推出了一些基础性的税务手册，专门设计用于免费发放给有需求的高中。据一位国税局官员透露，在最近一年中，大约85%的美国高中索取了这些手册。至于学生们是否应该花时间学习税法的问题，IRS 认为这超出了他们的职能范围。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Since government publications are not copyrighted, this is perfectly legal. The IRS also conducts institutes on technical questions every December for the enlightenment of the vast core of tax practitioners, accountants and lawyers, who will shortly be preparing the returns of individuals and corporations. It puts out elementary tax manuals, designed especially for free distribution to any high schools that ask for them. And according to one IRS official, some 85 percent of American high schools did ask for them in one recent year. The question of whether school children ought to be spending their time boning up on the tax laws is one that the IRS considers to be outside its scope.
此外，每年在税务截止日期之前，美国国税局（IRS）通常会在电视上播放一些广告，提供纳税提示和提醒。国税局自豪地表示，在这些广告中，大多数都是为了防止纳税人多缴税款。1963年秋季，国税局迈出了重要的一步，进一步提高了税款征收的效率，巧妙地将这一措施呈现为善意帮助大家的举措，就像小红帽故事中伪装成奶奶的狼。这一措施是建立所谓的“国家身份档案”，为每位纳税人分配一个账户号码，通常是他们的社会保障号码。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Furthermore, just before the tax deadline each year, the IRS customarily goes on television with spot advertisements offering tax pointers and reminders. It is proud to say that, of the various spots, a clear majority have been in the interest of protecting taxpayers from overpaying. In the fall of 1963, the IRS took a big step toward increasing the efficiency of its collection still further, and by a feat worthy of the wolf in little red riding hood, it managed to present the step to the public as a grandmotherly move to help everybody out. The step was the establishment of a so-called national identity file, involving the assignment to every taxpayer of an account number, usually his social security number.
其目的在于切实消除那些未申报公司分红或银行账户、债券利息收入的个人所造成的问题，这种偷漏税行为被认为每年让国库损失数亿。然而，这并不是全部。当将这个号码正确填写在申报表上时，就能确保您所申报和缴纳的税款立即得到承认，并且任何退款会迅速记录在您的账户上。正因如此，税务局长卡普兰在1964年税务申报表的封面上兴致勃勃地作出评论。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And its intention was to practically eliminate the problem created by people who failed to declare their income from corporate dividends or from interest on bank accounts or bonds, a form of evasion that was thought to have been costing the treasury hundreds of millions a year. But that is not all. When the number is entered in the proper place on a return, this will make certain that you are given immediate credit for taxes reported and paid by you, and that any refund will be promptly recorded in your favor. So Commissioner Kaplan commented brightly on the front cover of the 1964 tax return forms.
美国国税局开始采取另一项重大举措，即引入一套系统来自动化处理大部分的税务核查流程。七台区域计算机将收集和整理数据，随后这些数据会被输入到位于西弗吉尼亚州马丁斯堡的一个主数据处理中心。这个设备被设计成每秒可以进行25万次比较，被形象地称为“马丁斯堡怪物”，甚至在全面运转前就获得了这个称号。到1965年，每年有四到五百万份报税表接受了全面审计，所有报税表都被检查以发现数学错误。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The IRS then began taking another giant step. The adoption of a system for automating a large part of the tax-checking process, in which seven regional computers would collect and collate data that would be fed into a master data processing center at Martinsburg, West Virginia. This installation, designed to make a quarter of a million number of comparisons per second, began to be called the Martinsburg Monster, even before it was in full operation. In 1965, between four and five million returns a year were given a complete audit, and all returns were checked for mathematical errors.
到1967年，计算机系统全速运转时，所有的数学工作都由机器完成了，这解放了许多国税局员工，他们可以对更多的报税表进行详细审计。在1963年国税局授权发布的一份文献中提到，计算机系统的容量和存储能力将帮助那些忘记上年度抵扣或没有充分利用法律权益的纳税人。简而言之，这将成为一个"友好的怪物"。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Some of this mathematical work was being done by computers and some by people, but by 1967, when the computer system was going full blast, all the mathematical work was done by machine, thus freeing many IRS employees to subject even more returns to detailed audits. According to a publication authorized by the IRS back in 1963, though, the capacity and memory of the computer system will help taxpayers who forget prior year credits or who do not take full advantage of their rights under the laws. In short, it was going to be a friendly monster.
近年来，美国国税局的形象可能看起来是面带微笑却有些可怕，其中一个原因可能并不是什么阴谋，而是因为在这些年里主导国税局的卡普兰是一个开朗外向、天生的政治家。他的影响力甚至在他的继任者接任后仍然继续存在。卡普兰的继任者是谢尔顿·S·科恩，一位年轻的华盛顿律师，他在1964年12月被任命为国税局局长。在他正式上任之前，有一个六个月的过渡期，这段时间由国税局的资深员工伯特兰·M·哈丁担任代理局长。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If the mask of the IRS had presented to the country in recent years has worn a rather ghastly expression of benignity, part of the explanation is probably nothing more sinister than the fact that Kaplan, the man who dominated it in those years, is a cheerful extrovert and a natural politician, and that his influence continued to be felt under the man who was appointed to succeed him as commissioner in December 1964, a young Washington lawyer named Sheldon S. Cohen, who took over the job after a six-month interim during which an IRS career man named Bertrand M. Harding served as acting commissioner.
当卡普兰辞去专员职务时，他暂时退出了政界，回到了华盛顿，重新从事律师工作，专门处理包括商人的税务问题在内的事务。卡普兰被普遍认为是历史上最优秀的国税局专员之一。至少，他比最近两位前任专员都要出色。其中一位在离职后因逃避个人所得税被判刑两年，另一位后来竞选公职，竞选宣言是反对任何联邦所得税，就像是一个前裁判游说全国抵制棒球一样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When Kaplan resigned as commissioner, he stepped out of politics, at least temporarily, returning to his Washington law practice as a specialist in, among other things, the tax problems of businessmen. Kaplan is widely considered to have been one of the best commissioners of internal revenue in history, and, at the very least, he was certainly an improvement on two fairly recent occupants of the post, one of whom, some time after leaving it, was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for evading his own income taxes, and the other of whom subsequently ran for public office on a platform of opposition to any federal income tax, as a former umpire might stump the country against baseball.
莫蒂默·卡普兰是一位身材矮小、说话快速、充满活力的人，他在纽约市长大，曾是弗吉尼亚大学的法律教授。作为税务局长，他有几个值得称道的成就，其中之一是废除了以前被指控存在的做法，即给国税局的工作人员分配征税配额。他为国税局最高层带来了超越常规的正直形象，而最引人注目的是，他成功地让全国对税收产生了一种抽象的热情。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Among the accomplishments that Mortimer Kaplan, a small, quick-spoken dynamic man who grew up in New York City and used to be a University of Virginia law professor, is credited with as commissioner, is the abolition of the practice that had previously been alleged to exist, of assigning collection quotas to IRS agents. He gave the top echelons of IRS an air of integrity beyond cavalry, and, what was perhaps most striking, managed the strange feat of projecting to the nation a sort of enthusiasm for taxes, considered abstractly.
因此，他以某种风格收集这些信息，这种风格是他所谓的“新方向”，就像是一个附属的新前沿。“新方向”的主要推动力是更加强调通过教育来提高对税法的自愿遵守率，而不是集中精力寻找和起诉故意违法者。在1961年春天，卡普兰向他的众多官员发布了一份宣言，他写道，我们都应该明白，这项服务不仅仅是直接执行业务，目标是增加20亿美元的额外评估，从拖欠的账户中再收集10亿美元，并起诉几百名违法者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Thus he managed to collect them with a certain style, a sort of subsidiary new frontier, which he called the New Direction. The chief thrust of the New Direction was to put increased emphasis on education leading toward increased voluntary compliance with the tax law, instead of concentrating on the search for and prosecution of conscious offenders. In a manifesto that Kaplan issued to his swarm of officials in the spring of 1961, he wrote, we all should understand that the service is not simply running a direct enforcement business aimed at making $2 billion in additional assessments, collecting another billion from delinquent accounts, and prosecuting a few hundred dividers.
相反，它负责管理一个庞大的自我评估税收系统，该系统通过人们在纳税申报单上自报和自愿缴纳的税款筹集了超过900亿美元，另外还有20到30亿美元通过直接执法活动获得。简而言之，我们不能忘记，我们总收入的97%来自自我评估或自愿合规，只有3%直接来自执法。我们的主要任务是鼓励和实现更有效的自愿合规。这个新的方向实际上是一个重心转移，但这是一个非常重要的转变。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Rather, it is charged with administering an enormous self-assessment tax system, which raises over $90 billion from what people themselves put down on their tax returns and voluntarily pay, with another $2 or $3 billion coming from direct enforcement activities. In short, we cannot forget that 97% of our total revenue comes from self-assessment or voluntary compliance, with only 3% coming directly from enforcement. Our chief mission is to encourage and achieve more effective voluntary compliance. The New Direction is really a shift in emphasis, but it is a very important shift.
这本书的名字叫《美国的税收之道》，由莉莉安·多莉丝编著，并于1963年出版，卡普兰撰写了序言并给予了支持。这本书的封面部分介绍道：这是一部关于世界上最大、最高效的税收机构——美国国税局的激动人心的故事。书中描述了过去一个世纪中令人振奋的事件、激烈的立法斗争，以及那些对国家产生了深远影响的敬业公务员。你将感受到废除所得税的史诗般法律之战，你会对国税局的未来计划感到震惊。你还将看到正在设计中的大型计算机将如何影响税收系统，并以新的和非同寻常的方式影响许多美国人的生活。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It may be, though, that the true spirit of the New Direction is better epitomized on the jacket of a book entitled, The American Way in Taxation, edited by Lillian Doris, which was published in 1963, with the blessing of Kaplan, who wrote the forward. Here is the exciting story of the largest and most efficient tax collecting organization the world has ever known, the United States Internal Revenue Service, the jacket announced in part. Here are the stirring events, the bitterly fought legislative battles, the dedicated civil servants that have marched through the past century and left an indelible imprint on our nation. You'll thrill to the epic legal battle to kill the income tax, and you'll be astonished at the future plans of the IRS. You'll see how giant computers, now on the drawing boards, are going to affect the tax collection system and influence the lives of many American men and women in new and unusual ways.
听起来有点像马戏团的小贩在兜售一场公开处决。至于能否用“自愿遵守”这个新方针来形容这样的税收制度，值得商榷。毕竟，这个制度下，大约四分之三的个人税收是通过源头扣缴获得的，美国国税局和其庞大的后台系统一直在暗中监视那些不小心逃税的人，而逃税的惩罚不仅包括极其严厉的经济处罚，还可能导致每项罪行最高五年的监禁。然而，卡普兰似乎对此并不感到担心。他以不知疲倦的幽默感走访全国各地的商会、会计师协会和律师协会，参加午宴演讲，赞扬他们过去自愿遵守规定，并敦促他们在未来做出更大的努力，同时向他们保证这一切都是为了一个美好的目的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It sounded a bit like a circus barker, hawking a public execution. It is debatable whether the new direction watchword of voluntary compliance could properly be used to describe a system of tax collection under which some three-quarters of all collections from individuals are obtained through withholding at the source, under which the IRS and its Martinsburg monster lurked to catch the unwary evader, and under which the punishment for evasion runs up to five years in prison per offense in addition to extremely heavy financial penalties. Kaplan, however, did not seem to feel a bit of concern over this point. With tireless good humor, he made the rounds of the nation's organizations of businessmen, accountants, and lawyers, giving luncheon talks in which he praised them for their voluntary compliance in the past, exhorted them to greater efforts in the future, and assured them that it was all in a good cause.
