INSCRIBED TO PUBLIC FINANCE EXPERT AND TAX ECONOMIST HARLEY LUTZ IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION BY IRVING FISHER

FISHER, Irving and FISHER, Herbert W. Constructive Income Taxation. A Proposal for Reform. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1942. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. $3200.

First edition of this book offering a proposal for a new income tax system based on the idea of taxing only “real” income, in scarce original dust jacket, inscribed to a well-known tax economist and economics professor: “To Professor Harley L. Lutz with the compliments and esteem of Irving Fisher. Sept. 1942.”

In this work, Fisher and Fisher offer a persuasive proposal for an income tax system under which money would only be considered income if it was available to the taxpayer, thereby encouraging, above all, saving. Of course, their conception of saving takes various forms, but the idea is for the taxpayer to provide their own security and for the government to encourage that by removing taxation from all funds channeled into the sorts of saving behaviors it endorses. During the war era, with its attendant privation, this sort of do-it-yourself thriftiness made the plan a subject of much interest. Considered "the father of monetary economics" (Pressman, 91), "Irving Fisher was, in the opinion of many, the leading economic theorist in the United States during the first half of the 20th century" (ANB). The man to whom this copy is inscribed, Harley L. Lutz, was a professor at Stanford, Oberlin, and Princeton and an expert in public finance who wrote extensively on economics and tax issues.

Book fine, dust jacket with only slightest soiling, a few small closed tears. An about-fine copy, scarce inscribed and with such a desirable association.