TAXATION: Corn for Geese

Kernel of the U. S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling on the salaries of Port of New York Authority employes, making them subject to Federal income tax, was that the Authority, an autonomous body set up jointly by New York and New Jersey, is not essential to the existence of either State (TIME, June 13). If that kind of corn is good for the Federal gander, argued New York’s Attorney General John J. Bennett in a brief he filed with Supreme Court last week, then it is also good for State geese.

He appealed the case of James B. O’Keefe, an attorney for Home Owners’ Loan Corp. in Manhattan, who had sued for and won in the State courts a refund of $57.28 collected from him by New York on his $2,246.66 HOLC salary for 1934. Attorney General Bennett argued that HOLC is but one of a “constantly mounting number of new operations which have come to be regarded as having some relationship to government,” but are certainly not essential to the existence of the U. S’.