1964年税表封面上的文章中写道：“我们仍在努力在税务管理中加入人情味。”这篇文章由卡普兰签署，他表示这是与妻子共同撰写的。他在回答一位来电者时透露，在参加华盛顿奇瓦尼斯俱乐部于梅花酒店的午餐会议后几个小时，他提到了工作中的幽默感。去年是美国宪法所得税修正案的50周年纪念日，但国税局似乎没有收到任何生日蛋糕。这可能被认为是一种黑色幽默，除了刽子手不应该是那个开玩笑的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
We're still striving for the human touch in our tax administration, declared the essay on the cover of the 1964 tax return forms which Kaplan signed, in which he says he composed in collaboration with his wife. A lot of humor in this job, he told a caller a few hours after remarking to a luncheon meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Washington at the Mayflower Hotel. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Income Tax Amendment to the Constitution, but the Internal Revenue Service somehow or other didn't seem to get any birthday cakes. This might perhaps be considered a form of gallows humor, except that the hangman is not supposed to be the one who makes the jokes.
科恩是接替卡普兰的委员，并于1968年中期仍在职。他是土生土长的华盛顿人，1952年以全班第一的成绩毕业于乔治·华盛顿大学法学院。接下来的四年，他在国税局担任初级职务，然后又在华盛顿从事了七年的律师工作，最终成为著名律师事务所Arnold Fortis and Porter的合伙人。1964年初，他重返国税局，担任首席法律顾问。一年后，在37岁时，他成为历史上最年轻的税务局长。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Cohen, the commissioner who succeeded Kaplan and was still in office in mid-1968, is a born and bred Washingtonian who, in 1952, graduated from George Washington University Law School at the top of his class, served in a junior capacity with the IRS for the next four years, practiced law in Washington for seven years after that, eventually becoming a partner in the celebrated firm of Arnold Fortis and Porter. At the beginning of 1964, returned to the IRS as its Chief Counsel, and a year later, at the age of 37, became the youngest commissioner of Internal Revenue in History.
有着剪得很短的棕色头发、坦率的眼神，以一种朴实无华的方式让他看起来比实际年龄更年轻，科恩来自首席法律顾问办公室，并因在实际操作和理念上提升了这个办公室的声誉。他负责了一次行政重组，被广泛赞誉为加快决策速度的举措，并要求国税局在对纳税人的案件中保持法律立场的一致性。他要求国税局不要在费城对某个代码解释问题持一种立场，而在奥马哈对同一个问题持相反立场，这被认为是政府高原则战胜贪婪的壮举。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A man with close-cropped brown hair, candid eyes, in a guileless manner that makes him seem even younger than he is, Cohen came from the Chief Counsel's Office with a reputation of having uplifted it both practically and philosophically. He was responsible for an administrative reorganization that has been widely praised as making faster decisions possible, and for a demand that the IRS be consistent in its legal stand in cases against taxpayers, that it refrained from taking one position on a fine point of code interpretation in Philadelphia, say, and the opposite position on the same point in Omaha, which is considered a triumph of high principle of a governmental greed.
总的来说，科恩在就任时表示他打算继续卡普兰的政策，强调自愿遵守法律，努力与纳税公众保持和谐（或至少不冲突）的关系等等。然而，他比卡普兰要沉静一些，更具反思性，这种差异已经影响了整个国税局。他更多地待在办公室里，把参加午餐会的激励讲话交给下属去做。科恩在1965年时说道：“莫特在这方面做得很出色。由于他在这方面的努力，公众对我们的服务评价很高。我们希望在不更多施压的情况下保持这种高评价。无论如何，我也做不好，我天生不是这块料。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In general, Cohen said upon a summing office he intended to continue Kaplan's policies, to emphasize voluntary compliance, to strive for agreeable, or at least not disagreeable, relations with the tax-paying public, and so on. He is a less gregarious and a more reflective man than Kaplan, however, and this difference has had its effect on the IRS as a whole. He has stuck relatively close to his desk, leaving the luncheon circuit pep talks to subordinates. Mort was wonderful at that sort of thing, Cohen said in 1965. Public opinion of the service is high now as a result of his big push in that direction. We want to keep it high without more pushing on my part. Anyhow, I couldn't do it well. I'm not made that way.
一个常被提出且仍在被提出的指控是，专员的职务赋予了其过多的权力。专员无权提议更改税率或启动其他新的税务立法。提议更改税率的权力属于财政部长，部长可能会或可能不会在这方面征求专员的建议，而新税法的颁布当然是国会和总统的工作。然而，由于税法必须涵盖许多不同的情况，因此它们的写法通常比较笼统，专员则负责详细编写解释法律的规定，但这些规定可能会受到法庭的推翻。有时候，这些规定本身也有些模糊，在这种情况下，还有谁比专员——这些规定的制订者，更有资格去解释它们呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A charge that has often been made and continues to be made is that the office of Commissioner carries with it far too much power. The Commissioner has no authority to propose changes in rates or initiate other new tax legislation. The authority to propose rate changes belongs to the Secretary of the Treasury, who may or may not seek the Commissioner's advice in the matter, and the enactment of new tax laws is, of course, the job of Congress and the President. But tax laws, since they must cover so many different situations, are necessarily written in rather general terms, and the Commissioner is solely responsible, subject to reversal in the courts, for writing the regulations that are supposed to explain the laws in detail. And sometimes the regulations are a bit cloudy themselves, and in such cases, who is better qualified to explain them than their author, the Commissioner.
因此，几乎每当这位专员说出话时，不论是在办公桌前还是在午餐会议上，各种税务出版服务都会立刻将这些信息传播给全国各地的税务会计师和律师，他们对专员的言论都趋之若鹜，甚至超过了对一些被任命官员的言论的关注。因此，一些人视专员为实质上的专横者；而包括理论和实践税务专家在内的其他人则不这么认为。纽约大学法学院的法律教授杰罗姆·赫勒斯迪及其顾问表示，专员享有很大的行动自由，确实，他能做出可能影响国家经济发展以及个人和企业命运的决定。但如果他的行动自由受到限制，那么解释将变得僵化和确定无疑，反而会让像我这样的税务从业者更容易操控法律，以便为客户谋利。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Thus it comes about that almost every word that drops from the Commissioner's mouth, whether at his desk or at luncheon meetings, is immediately distributed by the various tax publishing services to tax accountants and lawyers all over the country, and is gobbled up by them with an evidity not always accorded the remarks of an appointed official. Because of this, some people see the Commissioner as a virtual tyrant; others, including both theoretical and practical tax experts, disagree. Jerome Hellersdy, who is a law professor at New York University Law School, as well as attached advisors, says the latitude of action given the Commissioner is great, and it's true that he can do things that may affect the economic development of the country as well as the fortunes of individuals and corporations. But if he had small freedom of action, it would result in rigidity and certainty of interpretation, and would make it much easier for tax practitioners like me to manipulate the law to their client's advantage.
专员的自由裁量权使他具有一种健康的不可预见性。当然，卡普兰并没有故意滥用他的权力，科恩也没有这样做。当我分别拜访专员办公室里的这两位时，他们都给人留下了高智商的印象，他们正如阿瑟·M·施莱辛格 Jr. 所说的，像作家梭罗那样生活在高度的道德紧张状态中。这种道德紧张的原因并不难理解。几乎可以肯定，这源于主持执行自己并不完全认可的法律时所遇到的困难。1958年，当卡普兰作为税务事务专家而非税务局专员身份出席众议院税收和预算委员会的会议时，他提出了一项名为“窗口工程”和“现金博” 的非正式活动，以便引导避免在一条他并不赞同的政策线上走下去。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Commissioner's latitude gives him a healthy unpredictability. Certainly Kaplan did not knowingly abuse his power, nor has Cohen done so. Upon visiting first one man and then the other in the Commissioner's office, I found that both conveyed the impression of being men of high intelligence, who were living, as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has said that Thoreau lived, at a high degree of moral tension, and the cause of the moral tension is not hard to find. It almost surely stemmed from the difficulty of presiding over compliance, voluntary or involuntary, with the law of which one does not very hardly approve. In 1958, when Kaplan appeared as a witness versed in tax matters rather than as Commissioner of Internal Revenue before the Houseways and Means Committee, he proposed an undocumented campaign, Windows Job, and cashux in order to train back a Hicks line walk away from his Flavor API's Food generally.
在伪造事件发生之前，有很多证据。这两种情况似乎都存在。ATM 在那里排了一条长队；我说那是一个规定的服务周期和避税机会。资本离职后不久，他详细解释了他理想中的税法应该是什么样的。与现行税法相比，它会简单得多，消除了漏洞，并取消了大多数个人抵扣和豁免，税率范围在 10% 到 50% 之间。在卡普兰的情况下，他解决道德紧张的过程在某种程度上并不完全是理性分析的结果。一些评论家对所得税持完全愤世嫉俗的观点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There was a lot of evidence before counterfeiting. It seemed like they were both. ATM led a line down out there; I said that it was a period of allotted service and opportunities for tax avoidance. Shortly after Capital Left Office, he explained in detail what his ideal tax law would be like. Compared to the present tax law, it would be heroically simple, with loopholes eliminated and most personal deductions and exemptions eliminated too, and with a rate scale ranging from 10 to 50 percent. In Kaplan's case, the resolution of moral tension insofar as he achieved it was not entirely the result of rational analysis. Some critics take a completely cynical view of the income tax.
某天，在担任专员期间，他若有所思地说。人们实际上是在说，这是一团糟，无能为力。我不能苟同。诚然，需要许多妥协，并且会继续需要。但我拒绝接受一种失败主义的态度。我们的税收制度有一种神秘的特点。无论从技术角度看它有多糟糕，它都有一种活力，因为合规程度非常高。他停顿了很长时间，可能是在他自己的论点中发现了缺陷。毕竟，在过去，全民守法并不总是意味着法律是明智或公正的。然后他继续说。纵观这些年来，我觉得我们的前景会不错。可能某种危机时刻会让我们开始超越自私的利益。我对未来五十年会有一个相当好的税制持乐观态度。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He mused one day during his stint as commissioner. They say, in effect, it's a mess and nothing can be done about it. I can't go along with that. True, many compromises are necessary and will continue to be. But I refuse to accept a defeatist attitude. There's a mystic quality about our tax system. No matter how bad it may be from the technical standpoint, it has a vitality because of the very high level of compliance. He paused for quite a long time, perhaps finding a flaw in his own argument. In the past, after all, universal compliance with the law has not always been assigned that it was either intelligent or just. Then he went on. Looking over the sweep of years, I think will come out well. Probably a point of crisis of some kind will make us begin to see beyond selfish interests. I'm optimistic that 50 years from now we will have a pretty good tax.
至于科恩，当现在的税法被写作时，他在美国国税局的立法起草部门工作，他参与了税法的撰写。人们可能会认为，这会让他对这部法典有某种特别的感情，但显然情况并非如此。请记住，当时是共和党执政，而我是民主党人，他在1965年的一天这样说道。起草法律时，你以技术人员的身份运作，而你之后感到的自豪感只是对技术能力的自豪感。因此，科恩可以重读他曾撰写的现在被法律认可的文章，既不感到欢欣也不感到后悔，对于支持卡普兰关于税法导致困难、复杂性和避税机会的观点，他一点也不犹豫。他对通过简化找到答案比卡普兰更加悲观。他说，也许我们可以降低税率，取消一些扣除，但那时我们可能会发现，为了公平起见，我们需要新的扣除。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for Cohen, he was working in the legislation drafting section of the IRS at the time the present code was written, and he had a hand in its composition. One might suppose that this fact would cause him to have a certain proprietary feeling toward it, but apparently that is not so. Remember that we had a Republican administration then, and I'm a Democrat, he said one day in 1965. When you are drafting a statute, you operate as a technician, and the pride you may feel afterward is pride in technical competence. So Cohen can reread his old prose, now enshrined in law, with neither elation nor remorse, and he has not the slightest hesitation about endorsing Kaplan's opinion that the code leads to hardships, complexities, and opportunities for tax avoidance. He is more pessimistic than Kaplan about finding the answer in simplification. Perhaps we can move the rates down and get rid of some deductions, he says, but then we may find we need new deductions, in the interests of fairness.
