This thorough, comprehensive, and reliable book, sponsored by the Canadian Tax Foundation, is an attempt to answer the following questions: Are there any really significant problems connected with the present method of taxing corporate income and dividends in Canada? If so, what are they? What are the economic effects of this method under the present rate structure? Is the tax affecting production adversely? Has it affected the pattern or volume of saving and investment? Has it had any effect of the way in which the financing of corporations is conducted? Has it affected costs and prices? Has it discriminated between different classes of corporations? What are the effects on small businesses? What is the incidence of the tax? Is there a serious double taxation of corporate income and the subsequent taxation of dividends paid to the shareholders? If so, then what should be done to remedy the situation? Is the recently announced government policy of reduction of the rate on the first $10,000 of corporate income and the granting of dividend credits to hare-holders a step in the right direction, or is there a better approach?

The conclusions drawn in this volume are the result of careful scrutiny of the rather considerable volume of literature on the subject, and discussions with many members of the accounting and legal professions, members of the federal civil service, and a large number of business men. Above all, these conclusions are the result of the writer's peculiar conception of taxation in the modern state.

J. RICHARDS PETRIE was born in Fredericton, N.B., in 1908. He obtained his B.A. and M.A. at the University of New Brunswick, and then was a research assistant at the University of Chicago, specializing in public finance. From 1932 to 1935, he was Deputy Assessor of Cook County, Illinois, in charge of corporation taxes. After a period of business experience he wrote a thesis on the Canadian Tax Systems, for which he received a Ph.D. from McGill University. In 1940 he was appointed Head of the Department of Economics and Political Science at the University of New Brunswick. During the war he spent two years with the Department of Munitions and Supply in Ottawa, and in 1943 became Assistant Director of the Canadian Mutual Aid Board. He was also Secretary of the N.B. Economic Development Board and the N.B. Committee on Resconstruction. In 1945 he became Vice-President of the Khaki University of Canada in the United Kingdom. Dr. Petrie is the author of 'The Regional Economy of New Brunswick,' and articles on a wide range of economy matters. As Chairman of a special Taxation Commissions appointed by the City of Fredericton, he devised a new tax system for that municipality. More recently Dr. Petrie has served as Director of Research of the Canadian Tax Foundation, Toronto. He is now Director of Economic Research with Jones Heward and Company, Montreal.

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