Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 53 Part 1.djvu/3

 PREFACE The Internal Revenue Code, approved February 10, 1939, and published in this volume as Public Act No. 1 of the Seventy-sixth Congress, is the first Federal act of its kind since the Revised Statutes of the United States, approved June 22, 1874. Title XXXV of the Revised Statutes embraces the general and permanent statutes relat- ing exclusively to internal revenue, in force on December 1, 1873. The internal revenue title, which comprises all of the Code except the preliminary sections relating to its enactment, is intended to con- tain all the United States statutes of a general and permanent nature relating exclusively to internal revenue, in force on January 2, 1939; also such of the temporary statutes of that description as relate to taxes the occasion of which may arise after the enactment of the Code. These statutes are codified without substantive change and with only such change of form as is required by arrangement and consolidation. The title contains no provision, except for effective date, not derived from a law approved prior to January 3, 1939. The derivation of the title, in its textual sequence, is shown in the appendix, part I, table A. Conversely, the placement of the statutes in the title, cited in their chronological order, is shown in table B. The Revised Statutes of the United States and the Statutes at Large of the United States are the sources of the law codified. The Revised Statutes cover the period ended December 1, 1873. The Statutes at Large codified cover the period following December 1, 1873, and are published in the 35 volumes numbered 18 to 52, inclusive. The separate enactments carried into the internal revenue title, wholly or in part, from the Statutes at Large are 143 in number, exclusive of 93 statutes involving express amendment, reenactment, or repeal. The 277 Revised Statutes sections codified were derived from 21 basic statutes. The whole body of internal revenue law in effect on January 2, 1939, therefore, has its ultimate origin in 164 separate enactments of Congress. The earliest of these was approved July 1, 1862; the latest, June 16, 1938. The Internal Revenue Code is an enactment without change of the 1939 edition of the Codificatioii of Internal Revenue Laws prepared by Mr. Colin F. Stam and Mr. L. L. Stratton, of the staff of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, with the assistance of the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice. The bill embodying that codification, H. R. 2762, was introduced on January 18, 1939, by Mr. Doughton, of North Carolina, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and vice chairman of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxa- tion. Mr. Doughton submitted the unanimously favorable report of the Committee on Ways and Means on January 20. Unanimous con- sent for consideration of the bill was requested and objected to on January 23. It was called up on the following Calendar Wednesday, January 25, and passed on that date by a vote of 350 to 16. On Jan- uary 27, the bill was messaged to the Senate and referred to the Com- mittee on Finance, before whom a hearing was held on the 30th. At the direction of Mr. Harrison, of Mississippi, chairman of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation and of the Committee iii

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