我怀疑，一个复杂的社会需要复杂的税法。如果我们制定了一个更简单的税法，它可能在几年后又会变得复杂。正如法国作家和外交官约瑟夫·德·迈斯特在1811年所说的，“每个国家都有它应得的政府”。因为政府的主要职能是立法，这句话暗示每个国家都有它应得的法律。虽然对于那些靠武力存在的政府来说，这种说法顶多算是半真半假的，但对于那些通过大众同意而存在的政府来说，这似乎是有道理的。如果美国法律中最重要的一条法律是所得税法，那么我们就有我们应得的所得税法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I suspect that a complex society requires a complex tax law. If we put in a simpler code, it would probably be complex again in a few years. Every nation has the government it deserves. The French writer and diplomat Joseph de Mist declared in 1811. Since the primary function of government is to make laws, the statement implies that every nation has the laws it deserves, and if the doctrine may be considered at best a half-truth in the case of governments that exist by force, it does seem persuasive in the case of governments that exist by popular consent. If the single most important law, now on the statute books of the United States is the income tax law, it would follow that we must have the income tax law we deserve.
近年来，关于所得税法的大量讨论主要集中于明显的违规行为。其中包括故意虚报可抵扣的商务费用、在税务申报中未申报的应税收入，这类欺诈或其他行为每年的金额估计高达250亿美元，还有税务局内部的腐败问题，一些专家认为这种情况在大城市中相当普遍。这些违法行为当然反映了人类长期以来的弱点。然而，所得税法本身却有些特征与特定的时间和地点密切相关，如果德·密斯特的观点正确，这些特征应该反映出一个国家的特性。也就是说，所得税法在某种程度上应该成为国家的一面镜子。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Much of the voluminous discussion of the income tax law in recent years has centered on plain violations of it, among them the deliberate padding of tax deductible business expense accounts, the matter of taxable income that has left undeclared on tax returns, fraudulently or otherwise, a sum estimated at as high as $25 billion a year, and the matter of corruption within the ranks of the Internal Revenue Service, which some authorities believe to be fairly common, at least in large cities. Such forms of outlawing, of course, reflect timeless and worldwide human frailties. The law itself, however, has certain characteristics that are more closely related to a particular time and place, and if de Mistre was right, these should reflect national characteristics. The income tax law, that is, should be, to some extent, a national mirror.
反思一下这样的情况：重申一下，目前征收所得税的基本法律是1954年的《国内税收法典》。该法典经过无数由国内税务局发布的规章的补充、无数司法判决的解释，并经过包括1964年《税收法案》在内的多项国会法案的修订，其中1964年的法案包含了我们历史上最大的一次减税。这个法典的长度甚至超过了《战争与和平》，措辞可能难以理解，充满术语，让人感到头晕目眩、心灰意冷。一个相当典型的句子，涉及到“雇佣”一词的定义，从564页的底部开始，包含超过一千个单词、19个分号、42个简单括号、3个括号中的括号，甚至还有一个莫名其妙的句中句号，最终在567页的顶部以一个明确的句号结束。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
How does the reflection look? To repeat, then, the basic law under which income taxes are now imposed is the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amplified by innumerable regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service, interpreted by innumerable judicial decisions and amended by several acts of Congress, including the Revenue Act of 1964, which embodied the biggest tax cut in our history. The Code, a document longer than Warren Peace, is phrased inevitably perhaps, in the sort of jargon that stuns the mind and disheartens the spirit. A fairly typical sentence, dealing with the definition of the word employment, starts near the bottom of page 564, includes more than a thousand words, 19 semicolons, 42 simple parentheses, 3 parentheses within parentheses, and even one unaccountable interstitial period, and comes to a gasping end with a definitive period near the top of page 567.
只有当人们仔细阅读涉及进出口税、遗产税及其他联邦税项的部分时，才会发现一句可以理解且有趣的句子，比如：“每个出口Oleomardron的人都必须在每个桶、桶唇或其他包装上以不小于半英寸的普通罗马字体标明Oleomardron。”然而，尽管《法规》第2页的一段并不是一个完整的句子，却已经足够清晰明了。它明确规定了单身人士的收入税率：不超过2,000美元的应税收入税率为20%，超过2,000美元但不超过4,000美元的应税收入税率为22%，依此类推，最高税率为应税收入超过200,000美元的91%。正如我们所了解的，税率在1964年下调，最高税率变为70%。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Not until one is penetrated to the part of the Code, dealing with export import taxes, which fall within its province, along with estate taxes and various other federal imposts, does one come upon a comprehensible and diverting sentence like, every person who shall export Oleomardron shall brand upon every tub, furkin, or other package containing such article the word Oleomardron in plain Roman letters, not less than one half inch square. Yet a clause on page 2 of the Code, though it is not a sentence at all, is as clear and forthright as one could wish. It sets forth without a due the rates at which the incomes of single individuals are to be taxed, 20% on taxable income of not over $2,000, 22% on taxable income of over $2,000 but not over $4,000, and so on up to a top rate of 91% on taxable income of over $200,000. As we have seen, the rates were amended downward in 1964 to a top of 70%.
一开始，这部法规就声明其原则，根据税率表来看，它宣称自己坚定地追求平等——对穷人征税较轻，对富裕阶层征税适中，而对非常富有的人征税几近于没收。然而，尽管这点已被广泛知晓以至于几乎无需重复，但法规并未很好地实现其原则。要证明这一点，只需参考一些由税务局每年发布的名为《收入统计》的报告，这些报告详尽地记录了最近的所得税情况。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Right at the start then, the Code makes its declaration of principle and to judge by the rate table, it is implacably egalitarian, taxing the poor relatively lightly, the well to do moderately, and the very rich at levels that verge in the confiscatory. But to repeat a point that has become so well known that it scarcely needs repeating, the Code does not live up to its principles very well. For proof of this, one need look no further than some of the recent score sheets of the income tax, a set of volumes entitled Statistics of Income, which are published annually by the Internal Revenue Service.
在1960年，个人在扣除所有的扣减和个人免税额后，如果他们的总收入在4,000至5,000美元之间，并且利用了让已婚夫妇和户主可以享受比单身人士更低税率的政策，他们最终支付的税款大约为报告收入的十分之一。而收入在10,000至15,000美元之间的人支付的税款大约为七分之一。收入在25,000至50,000美元之间的人支付的税款不到四分之一，而收入在50,000至100,000美元之间的人支付的税款约为三分之一。到目前为止，我们可以明显看出这一税收是根据支付能力进行的，正如税率表所规定的那样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For 1960, individuals with gross incomes of between $4,000 and $5,000 after taking advantage of all their deductions and personal exemptions and availing themselves of the provision that allows married couples and the heads of households to be taxed at rates generally lower than those for single persons ended up paying an average tax bill of about one-tenth of their reportable receipts. While those in the $10,000 to $15,000 range pay to bill of about one-seventh. Those in the $25,000 to $50,000 range pay to bill of not quite a quarter and those in the $50,000 to $100,000 range pay to bill of about a third. Up to this point, clearly we find a progression according to ability to pay, much as the rate table prescribes.
然而，当我们达到最高收入阶层时，这种进展却突然停止。也就是说，正是在应该最为明显的地方停住了。以1960年为例，年收入在15万到20万美元、20万到50万美元、50万到100万美元以及超过100万美元的群体，平均纳税额都不到他们应报告收入的50%。如果考虑到一个事实，即越富有的人，他们的钱中有很大一部分甚至不需要作为应税总收入报告，比如某些债券的收入和长期资本收益的一半，就会很明显地发现，在最高的收入层级，实际缴纳的税率反而下降了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
However, the progression stops abruptly when we reach the top income brackets. That is, at just the point where it is supposed to become most marked. For 1960, the $150,000 to $200,000, $200,000 to $500,000, $500,000, $1,000,000, and million-plus groups each paid on the average less than 50% of their reportable incomes. And when one takes into consideration the fact that the richer a man is, the likelier it is that a huge proportion of his money need not even be reported as gross taxable income, all income from certain bonds, for example, and half of all income from long-term capital gains, it becomes evident that at the very top of the income scale, the percentage rate of actual taxation turns downward.
1961年的收入统计数据证实了这一点。统计数据按收入等级细分，显示尽管有7,487名纳税人申报的总收入为200,000美元或以上，但其中不到500人的净收入被按91%的税率征税。在其存在期间，91%的税率就像公众的镇静剂，使低收入者庆幸自己不是富人，同时并没有对富人造成很大的影响。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The evidence is confirmed by the statistics of income for 1961, which breaks down figures on payments according to bracket, and which shows that although 7,487 taxpayers declared gross incomes of $200,000 or more, fewer than 500 of them had net income that was taxed at the rate of 91%. Throughout its life, the rate of 91% was a public tranquilizer, making everyone in the lower bracket feel fortunate not to be rich and not hurting the rich very much.
然后，作为这个笑话的点睛之笔（如果这可以算作一个笑话的话），就是那些收入最高的人反而缴税最少。也就是说，那些年收入达到百万美元或以上的人，竟然能够通过完全合法的途径做到不缴一分钱的所得税。根据收入统计数据，1960年美国有11个人处于这种情况，而当年的总人数为306名。到了1961年，这种情况的人增加到了17人，而总人数则为398名。事实上，所得税几乎没有实质上的累进性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And then, to top off the joke, if that is what it is, there are the people with more income than anyone else who pay less tax than anyone else. That is, those with annual incomes of a million dollars or more who managed to find perfectly legal ways of paying no income tax at all. According to statistics of income, there were 11 of them in 1960, out of a national total of 306 million a year, and 17 in 1961, out of a total of 398. In plain fact, the income tax is hardly progressive at all.
这种外表与现实之间巨大差距的解释，以至于让该法规面临虚伪的广泛指责，可以在其隐晦深处的对标准条款的详细例外中找到，这些例外通常被称为特殊利益条款，或者更直白地说，是漏洞。漏洞这一词汇的使用者，大多愿意承认这是一个带有一定主观色彩的称呼，因为一个人眼中的漏洞可能是另一个人的救命稻草，而在某个时刻，这可能也是同一人的救命稻草。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The explanation of this disparity between appearance and reality, so huge that it lays the code open to a broad accusation of hypocrisy, is to be found in the detailed exceptions to the standard rates which lurk in its dim depths, exceptions that are usually called special interest provisions or, more bluntly, loopholes. Loopole, as all fair-minded users of the word are ready to admit, is a somewhat subjective designation, for one man's loophole may be another man's lifeline, who are perhaps at some other time the same man's lifeline.
1913年原始所得税法中明显缺少漏洞。这些漏洞是如何进入法律并为何继续存在的问题，涉及政治，甚至可能涉及形而上学，但它们实际的运作相对简单，而且值得关注。对于拥有大量资本的人来说，避税的最简单方法莫过于投资于州、城市、市政机构和收费公路的债券。这些债券所支付的利息一律免税。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Loopoles were noticeably absent from the original 1913 income tax law. How they came to be law and why they remain law are questions involving politics and possibly metaphysics, but their actual workings are relatively simple and are illuminating to watch. By far the simplest method of avoiding income taxes, at least for someone who has a large amount of capital at his disposal, is to invest in the bonds of states, municipalities, port authorities, and toll roads. The interest paid on all such bonds is unequivocally tax exempt.
近年来，高等级免税债券的利息介于3%到5%之间。一位投资1000万美元在这种债券上的人，每年可以轻松获得30万到50万美元的免税收入，而不需要为自己或税务律师费心。如果他愚蠢地把这笔钱投入到普通投资上，假设收益率是5%，那么他的应税收入将是50万美元。在1964年的税率下，假设他是单身，没有其他收入，也没有利用任何规避手段，他将需要缴纳近36.7万美元的税款。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Since the interest on high-grade tax exempt bonds in recent years has run from 3 to 5%, a man who invests $10 million in them can collect $300,000 to $500,000 a year tax-free without putting himself or his tax lawyer to the slightest trouble. If he had been foolish enough to sink the money in ordinary investments yielding, say, 5%, he would have had a taxable income of $500,000, and at the 1964 rate, assuming that he was single, had no other income, and did not avail himself of any dodges, he would have to pay taxes of almost $367,000.
