The article presents information on the accountants in the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The operation of OPA are divided into two parts, the national office in Washington D.C. and the offices in the field. In the national office, interest is primarily directed toward preparation of regulations, formulation of general over-all Policy; making surveys on a national scale of those commodities subject to price control, post-auditing the decisions of the regional office and in certain instances, handling some price adjustment. The Accounting Division in its national office and field operations acts more as an integrated unit than do the operating departments. Within this division, there are also certain well-defined areas of authority and responsibility; but the individual offices come to the aid of each other whenever it is necessary and convenient. Personnel of the national office will come to the assistance of the District Accountant and District Accountants have sent members of their staffs to another district for short periods.

The purpose of this article is (1) to point out the trend in delegating to business a greater and greater share of the burden of tax collection through the medium of withholding taxes on wages; 2) to describe the effects of such a policy on business and (3) to evaluate this development in the light of possible alternatives. Although in the past government has called upon business for assistance in collecting revenue, such activity has been of relatively minor importance in affecting the accounting routines and the operating expense of each particular business involved. Record-keeping detail expanded with the advent of the Social Security Act. Wages exempted from the act were to be recorded separately from those covered by the act. Totals of taxable wages and totals of taxes withheld from wages were to be computed for individuals and for the firm as a unit. Receipts were to be furnished to employees periodically and reports made to the government quarterly, annually and at separate dates. State unemployment laws which required the reporting of specified data at frequent intervals added to the record keeping burden. Thus arose the universal need for more complicated and detailed pay-roll records and equipment.

A logical and coherent system of standards for income determination must be constructed if one has to judge the adequacy of income tax provisions for calculating income. If the economic concept of income is modified to fit practical business conditions and difficulties, it becomes a concept which is, in reality, a logical accounting conception. Since both economics and accounting deal with business, they should furnish the basic outline for determining taxable income. There appears to be sufficient reason for prescribing accounting methods, in general, for measuring income for tax purposes. Caution must be exercised, however, not to assume arbitrarily that income tax methods must conform in their entirety with accounting methods. Since a business enterprise measures its progress or retrogression by accounting methods, greater convenience, simplification, and cooperation will exist if taxable income is computed in the same manner rather than by an arbitrary or illogical statutory system. The methods followed by accountants and businessmen are tied up rather closely with economic facts and conditions, the tax system, likewise, should be so related.