FISCAL: Satisfactory Showing

Last week the Treasury Department struck a final balance of its books for the fiscal year 1930, was gratified to discover it had a surplus of receipts over expenditures of $184,000,000.

The 1930 figures failed to reflect large income tax losses due to last year’s stock-market crash. In fact income tax receipts were up $80,000,000 above the 1929 level. Business depression since Jan. 1 likewise made no appearances in these fiscal statistics; its effect will not emerge until next year’s tax payments.

Secretary Mellon called the 1930 record “a satisfactory showing.” The chief figures:

Total receipts $4,178,000,000

Total expenditures 3,994,000,000

Income taxes 2,411,000,000

Customs 587,000,000

Public debt reduction 746,000,000

Secretary Mellon called the surplus “abnormal” because foreign countries had made their June War debt payments in cash ($76,000,000) instead of in U. S. securities.

To Congress was due credit for the fact that, in appropriating almost four billions of Federal expense money, it had saved $29,000,000 on the President’s well-pruned budget.