自从我们的所得税法开始实行以来，州和市政债券就一直享有免税。最初这一免税是基于宪法的理由，现在则是因为各州和城镇需要这笔资金。大多数财政部长都对该免税持支持态度，但没有一个能够成功废除它。税法中可能最重要的特殊利益条款之一就是涉及资本利得的条款。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The exemption on state and municipal bonds has been part of our income tax law since its beginnings. It was based originally on constitutional grounds and is now defended on the ground that the states and towns need the money. Most secretaries of the Treasury have looked on the exemption with this favor, but not one has been able to accomplish its repeal. Probably the most important special interest provision in the code is the one that concerns capital gains.
美国国会联合经济委员会的工作人员在1961年发布的一份报告中写道，资本利得的处理已经成为联邦税收体系中最显著的漏洞之一。这项规定基本上是说，如果纳税人在房地产、公司、股票等方面进行资本投资，并持有至少六个月后再以获利出售，那么根据这条规定，他们的利润将以远低于普通收入税率的税率征税。具体来说，这个税率是该纳税人普通最高税率的一半，或者是25%，取较低者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The staff of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress wrote in a report issued in 1961, capital gains treatment has become one of the most impressive loopholes in the federal revenue structure. What the provision says in essence is that a taxpayer who makes a capital investment in real estate, a corporation, a block of stock, or whatever holds onto it for at least six months and then sells it at a profit is entitled to be taxed on the profit at a rate much lower than the rate on ordinary income. To be specific, the rate is half of that taxpayer's ordinary top tax rate or 25% whichever is less.
这对任何收入通常会让他进入非常高税率的人来说，意味着什么是显而易见的。他必须找到一种方法，使尽可能多的收入以资本利得的形式获得。因此，在过去的十年或二十年里，把普通收入转化为资本利得的方法变得非常流行。这个"游戏"常常不费太大力气就能赢得胜利。在20世纪60年代中期的一次电视节目中，David Susskind询问了六位聚集在一起的亿万富翁，他们是否认为税率是通往财富之路上的绊脚石。现场一片沉默，仿佛这些亿万富翁对这个想法感到陌生，随后，其中一位用对孩子解释事情的语气提到了资本利得条款，并表示他并不认为税收是个大问题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
What this means to anyone whose income would normally put him in a very high tax bracket is obvious. He must find a way of getting as much as possible of that income in the form of capital gains. Consequently, the game of finding ways of converting ordinary income into capital gains has become very popular in the past decade or two. The game is often won without much of a struggle. On television one evening in the middle 1960s, David Susskind asked six assembled multimillionaires whether any of them considered tax rates a stumbling block on the high road to wealth in America. There was a long silence, almost as if the notion were new to the multimillionaires and then one of them in the tone of someone explaining something to a child mentioned the capital gains provision and said that he didn't consider taxes much of a problem.
那天晚上，对于高税率的讨论就此打住了。如果说资本利得条款像某些债券的豁免条款一样，其好处主要惠及富人，那么它在其他方面则有所不同。资本利得条款是两个漏洞中更宽松的一个。实际上，它可以被称为“母漏洞”，因为它能够产生其他漏洞。例如，通常我们会认为纳税人需要先有资本才能获得资本利得。但在1950年，有人发现了一种方法，并使之成为法律，即纳税人可以在没有资本之前就获得资本利得。这就是股票期权条款。根据这项条款，公司可以赋予其高管在约定期限内（比如五年内）以当时市场价格或接近市场价格购买公司股份的权利。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There was no more discussion of high tax rates that night. If the capital gains provision resembles the exemption on certain bonds in that the advantages it affords are of benefit chiefly to the rich, it differs in other ways. It is by far the more accommodating of the two loopholes. Indeed, it is a sort of mother loophole capable of spawning other loopholes. For example, one might think that a taxpayer would need to have capital before he could have a capital gain. Yet a way was discovered and was passed into law in 1950 for him to get the gain before he has the capital. This is the stock option provision. Under its terms, a corporation may give its executives the right to buy its shares at any time within a stipulated period, say five years, at or near the open market price at the time of the granting of the option.
如果之后市场上的股票价格像过去经常发生的那样大幅上涨，管理层可以选择以之前的旧价格购买股票，随后在一段时间后以新价格在公开市场上卖掉，并且只需为差额支付资本利得税，前提是他们不急于求成。从管理层的角度来看，这其中的奥妙在于，一旦股票价值大幅上涨，他们手中的期权本身就变成了一项有价值的资产，他们可以用它来借入现金以行使期权。然后，购买股票并再次卖出后，他们可以偿还债务，并获得一种没有投资任何资本却产生的资本收益。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Later on, if, as has happened so often, the market price of the stock goes sky high, the executives may exercise their options to buy the stock at the old price, may sell it on the open market sometime later at the new price, and may pay only capital gains rates on the difference provided that they go through these motions without unseemly haste. The beauty of it all from an executive's point of view is that once the stock has gone up substantially in value, his option itself becomes a valuable commodity, against which he can borrow the cash he needs in order to exercise it. Then, having bought the stock and sold it again, he can pay off his debt and have a capital gain that has arisen from the investment of no capital.
从公司的角度来看，其妙处在于他们可以部分以税率相对较低的货币形式补偿高管。当然，如果公司的股票下跌——这种情况偶尔会发生——或者股票根本没有上涨，这整个计划就会化为乌有。但即便如此，高管相当于在股票市场的轮盘赌中获得了一次免费尝试，有机会赢得大量收益，而几乎没有任何损失的风险，这是一种税法未给予其他群体的待遇。通过优待资本收益而非普通收入，税法似乎传递了两个非常值得怀疑的观念：一种是认为未经努力获得的收入比通过劳动获得的收入更值得，另一种是认为有资金可供投资的人比没有资金的人更值得被优待。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The beauty of it all from the corporation's point of view is that they can compensate their executives partly in money taxable at relatively low rates. Of course, the whole scheme comes to nothing if the company's stock goes down, which does happen occasionally, or if it simply doesn't go up. But even then, the executive has had a free play on the roulette wheel of the stock market, with a chance of winning a great deal and practically no danger of losing anything, something that the tax law offers no other group. By favoring capital gains over ordinary income, the code seems to be putting forward two very dubious notions, that one form of unearned income is more deserving than any form of earned income, and that people with money to invest are more deserving than people without it.
几乎没有人认为资本利得受到优待的待遇可以在公平性上得到辩护。对于考虑这一问题的人，他们倾向于同意从社会学角度来分析的Helestine的观点，他认为，对因财产价值增长而获得的利润征收更高税收是有一定道理的，相较于对个人服务所得的收入征税。对资本利得优惠待遇的辩护则基于其他理由。一方面，有一个受认可的经济理论支持对资本利得完全免征所得税。这个理论认为，工资和投资的分红或利息是资本树上的果实，因此是应纳税的收入，而资本利得代表的是这棵树本身的增长，因此不能算作收入。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Hardly anyone contends that the favored treatment of capital gains can be justified on the ground of fairness. Those who consider this aspect of the matter are apt to agree with Helestine, who has written, from a sociological viewpoint, there is a good deal to be said for more severe taxation of profit from appreciation in the value of property than from personal service income. The defense then is based on other grounds. For one, there is a respectable economic theory that supports a complete exemption of capital gains from income tax. The argument being that whereas wages and dividends or interest from investments are fruits of the capital tree, and are therefore taxable income, capital gains represent the growth of the tree itself, and are therefore not income at all.
这种区别实际上体现在一些国家的税法中，尤其是英国的税法。原则上，英国在1964年之前并不对资本利得征税。另一个纯粹从实用角度出发的论点认为，资本利得条款是必要的，以鼓励人们对自己的资本进行风险投资。同样，股权激励的支持者表示，公司需要股权激励来吸引和留住高管人才。最后，几乎所有的税务机关都同意，按照与其他收入完全相同的标准对资本利得征税，这就是大多数改革者认为应该做到的，会涉及到巨大的技术难题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This distinction is actually embedded in the tax laws of some countries, most notably in the tax law of Britain, which in principle did not tax capital gains until 1964. Another argument, this one purely pragmatic, has it that the capital gains provision is necessary to encourage people to take risks with their capital. Similarly, the advocates of stock options say that corporations need them to attract and hold executive talent. Finally, nearly all tax authorities are agreed that taxing capital gains on exactly the same basis as other income, which is what most reformers say ought to be done, would involve formidable technical difficulties.
富有和高收入人群中的特定子类别可以通过多种方式减少税负，包括企业养老金计划。这些计划类似于股票期权，可以帮助高管解决税务问题。此外，还有一些名义上用于慈善和教育目的的免税基金会，其中超过一万五千个基金会帮助减轻了捐赠者的税负，虽然其中一些基金会的慈善和教育活动几乎不可见。此外，还有个人控股公司，虽然受到了相对严格的监管，仍然使得那些拥有很高个人服务收入的人，例如作家和演员，能够通过将自己进行公司化来降低税负。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Particular subcategories of the rich and the well-paid can avail themselves of various other avenues of escape, including corporate pension plans, which, like stock options, contribute to the solution of the tax problems of executives. Tax-free foundations set up ostensibly for charitable and educational purposes, of which over fifteen thousand helped to ease the tax burdens of their benefactors, though the charitable and educational activities of some of them are more or less invisible, and personal holding companies, which subject to rather strict regulations, enable persons with very high incomes from personal services, like writing and acting, to reduce their taxes by what amounts to incorporating themselves.
在所有税法中的漏洞中，最让人厌恶的可能就是石油的百分比折旧减免。税法中使用“折旧”这个词，是指不可再生自然资源的逐步耗尽，但在石油从业者的税务申报中，这个词却变成了一种奇迹般美化的“折旧”。厂家对一台机器申请折旧扣税，只能扣除到机器的原始成本为止，也就是说，直到这台机器在理论上变得一文不值。而无论是个人还是公司，作为石油投资者，却可以基于难以讲清的原因，对产油井无限期申请百分比折旧，即使这意味着油井的原始成本已经多次收回。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Of the whole array of loopholes in the code, however, probably the most widely loathed is the percentage depletion allowance on oil. As the word depletion is used in the code, it refers to the progressive exhaustion of irreplaceable natural resources, but as used on oilman's tax returns, it proves to mean a miraculously glorified form of what is ordinarily called depreciation. Whereas a manufacturer may claim depreciation on a piece of machinery as a tax deduction, only until he has deducted the original cost of the machine, until, that is, the machine is theoretically worthless from where, an individual or corporate oil investor, for reasons that defy logical explanation, may go on claiming percentage depletion on a producing well indefinitely, even if this means that the original cost of the well has been recovered many times over.
石油枯竭补贴每年为27.5%，但最高只能达到石油投资者净收入的一半。其他自然资源有较小的补贴，比如铀是23%，煤是10%，牡蛎和蛤壳是5%。这些补贴对石油投资者的应纳税收入的影响，尤其是在与其他避税措施结合使用时，的确令人惊讶。例如，在最近的五年间，一位石油商人的净收入有1430万美元，但他只缴纳了8万美元的税，税率仅为0.6%。不足为奇的是，百分比枯竭补贴总是遭到抨击，但同样不足为奇的是，它也总是被强力捍卫。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The oil depletion allowance is 27.5% a year, up to a maximum of half of the oil investor's net income. There are smaller allowances and other natural resources, such as 23% on uranium, 10% on coal, and 5% on oyster and clam shells. And the effect it has on the taxable income of an oil investor, especially when it is combined with the effects of other tax avoidance devices, is truly astonishing. For instance, over a recent five-year period, one oilman had a net income of $14.00 and a third million dollars, on which he paid taxes of $80,000 or six-tenths of 1%. Unsurprisingly, the percentage depletion allowance is always under attack, but also unsurprisingly, it is defended with tigerish zeal.
即使是虎视眈眈的肯尼迪总统在1961年和1963年提出的税收改革建议，这被普遍认为是由国家元首提出的最广泛的税改计划，也没有敢提议废除这个政策。通常的观点是，百分比枯竭津贴是必要的，因为它可以补偿石油商在勘探钻井时所冒的风险，从而确保国家使用的石油供应充足。但是，许多人认为，这种论点实际上是在说，枯竭津贴是对石油行业的必要而且有益的联邦补贴，因此这一论点本身就站不住脚，因为给予某个特定行业补贴并不是所得税应承担的职责。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
So, tigerish, that even President Kennedy's 1961 and 1963 proposals for tax revision, which taken together, are generally considered the broadest program of tax reform ever put forward by a chief executive, did not venture to suggest its repeal. The usual argument is that the percentage depletion allowance is needed in order to compensate oilmen for the risks involved in speculative drilling, and thus ensure an adequate supply of oil for national use. But many people feel that this argument amounts to saying that depletion allowance is a necessary and desirable federal subsidy to the oil industry, and thereby scuttles itself, since granting subsidies to individual industries is hardly the proper task of the income tax.
1964年的《税收法》几乎没有堵住税收漏洞，但在某种程度上减低了其利用价值，因为对高收入群体的基本税率进行了大幅削减，这可能使一些高收入纳税者不再去费力使用那些不太方便或效果不佳的避税手段。就新法案在一定程度上缩小税法承诺与实际执行之间差距而言，它算是一种有益的改革。彻底解决所有所得税逃避问题的一个办法就是废除所得税。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The 1964 Revenue Act does practically nothing to plug the loopholes, but it does make them somewhat less useful, in that the drastic reduction of the basic rates on high incomes has probably led some high-bracket taxpayers simply to quit bothering with the less convenient or effective of the dodges. Insofar as the new bill reduces the disparity between the code's promises and its performance, that is, it represents a kind of advantageous reform. One way to cure all income tax evasion would be to repeal the income tax.
然而，自1964年以来，虽然这些巧言令色有所减少，但该法规包含的一些容易辨别且令人不安的特征仍未改变，将来可能也很难改变。其中一些问题涉及法规对自行经营生意的人，或者那些有工作但没有报销业务开支的人的差旅和招待费扣除方式的规定。据近期估计，这些扣除每年在五十亿到一百亿美元之间，导致联邦收入减少一到二十亿美元。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
However, quite apart from the sophistry since 1964 happily somewhat lessened that the code embodies, it has certain discernible and disturbing characteristics that have not been changed and may be particularly hard to change in the future. Some of them have to do with its methods of allowing and disallowing deductions for travel and entertainment expenses by persons who are in business for themselves, or by persons who are employed but are not reimbursed for their business expenses, deductions that were estimated fairly recently at between five and ten billion dollars a year, with the resulting reduction in federal revenue of between one and two billion.
旅行和娱乐问题，也就是通常所说的T&E问题，一直存在很长时间，并且顽固地抵制了各种解决尝试。T&E历史上的一个关键时刻发生在1930年，当时法院裁定，演员兼歌曲作者乔治·M·科汉有权根据合理估算扣除他的商业开支，即使他无法提供支付该金额的证明，甚至无法提供详细的账目。这一裁决意味着其他人也可以这样做。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The travel and entertainment problem, or the T&E problem, as it is customarily called, has been around a long time and has stubbornly resisted various attempts to solve it. One of the crucial points in T&E history occurred in 1930, when the courts ruled that the actor and songwriter George M. Kohan, and therefore anyone else, was entitled to deduct his business expenses on the basis of a reasonable estimate, even if he could not produce any proof of having paid that sum, or even produce a detailed accounting.
这段文字的大意可以翻译如下：
所谓的Kohan条例在实施后长达三十多年里，每年春天都被成千上万的商人像穆斯林面向麦加一样虔诚地引用。在这些年里，商人们的税务扣除额估算就像葛藤一样迅速增长，估算者们也变得更加大胆。结果，Kohan条例以及其他不太严格的差旅费用规定遭到了试图改革者的一系列攻击。在1951年和1959年，国会曾提出法案，几乎或完全要废除Kohan条例，然而，这些法案最终被否决，其中一次否决的原因是在公众强烈反对下，人们认为差旅和娱乐费用改革会导致肯塔基赛马会的终结。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Kohan rule, as it came to be called, remained in effect for more than three decades, during which it was invoked every spring by thousands of businessmen as richly as Muslims turned toward Mecca. Over those decades, estimated business deductions grew like kudzu vines as the estimators became bolder, with the result that the Kohan rule and other flexible parts of the T&E regulations were subjected to a series of attacks by would-be reformers. Bills that would have virtually or entirely eliminated the Kohan rule were introduced in Congress in 1951, and again in 1959, only to be defeated, in one case, after an outcry that T&E reform would mean the end of the Kentucky Derby.
在1961年，肯尼迪总统提议了一项立法，这项立法不仅会废除Kohan规则，还将把一个人每天可以用于食物和饮料的扣除额度降低到四到七美元之间，这几乎会终结美国生活中关于可扣除额度的错误。然而，这样的根本性社会变革并没有发生。商人们以及酒店、餐馆和夜总会立刻发出了强烈且持久的抗议声，许多肯尼迪的提议很快就被放弃了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And in 1961, President Kennedy proposed legislation that not only would have swept aside the Kohan rule, but by reducing to between four and seven dollars a day the amount that a man could deduct for food and beverages would have all but put an end to the error of deductibility in American life. No such fundamental social change took place. Loud and long whales of anguish instantly arose from businessmen and also from hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, and many of the Kennedy proposals were soon abandoned.
尽管如此，美国国会在1962年通过了一系列对法规的修订，并由国税局在1963年实施。这些修订确实废除了Kohan规则，并规定，从那时起，无论金额大小，所有商业扣除都必须通过记录证明，甚至需要实际收据。然而，即使粗略查看自那时以来的法律，也可以看出这些新改革的差旅与娱乐费用规定有些不尽如人意，实际上充满了荒谬之处，并且缺乏深思熟虑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Nevertheless, there were a series of amendments to the code passed by Congress in 1962 and put into effect by a set of regulations issued by the Internal Revenue Service in 1963. They did lead to the abrogation of the Kohan rule, and the stipulation that, generally speaking, all business deductions, no matter how small, would, thenceforward, have to be substantiated by records if not by actual receipts. Yet even a cursory look at the law, as it has stood since then, shows that the new reformed T&E rules fall somewhat short of the ideal, that in fact they are shot through with absurdities and underlaid by kind of philisthenism.
要使旅行费用可以抵税，旅行的主要目的是为了工作而不是娱乐，并且必须是离家出发的旅行，也就是说，不只是上下班通勤。关于“离家”的规定引发了“家”在哪里的疑问，并引出了“税务之家”的概念，这是一个人必须离开的地方，才能符合旅行费用扣除的条件。对于一位商人来说，不管他拥有多少乡间别墅、狩猎小屋和分公司，他的“税务之家”是他主要工作的区域，而不仅仅是某一特定建筑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For travel to be deductible, it must be undertaken primarily for business rather than for pleasure, and it must be away from home, that is to say not merely commuting. The away from home stipulation raises the question of where home is, and leads to the concept of a tax home, the place one must be away from in order to qualify for travel deductions. A businessman's tax home, no matter how many country houses, hunting lodges, and branch offices he may have, is the general area, not just a particular building, that is, of his principle plates of employment.
因此，通勤到两个不同城市工作的婚姻伴侣拥有各自独立的税务住所，但幸运的是，法规仍然承认他们的婚姻，给予他们和其他已婚人士相同的税收优惠。尽管已经存在所谓的“税务婚姻”，但“税务离婚”仍旧是尚未实现的概念。至于娱乐方面，由于编写国税局法规的人员不再能使用广泛适用的共同消费规则，他们不得不做出微妙的区分，几乎达到神学上的精细程度。而这些区分的结果是直接鼓励了一种习惯，即在任何时候、与各类人群中谈论工作事务，这一点多年来一直被认为是过于常见的现象。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As a result, marriage partners who commute to work in two different cities have separate tax homes, but fortunately the code continues to recognize their union to the extent of allowing them the tax advantages available to other married people. Although there have been tax marriages, the tax divorce still belongs to the future. As for entertainment, now that the writers of IRS regulations have been deprived of the far-reaching co-hand rule, they are forced to make distinctions of almost theological nicety, and the upshot of the distinctions is to put a direct premium on the habit, which some people have considered all too prevalent for many years, anyhow, of talking business at all hours of the day and night, and in all kinds of company.
例如，只有在夜总会、剧院或音乐会等场所招待商务伙伴时，如果在招待前后或期间进行实质性和真实的商务讨论，才能获得扣除。很难想象如果商人在演出或音乐会期间大量进行商务讨论，会是什么结果。另一方面，如果商人在没有娱乐表演的安静餐厅内招待他人，即使很少或没有进行实际商务讨论，只要会议有商务目的，他仍可以申请扣除。一般来说，环境越嘈杂、混乱或让人分心，进行的商务谈话就必须越多。规定中明确将鸡尾酒会列为嘈杂和令人分心的场合，因此在此类活动前后或期间需进行显著数量的商务讨论。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For example, deductions are granted for the entertainment of business associates at nightclubs, theaters, or concerts only if a substantial and bonafide business discussion takes place before, during, or after the entertainment. One is reluctant to picture the results if businessmen take to carrying on business discussions in great numbers during plays or concerts. On the other hand, a businessman who entertains another in a quiet business setting such as a restaurant with no floor show may claim a deduction even if little or no business is actually discussed as long as the meeting has a business purpose. Generally speaking, the noisier and more confusing or distracting the setting, the more business talk there must be. The regulations specifically include cocktail parties in the noisy and distracting category, and accordingly require conspicuous amounts of business discussion before, during, or after them.
尽管在主人家中为商业伙伴准备的一顿饭可能无需任何商业讨论即可获得扣除。然而，在这种情况下，正如J. K. Lasser税务研究所的热门指南《你的所得税》所警示的那样，你必须准备好证明你的动机是出于商业目的而不是社交目的。换句话说，为了保险起见，无论如何都要谈论业务。赫勒斯坦写道，从今往后，税务人无疑会敦促他们的客户在任何情况下都谈论业务，并会要求他们提醒妻子，如果她们想继续维持现有的生活方式，就不要反对谈论业务。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Though a meal served to a business associate at the host's home may be deductible with no such discussion at all. In the latter case, however, as the J. K. Lasser Tax Institute cautions in its popular guide, Your Income Tax, you must be ready to prove that your motive was commercial rather than social. In other words, to be on the safe side, talk business anyhow. Helerstein has written, henceforth, tax men will doubtless urge their clients to talk business at every turn, and will ask them to admonish their wives not to object to shop talk if they want to continue their custom style of living.
在1963年后的规则中，大规模的娱乐活动是不被鼓励的。但是，如Lasser小册子略带喜悦地指出，国会并未在法律中明确规定禁止奢华或者奢侈的娱乐活动。相反，规则中规定，如果商人在娱乐设施上，比如游艇、狩猎小屋、游泳池、保龄球馆或者飞机等，用于商务用途的时间超过一半，他就可以将该设施相关的运作费用部分作为扣除项。 在一本名为《1963年费用账户》的小册子中，该规则通过以下例子进行了说明：一艘游艇是为了招待客户而维护的，其中25%的时间用于休闲。因为这艘游艇有75%的时间用于商业目的，所以是主要为了推动纳税人的业务，这样的话，75%的养护费用可以作为可扣除的娱乐设施费用。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Entertainment, on an elaborate scale, is discouraged in the post-1963 rules, but, as the Lasser booklet notes, perhaps a little jubilantly, Congress did not specifically put into law a provision barring lavish or extravagant entertainment. Instead, it decreed that a businessman made a deduction appreciation in operating expenses on an entertainment facility—a yacht, a hunting lodge, a swimming pool, a bowling alley, or an airplane, for instance, provided he uses it more than half the time for business. In a booklet entitled Expense Accounts, 1963, which is one of many publications for the guidance of tax advisors that are issued periodically by Commerce Clearinghouse Inc., the rule was explained by means of the following example. A yacht is maintained for the entertainment of customers. It is used 25% of the time for relaxation. Since the yacht is used 75% of the time for business purposes, it is used primarily for the furtherance of the taxpayers' business, and 75% of the maintenance expenses are deductible entertainment facility expenses.
如果游艇只有40%的时间用于商业用途，那么将不允许任何扣除。并没有规定游艇主人如何测量商业时间和娱乐时间。可以推测，当游艇在船坞中或只载有船员的时候，这段时间既不计入商业也不计入娱乐。然而，也有人可能认为，游艇主人有时候单单欣赏游艇在锚点摇曳就能感受到乐趣。那么应该分配的时间应当是在他和一些客人在游艇上的时段，或许他最有效的遵守法律的方法就是安装两个秒表，左舷计时器用于记录商业巡游时间，右舷计时器用于记录娱乐巡游时间。或许顺风而行会让一次社交巡游提早一个小时回航，或者九月的一场风暴推动商业巡游的最后一段航程，这样就可以使本季的商业时间达到关键的50%以上。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If the yacht had been used only 40% for business, no deduction would be allowed. The method by which the yachtsman is to measure business time and pleasure time is not prescribed. Presumably, time when the yacht is in dry dock, or is in the water with only her crew aboard, would count as neither, though it might be argued that the owner sometimes derives pleasure simply from watching her swing at anchor. The time to be apportioned then must be the time when he and some guests are aboard her, and perhaps his most efficient way of complying with the law would be to install two stopwatches, Port and Starbird, one to be kept running during business cruising, and the other during pleasure cruising. Perhaps a favoring westerly might speed a social cruise home an hour early, or September blow to lay the last leg of a business cruise, and thus tip the season's business time above the crucial 50% figure.
对于船长来说，这种及时的胜利可能是值得祈祷的，因为他游艇的税费抵扣可能会使他当年的税后收入翻倍。总之，这项法律有些荒谬。一些专家认为，细节法规的变化对我们的社会是一种收益，因为许多纳税人可能会在一些宽泛的规定下动心作假，比如所谓的“顺手原则”，但他们没有胆量或心思具体罗列虚假的项目。然而，这种合规性的提高可能也是对我们国家生活的某种贬低。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Well, might the skipper pray for such timely wins, since the deductibility of his yacht could easily double his after-tax income for the year? In short, the law's nonsense. Some experts feel that the change in teeny regulations represents a gain for our society because quite a few taxpayers who may have been inclined to fudge a bid under general provisions like the go-hand rule do not have the stomach or the heart to put down specific fraudulent items. But what has been gained in the way of compliance may have been lost in a certain debasement of our national life.
税法的任何部分几乎从未如此积极地推动社交商业化，或特别惩罚了理查德·霍夫施塔特在其著作《美国生活中的反智主义》中所说的开国者所具有的业余精神。或许最大的危险在于，人们通过申报那些在技术上属于商业但实际上是社交的活动作为扣除项，也就是遵循法律的字面规定，这样做可能会让自己感到生活变得廉价。有人可能会认为，如果开国者在世，他们会鄙视将社交与商业、业余与专业混为一谈，并且只会申报最明确无误的开支。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Scarcely ever has any part of the tax law tended so energetically to compel the commercialization of social intercourse, or penalized so particularly the amateur spirit, which Richard Hofstadter declares in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life characterized the Founders of the Republic. Perhaps the greatest danger of all is that, by claiming deductions for activities that are technically business but actually social, that is, by complying with the letter of the law, a man may cheapen his life in his own eyes. One might argue that the Founders, if they were alive today, would scornfully decline to mingle the social and the commercial, the amateur and the professional, and would disdain to claim any but the most unmistakable expenses.
但根据现行税法，问题在于他们是否能负担得起如此高额的税款，或者甚至应该被要求做出这样的选择。有观点认为，税法对知识性工作的待遇是不公平的，主要证据在于：所有类型的可消耗实物资产都可以申请折旧，天然资源也可以申请耗竭减税，但对于创作者和发明者的精神或创造力的消耗，却没有类似的扣除。这些人的后期作品质量和收入有时会明显下降，可脑力疲乏的影响却得不到承认。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But under the present tax laws, the question would be whether they could afford such a lordly overpayment of taxes or should even be asked to make the choice. It has been maintained that the code discriminates against intellectual work, the principal evidence being that while depreciation may be claimed on all kinds of exhaustible physical property and depletion may be claimed on natural resources, no such deductions are allowed in the case of exhaustion of the mental or imaginative capacities of creative artists and inventors, even though the effects of brainfag are sometimes all too apparent in the later work and incomes of such persons.
有人认为职业运动员受到歧视，因为相关法则不允许对他们身体的损耗进行折旧。像美国作者联盟这样的组织进一步指出，这一法则对作者和其他创意工作者是不公平的，因为他们的收入由于工作性质和市场经济原因会大幅波动。这样一来，他们在收入较高的年份被征收过重的税，而在收入较低的年份又没有足够的财力来维持生活。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It has also been argued that professional athletes are discriminated against in that the code does not allow for depreciation of their bodies. Organizations like the Authors League of America have contended further that the code is unfair to authors and other creative people whose income, because of the nature of their work and the economics of its marketing, is apt to fluctuate wildly from year to year, so that they are taxed exorbitantly in good years and are left with too little to tie them over bad years.
1964年法案中的一项规定旨在解决这种情况。它为创意艺术家、发明家和其他突然获得大笔收入的人提供了一个四年平均公式，以减轻突发性收入年份带来的税收负担。不过，如果说税法对知识分子不利，这种情况可能只是无意的，而且肯定是存在不一致的。通过给予慈善基金会免税待遇，税法便利了每年发放数百万美元的奖励，这些资金大多数本来会被政府征税，用于资助学者的旅行和生活费用，以支持他们进行各种研究项目。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A provision of the 1964 bill intended to take care of this situation provided creative artists, inventors, and other receivers of sudden large income with a four-year averaging formula to ease the tax bite of a windfall year. But if the code is anti-intellectual, it is probably so only inadvertently, and is certainly so only inconsistently. By granting tax-exempt status to charitable foundations, it facilitates the award of millions of dollars a year, most of which would otherwise go into the government's coffers to scholars for travel and living expenses while they carry out research projects of all kinds.
通过对已增值财产的馈赠做出特殊规定，这种做法无论是有意还是无意，不仅推动了画家和雕塑家作品价格的上涨，还将数以千计的艺术品从私人收藏引导至公立博物馆。这个过程的运作机制现在已经非常为人所知，只需简单概述一下。一位藏家将艺术品捐赠给博物馆时，可以在所得税申报中扣除该艺术品在捐赠时的公允价值，并且无需为其购买以来增值部分支付资本利得税。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And by making special provisions in respect to gifts of property that has appreciated in value it has, whether it's inadvertently or inadvertently, tended not only to force up the prices that painters and sculptors receive for their work, but to channel thousands of works out of private collections and into public museums. The mechanics of this process are by now so well known that they need to be merely outlined. A collector who donates a work of art to a museum may deduct on his income tax return the fair value of the work at the time of the donation, and need pay no capital gains tax on any increase in its value since the time he bought it.
如果增值幅度很大，而收藏者的税率又很高，那么他实际上可能在交易中受益。此外，这些规定使一些博物馆在大量捐赠的影响下繁忙不已，馆员们忙于清点和整理藏品。这种情况还促使曾经在税收前时代活跃的富有的业余爱好者重新崭露头角。近年来，一些高税率的人开始养成连续收藏的习惯，比如前几年收藏后印象派的作品，然后是中国玉器，再接下来是现代美国绘画作品。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If the increase in value has been great, and the collector's tax bracket is very high, he may actually come out ahead on the deal. Besides bearing some museums under such an avalanche of bounty that their staffs are kept busy digging themselves out, these provisions have tended to bring back into existence that lovable old figure from the pre-tax past, the rich dillotont. In recent years, some high bracket people have fallen into the habit of making serial collections, post-impressionists for a few years, perhaps, followed by Chinese jade, and then by modern American painting.
在每个阶段结束时，收藏家将其整个收藏品捐赠出去，当计算出本来需要支付的税款时，会发现这次冒险几乎没有花费他任何费用。对于高收入人群来说，以艺术品或现金及其他财产形式进行慈善捐赠的低成本，是税法中最奇特的现象之一。在个人所得税申报中，每年大约有五十亿美元被申报为可扣除的捐赠，而绝大部分是以某种类型的资产形式出现，这些资产已经增值，并且大多来自于高收入人群。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
At the end of each period, the collector gives away his entire collection, and when the taxes he would otherwise have paid are calculated, the adventure is found to have cost him practically nothing. The low cost of high-income people's charitable contributions, whether in the form of works of art or simply in the form of money and other property, is one of the oddest fruits of the code. Of approximately five billion dollars claimed annually as deductible contributions on personal income tax returns, by far the greater part is in the form of assets of one sort or another that have appreciated in value, and comes from persons with very high incomes.
通过一个简单的例子可以清楚地说明这个原因。一个税率为20%的人如果捐赠1000美元现金，他实际上需要承担的净成本是800美元。而一个税率为60%的人捐赠同样的金额，他的净成本则是400美元。如果这位高税率的人捐赠的是他原来花200美元购入的股票，那么他的净成本只有200美元。正是因为税法大力支持大规模慈善捐赠，才出现了一些年收入百万美元且无需缴税的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The reasons can be made clear by a simple example. A man with a top bracket of 20%, who gives away $1,000 in cash, incurs a net cost of $800. A man with a top bracket of 60% who gives away the same sum in cash incurs a net cost of $400. If, instead, this same high bracket man gives $1,000 in the form of stock that he originally bought for $200, he incurs a net cost of only $200. It is the code's enthusiastic encouragement of large-scale charity that has led to most of the cases of million dollar a year men who pay no tax at all.
根据其最奇特的条款之一，任何人在过去十年中的八年里，其所得税和缴费总和达到或超过其应税收入的九成，这样的人在当前年度可以不受通常的扣除额限制，并且能够完全免税。 因此，这一法规的条款常常使简单的财务操作伪装成慈善行为，支持了一种常见的指责，即认为该法规在道德上是混乱不堪的，甚至更加糟糕。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Under one of its most peculiar provisions, anyone whose income tax and contributions combined have amounted to nine tenths or more of his taxable income for eight out of the ten preceding years is entitled, by way of reward, to disregard in their current year the usual restrictions on the amount of deductible contributions, and can escape the tax entirely. Thus, the code's provisions often enable mere fiscal manipulation to masquerade as charity, substantiating a frequent charge that the code is morally muddle-headed, or worse.
这些条款也导致了其他人的思想混乱。例如，近年来的大型筹款活动在呼吁做好事与向捐赠者解释税收优惠之间左右为难。一个有启发性的例子是一份值得称赞的详尽小册子，名为《更大的税收节省：一种建设性的方法》，这是普林斯顿大学在一项大规模资本基金募集活动中使用的，类似甚至几乎相同的小册子也曾被哈佛、耶鲁和其他许多机构使用。在一个政治家、科学家和经济学家必须作出几乎可以肯定会影响到将来几代人决策的时代，领导者的责任是重大的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The provisions also give rise to muddle-headedness in others. The appeal made by large fundraising drives in recent years, for example, has been uneasily divided between a call to good works and an explanation of the tax advantages to the donor. An instructive example is a commendably thorough booklet entitled, Greater Tax Savings, a constructive approach, which was used by Princeton in a large capital funds drive, similar not to say nearly identical booklets have been used by Harvard, Yale, and many other institutions. The responsibilities of leadership are great, particularly in an age when statesmen, scientists, and economists must make decisions which will almost certainly affect mankind for generations to come.
这本小册子的前言一开始就显得很正式，接着解释说，这本小册子的主要目的是鼓励潜在的捐赠者更认真地思考他们捐赠的方式。有许多不同的方法可以让捐赠者以相对较低的成本进行大额捐赠。了解这些机会对潜在的捐赠者来说是很重要的。在后续的页面中，详述了如何通过捐赠增值证券、工业产权、租约、版税、珠宝、古董、股票期权、住宅、人寿保险和库存物品等方式以及通过使用信托来节省税款的机会。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The pamphlet's forward starts out lawfully, and goes on to explain, the chief purpose of this booklet is to urge all prospective donors to give more serious thought to the manner in which they make their gifts. There are many different ways in which substantial gifts can be made at comparatively low cost to the donor. It is important that prospective donors acquaint themselves with these opportunities. The opportunities expounded in the subsequent pages include ways of saving on taxes through gifts of appreciated securities, industrial property, leases, royalties, jewelry, antiques, stock options, residences, life insurance, and inventory items, and through the use of trusts.
信托方法具有很大的多功能性。有一次，有人提出建议，与其直接捐赠，持有增值证券的所有者可能希望以他最初支付的价格将其卖给普林斯顿换取现金。对于头脑简单的人来说，这可能看起来像是一个商业交易，但小册子准确地指出，根据税法规定，证券当前市场价值与其以较低价格出售给普林斯顿之间的差额实际上代表着纯粹的慈善行为，因此可以作为完全抵扣。在我们强调仔细的税务筹划重要性时，希望最后一段能让大家明白，我们不希望任何人认为捐赠的思想和精神应在任何方面服从于税务考虑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The trust approach has great versatility. At one point, the suggestion is put forward that instead of actually giving anything away, the owner of appreciated securities may wish to sell them to Princeton for cash at the price he originally paid for them. This might appear to the simple-minded to be a commercial transaction, but the booklet points out accurately that in the eyes of the code, the difference between the securities current market value and the lower price at which they are sold to Princeton represents pure charity and is fully deductible as such. While we have laid heavy emphasis on the importance of careful tax planning, the final paragraph goes, we hope no inference will be drawn that the thought and spirit of giving should in any way be subordinated to tax considerations.
确实，赋税制度不应如此复杂，也没有必要这样复杂。通过巧妙地减少或消除繁重的负担，其本质就可以自由发挥。然而，这一制度最明显的特点之一就是其复杂性，而这种复杂性导致了一些深远的社会影响。许多纳税人几乎必须寻求专业帮助才能在合法的前提下最大限度地减少税务负担。由于一流的税务建议昂贵且稀缺，这让富人相比穷人获得了更多优势，使得税制的实际运作比其条款更不具民主性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Indeed, it should not, nor need it be, with the heavy substance of giving so deftly minimized or actually removed, its spirit can surely fly unrestrained. One of the most marked traits of the code to bring this ransacking of its character to a close is its complexity, and this complexity is responsible for some of its most far-reaching social effects. It is a virtual necessity for many taxpayers to seek professional help if they want to minimize their taxes legally. And since first-rate advice is expensive and in short supply, the rich are thereby given still another advantage over the poor, and the code becomes more undemocratic in its action than it is in its provisions.
税务咨询费用本身可抵扣的事实意味着，对于那些财富越来越多的人来说，税务咨询服务的成本也变得越来越低。尽管美国国税局（IRS）提供了许多免费的纳税人教育和援助项目，这些项目既全面又有良好的意图，但它们仍然无法与独立税务专家提供的付费服务相媲美。原因之一是，IRS 的首要任务是收取税款，因此当它试图向人们解释如何避税时，这显然存在利益冲突。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the fact that fees for tax advice are themselves deductible means that tax advice is one more item on the long list of things that cost less and less to those who have more and more. All the free projects of taxpayer education and taxpayer assistance offered by the Internal Revenue Service, and they are extensive and well-ment, cannot begin to compete with the paid services of a good independent tax expert, if only because the IRS, whose first duty is to collect revenue, is involved in an obvious conflict of interest when it sets about explaining to people how to avoid taxes.
从1960年的个人税收中，大约一半的收入来自调整后总收入在9,000美元或以下的人群，但这并不完全归因于税法的规定。部分原因在于，低收入纳税人无力支付税务顾问的费用从而降低他们的税款。庞大数量的税务顾问——业内称为从业者——是税法复杂性的一个奇特且令人不安的副产品。这个队伍的确切规模不详，但有一些参考数据。据最近统计，约有80,000人——其中大多数是律师、会计师和前税务局员工——持有财政部发放的证件，正式授权他们从事税务顾问的工作，并以此身份在税务局前出面。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The fact that about half of all the revenue derived from individual returns from 1960 came from adjusted gross incomes of $9,000 or less is not attributable entirely to provisions of the code. In part, it results from the fact that low income taxpayers cannot afford to be shown how to pay less. The huge army of people who give tax advice, practitioners, they are called in the trade, is a strange and disturbing side effect of the code's complexity. The exact size of this army is unknown, but there are a few guideposts. By a recent count some 80,000 persons, most of them lawyers, accountants, and former IRS employees held cards granted by the Treasury Department that officially entitled them to practice the trade of tax advisor and to appear as such before the IRS.
此外，还有大量未被统计的无执照且常常不具备资格的人，他们以收费的形式帮人准备报税文件，这是任何人都可以合法提供的服务。至于律师，他们可以说是税务咨询行业中无可争议的富豪，如果不是无可争议的贵族的话。在全国范围内几乎没有哪位律师在一年的执业中不会涉及税务问题。每年都有越来越多的律师专注于税务问题。美国律师协会的税务部门，基本由税务律师组成，大约有9000名成员。在典型的大型纽约律师事务所中，每五位律师中就有一位全职处理税务事务，而纽约大学的法学院的税务系，一个培养税务律师的庞大基地，规模甚至超过了普通法学院的整体。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In addition, there is an uncounted host of unlicensed and often unqualified persons who prepare tax returns for a fee, a service that anyone may legally perform. As for lawyers, the undisputed plutocrats, if not the undisputed aristocrats of the tax advice industry, there is scarcely a lawyer in the country who is not concerned with taxes at one time or another during a year's practice. In every year there are more lawyers who are concerned with nothing else. The American Bar Association's Taxation Section, composed mostly of nothing but tax lawyers, has some 9,000 members. In the typical large New York law firm, one out of five lawyers devotes all of his time to tax matters, and the New York University Law School's Tax Department, an enormous brood hen for the hatching of tax lawyers, is larger than the whole of an average law school.
从事避税工作的智囊，通常被认为包括一些现存最优秀的法律人才，却被视为国家资源的浪费。许多人广泛认同这一观点，而一些顶尖的税务律师甚至乐于支持这一看法。他们乐于承认，首先，他们的智力确实异常出众；其次，这些才能确实被浪费在了微不足道的事情上。法律领域也有其变化周期，最近有人对此作了解释。在美国，直到1890年，热门领域是财产法，然后进入了一个以公司法为主要内容的阶段，而现在则是各种法律专业领域，其中最重要的就是税法。我完全愿意承认，我所从事的工作具有无限的社会价值。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The brains that go into tax avoidance, which are generally recognized as including some of the best legal brains extant, constitute a wasted national resource. It is widely contended, and this contention is cheerfully upheld by some leading tax lawyers who seem only too glad to affirm, first, that their mental capacities are indeed exceptional, and second, that these capacities are indeed being squandered on trivia. The law has its cycles, one of them explained recently. In the United States the big thing until about 1890 was property law. Then came a period when it was corporation law, and now its various specialties of which the most important is taxes. I am perfectly willing to admit that I am engaged in work that has unlimited social value.
毕竟，当我们谈论税法时，我们究竟在谈论什么呢？充其量不过是在讨论个人或公司应该合理支付多少费用来支持政府。好吧，那我为什么从事税务工作呢？首先，它是一项令人着迷的智力游戏，与诉讼一样，可能是当前法律实践中最具智力挑战性的领域之一。其次，尽管在某种意义上它是专门化的，但在另一种意义上，它又不是，因为它涉及法律的各个领域。你可能今天与好莱坞制片人合作，明天与大型房地产商合作，再下一天与公司高管打交道。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
After all, what are we talking about when we talk about tax law? At best, only the question of what an individual or corporation should fairly pay in support of the government. All right, why do I do tax work? In the first place, it's a fascinating intellectual game, along with litigation, probably the most intellectually challenging branch of the law as it is now practiced. In the second place, although it's specialized in one sense, in another sense it isn't. It cuts through every field of law. One day, you may be working with a Hollywood producer, the next day with a big real estate man, the next with a corporation executive.
第三，它是一个非常赚钱的领域。表面上看它虚伪地平等，但实际上却是系统性寡头统治，复杂得令人无法理解，随意地进行歧视，推理看似有理实则不然，言辞咬文嚼字，使慈善工作令人沮丧，是讨论的敌人，鼓励行话交流，浪费人才，对财产拥有者来说是坚实的支持，但对低收入者来说却是沉重的负担，对艺术家和学者来说是个不可靠的朋友。如果国家的镜像是以上这些，倒也有其好的方面。当然，没有任何可能的所得税法能够取悦所有人，可能也没有任何公平的法律能让任何人完全满意。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the third place, it's a highly lucrative field. Hypocratically egalitarian on the surface and systematically oligarchic underneath, unconscionably complicated, whimsically discriminatory, specious in its reasoning, petty fogging in its language, demoralizing to charity, an enemy of discourse, a promoter of shop talk, a squanderer of talent, a rock of support to the property owner but a weighty onus to the underpaid, an inconstant friend to the artist and scholar, if the national mirror image is all these things, it has its good points as well. Certainly, no conceivable income tax law could please everybody, and probably no equitable one could entirely please anybody.
在刘易斯·艾森斯坦的书《税收的意识形态》中提到，税收是一种不断变化的产物，通常是为了让别人来支付它。除了那些明显为特殊利益设计的条款外，税法看起来是一本诚实撰写的文件，即便在最糟糕的情况下也仅仅是有些误导。它旨在以尽可能公平的方式，从一个前所未有复杂的社会中收集前所未有的大量资金，并通过鼓励有价值的事业来促进国家经济。当税法得到聪明和认真地执行时，如近期的情况，我们的国家所得税法可能是世界上最公平的法规之一。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Lewis Eisenstein notes in his book, The Ideologies of Taxation, taxes are a changing product of the earnest effort to have others pay them. With the exception of its more flagrant special interest provisions, the code seems to be a sincerely written document, at worst misguided, that it's aimed at collecting unprecedented amounts of money from an unprecedentedly complex society in the fairest possible way, at encouraging the national economy in that promoting worthy undertakings. When it is intelligently and conscientiously administered, as it has been of late, our national income tax law is quite possibly as equitable as any in the world.
然而，制定一项不够理想的法律，然后试图通过良好的管理来弥补其缺陷，显然是一种荒谬的做法。一种更合乎逻辑的解决方案是取消所得税，这个建议主要来自于激进右翼的一些成员，他们认为任何所得税都是社会主义或共产主义的表现，并希望联邦政府干脆停止开支。尽管某些经济学家也提出废除所得税作为理论上的理想，而非实际可能，他们在寻找替代的方法，以筹集目前由所得税产生的至少一部分资金。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But to enact an unsatisfactory law and then try to compensate for its shortcomings by good administration is clearly an absurd procedure. One solution that is more logical to abolish the income tax is proposed chiefly by some members of the radical right, who consider any income tax, socialistic or communistic, and who would have the federal government simply stop spending money. Though abolition is also advanced as theoretical ideal rather than as a practical possibility by certain economists who are looking around for alternative ways of raising at least a significant fraction of the sums now produced by the income tax.
一种可选的税收方式是增值税。在增值税制度下，制造商、批发商和零售商要对其购买商品的价值与售出商品的价值之间的差额征税。增值税被认为有几个优点：它比企业所得税更均匀地分配了生产过程中的税收负担，而且可以让政府更快获得税款。包括法国和德国在内的多个国家都实施了增值税，不过它们是作为对所得税的补充而非替代。目前在我们国家，还没有联邦层面的增值税被提上日程。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
One such alternative is a value added tax, under which manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, will be taxed on the difference between the value of the goods they bought and that of the goods they sold. Among the advantages claimed for it are that it would spread the tax burden more evenly through the productive process than a business income tax does, and that it would enable the government to get its money sooner. Several countries, including France and Germany, have value added taxes, though as supplements rather than alternatives to income taxes. But no federal tax of the sort is more than remotely in prospect in this country.
其他减轻收入税负担的建议方法包括：增加受消费税影响的项目数量，并对其统一税率，形成类似联邦销售税的效果；增加使用税，例如对联邦拥有的桥梁和休闲设施收取通行费；制定法律允许联邦彩票。这些彩票曾在殖民时期至1895年间被允许，用于资助哈佛大学的建设、支持独立战争以及修建许多学校、桥梁、运河和道路。所有这些方案的一个明显缺点是，它们在征收收入时相对较少考虑支付能力，因此它们在可预见的未来没有被实施的可能性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Other suggested means of lightening the burden of the income tax are to increase the number of items subject to excise taxes and apply uniform rate to them so as to create what would amount to a federal sales tax, to increase user taxes, such as tolls on federally owned bridges and recreation facilities, and to enact a law permitting federal lotteries like the lotteries that were permitted from colonial times up to 1895, which helped finance such projects as the building of Harvard, the fighting of the Revolutionary War, and the building of many schools, bridges, canals and roads. One obvious disadvantage of all these schemes is that they would collect revenue with relatively little regard to ability to pay, and for this reason or others none of them stand a chance of being enacted in the foreseeable future.
一种被理论家们特别喜爱但几乎没有其他人支持的税种叫做支出税。支出税是根据个人的年总支出来征税，而不是根据他们的收入。支持这种税的人，作为稀缺经济学的坚定支持者，认为它主要的优点是简单，并且能促进储蓄。他们还认为，这比所得税更公平，因为它是对人们从经济中取走的部分征税，而不是对他们投入的进行征税。此外，他们也认为这会成为政府保持国家经济稳定的有力工具。而反对者则认为，这种税收并不简单，而且非常容易逃避，另外它会导致富人变得更富有，甚至更吝啬。最后，由于对消费进行惩罚，这可能引发经济萧条。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A special favorite of theoreticians but of hardly anyone else is something called the expenditure tax, the taxing of individuals on the basis of their total annual expenditures rather than on their income. The proponents of this tax, die-hearted parents of the economics of scarcity, argue that it would have the primary virtue of simplicity, that it would have the beneficial effect of encouraging savings, that it would be fairer than the income tax because it would tax what people took out of the economy rather than what they put into it, and that it would give the government a particularly handy control instrument with which to keep the national economy on an even keel. Its opponents contend that it wouldn't really be simple at all, and would be ridiculously easy to evade, that it would cause the rich to become richer and doubtless stingier as well, and finally that by putting a penalty on spending it would promote depression.
无论如何，双方都承认在美国推行这一政策在现阶段政治上是不可行的。1942年，美国财政部长亨利·摩根索曾认真提议实施支出税；1951年，剑桥经济学家尼古拉斯·卡尔多作为英国国库特别顾问也提出了类似建议。但两人都没有要求废除所得税。这些提议几乎一致遭到否决。一位欣赏支出税的人最近表示，支出税是个美好的设想，它几乎可以避免所得税的各种弊端，但这只是个梦想。事实证明，在西方世界中，只有印度和锡兰（现称斯里兰卡）实施了这种税收制度。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In any event, both sides concede that its enactment in the United States is not now politically practicable. An expenditure tax was seriously proposed for the United States by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. in 1942, and for Britain by a Cambridge economist, later a special advisor to the national treasury named Nicholas Kaldor in 1951, though neither proponent asked for a repeal of the income tax. Both proposals were all but unanimously hooted down. The expenditure tax is a beautiful thing to contemplate, one of its admirers said recently. It would avoid almost all the pitfalls of the income tax, but it's a dream. And so it is in the Western world such a tax has been put in effect only in India and Ceylon.
当时没有可行的替代方案，所以所得税似乎会继续存在，而对更好税制的希望可能在于对其进行改革。由于税法的主要特点是复杂性，改革可能就从这里开始。自1943年以来，简化的努力一直在定期进行，当时财政部长摩根索设立了一个委员会来研究这个问题，并且偶尔也有一些小的成功。例如，在肯尼迪政府期间，推出了简化的说明和简短的表格，供那些愿意列举扣除项但事务相对简单的纳税人使用。但很明显，这些更像是游击战的小型胜利。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
With no feasible substitute in sight then, the income tax seems to be here to stay, and any hope for better taxation seems to lie in its reform. Since one of the code's chief laws is its complexity, reform might well start with that. Efforts at simplification have been made with regularity since 1943, when Secretary Morgenthau set up a committee to study the subject, and there have been occasional small successes, simplified instructions, for example, and a shortened form, for taxpayers who wish to itemize deductions, but whose affairs are relatively uncomplicated were both introduced during the Kennedy administration. Obviously, though, these were more guerrilla skirmish victories.
取得更全面胜利的一个障碍在于，许多法律复杂性是出于对所有人的公平考虑而引入的，显然无法在不牺牲公平的情况下予以去除。家庭支持特别条款的发展就是一个生动的例子，展示了追求公平有时如何导致复杂性。在1948年之前，一些州有而另一些州没有共同财产法，这使得那些有共同财产法的州的已婚夫妇在税收方面占了便宜。只有这些夫妇可以被视为将其总收入平分纳税，即使一个配偶实际上收入很高而另一个配偶没有收入。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
One obstacle to any victory more sweeping is the fact that many of the code's complexities were introduced in no interest other than that of fairness to all, and apparently cannot be removed without sacrificing fairness. The evolution of the special family support provisions provides a striking example of how the quest for equity sometimes leads straight to complexity. Up to 1948, the fact that some states had and some didn't have community property laws resulted in an advantage to married couples in the community property states. Those couples, and those couples only, were allowed to be taxed as if their total income were divided equally between them, even though one spouse might actually have a high income and the other none at all.
为了纠正这种明显的不平等，联邦法典进行了修改，将收入分割的特权扩展到所有已婚人士。即使不考虑由此对单身者（尤其是没有供养义务的单身者）的歧视，这种歧视至今仍然存在且未被挑战，这种对不平等的纠正又引发了另一种不平等，之后的纠正又导致了新的问题。在这种连锁反应式的修改展开之前，已经考虑到那些有家庭责任但未婚人士的特殊合理问题。然后是有工作但在工作时间需要支付育儿费用的妻子们，以及鳏夫和寡妇的问题，每一次的修改都让法典变得更加复杂。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To correct this clear cut inequity, the federal code was modified to extend the income-dividing privilege to all married persons. Even apart from the resulting discrimination against single persons without dependence, which remains enshrined and unchallenged in the code today, this correction of one inequity led to the creation of another, the correction of which led to still another. Before the Chinese box sequence was played out, a count had been taken of the legitimate special problems of persons who had family responsibilities although they were not married. Then of working wives with expenses for child care during business hours, and then of widows and widowers, and each change made the code more complex.
漏洞是另一个问题。在这个情况下，复杂性不仅没有服务于公平，反而走向了其反面，而这些漏洞的顽固存在构成了一个令人困惑的悖论。在一个大多数人可以制订法律的体系下，那些明显偏袒极少数人的税收条款似乎表现出一种失控的公民权利原则，就像是为了保护百万富翁的反歧视计划。新的税收立法的产生过程确实是一个曲折的旅程，它可能最初来自财政部或其他来源，经过众议院筹款委员会、全院、参议院财政委员会和整个参议院的审批，然后由会议委员会商定众参两院的妥协方案，再由众议院和参议院重新通过，最终由总统签署。在这个过程的任何阶段，法案都有可能被扼杀或者搁置。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The loopholes are another matter. In their case, complexity serves not equity but its opposite, and their persistent survival constitutes a puzzling paradox. In a system under which the majority presumably makes the laws, tax provisions that blatantly favor tiny minorities over everybody else would seem to represent the civil rights principle run wild, a kind of anti-discrimination program for the protection of millionaires. The process by which new tax legislation comes into being, in original proposal from the Treasury Department or some other source, passage and turn by the houseways and means committee, the whole house, the Senate Finance Committee, and the whole Senate followed by the working out of a house Senate compromise by conference committee, followed by repassage by the house and the Senate, and finally followed by signing by the President is indeed a tortuous one, at any stage of which a bill may be killed or shelved.
尽管公众有很多机会对特别利益条款提出抗议，但公众压力通常更多是支持这些条款而不是反对。在《税收漏洞》一书中，作者菲利普·M·斯特恩指出了一些阻碍税收改革措施实施的因素，包括反改革游说团体的技巧、力量和组织性，政府内部支持改革力量的分散和政治无力，以及公众的冷漠。公众几乎没有通过给国会议员写信或其他方式积极表达对税收改革的热情，这可能主要是因为他们对整个复杂的技术问题感到困惑，从而保持沉默。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
However, though the public has plenty of opportunity to protest special interest provisions, what public pressure there is is apt to be greater in favor of them than against them. In the book on tax loopholes, called The Great Treasury Raid, Philip M. Stern, points out several forces that seem to him to work against the enactment of tax reform measures, among them the skill, power and organization of the anti-reform lobbies, the defuiseness and political impotence of the pro-reform forces within the government and the indifference of the general public, which expresses practically no enthusiasm for tax reform through letters to congressman or by any other means, perhaps in large part because it is stunned into incomprehension and consequent silence by the mind-boggling technicality of the whole subject.
从这个角度来看，代码的复杂性就像是无懈可击的厚象皮。因此，财政部作为负责征收联邦税收的机构，理应对税制改革感兴趣。但实际上，他们常常孤立无援，只能与伊利诺伊州参议员保罗·道格拉斯、田纳西州参议员阿尔伯特·戈尔和明尼苏达州参议员尤金·麦卡锡等少数致力于改革的立法者站在一起，成为一个孤立而无从辩护的突出点。乐观主义者相信，总有一天在某个危机时刻，某些受到特别优待的团体会突破自身私利的局限，其它国家也会克服其被动姿态，从而使所得税能够更真实地反映国家的形象，而不是现在这样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In this sense, the code's complexity is its impenetrable elephant hide. Thus, the Treasury Department, which, as the agency charged with collecting federal revenues, has a natural interest in tax reform, is often left along with a handful of reform-minded legislators like Senators Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, Albert Gore of Tennessee, and Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota, an alonely and indefensible salient. Optimists believe that some point of crisis will eventually cause especially favored groups to look beyond their selfish interests and the rest of the country to overcome its passivity, to such an extent that the income tax will come to give back a more flattering picture of the country than it does now.
虽然他们没有具体说明这将何时发生，如果真的发生的话。但一些对此最关心的人所希望的图景大致已经为人所知。许多改革者对理想的所得税和远期愿景的期待是：拥有简单明了的税收条例、相对较低的税率，并且极少的例外。在其主要结构特征上，这种理想的税收与1913年的所得税有很大的相似之处，这是美国和平时期实施的第一个所得税。所以，如果今天那些难以实现的愿望最终成为现实，所得税将几乎回到了起点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When this will happen, if ever they do not specify. But the general shape of the picture hoped for by some of those who care most about it is known. The ideal income tax and vision for the far future by many reformers would be characterized by a short and simple code, with comparatively low rates, and with a minimum of exceptions to them. In its main structural features, this ideal tax would bear a marked resemblance to the 1913 income tax, the first ever to be put in effect in the United States in peacetime. So, if the unattainable visions of today should eventually materialize, the income tax would be just about back where it started.