Inheritance Taxation AND THE Federal Estate and Gift Taxes WITH STATUTES, DECISIONS BY LAFAYETTE B. GLEASON AND ALEXANDER OTIS FOURTH EDITION REVISED BY ALEXANDER OTIS A GENERAL TREATISE FOR ALL STATES BUT SO ARRANGED AS TO BE TO ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES A LOCAL WORK FOR INTRODUCTION TO FOURTH EDITION In preparing a Fourth Edition of this work it has been found necessary to make a complete revision and rearrangement and several sections of the book have been entirely rewritten. This task became essential because the vast accumulation of material had altogether outgrown the original frame-work. Ten eventful years have elapsed since the work of collecting the data for the first edition was begun. That edition appeared in the fall of 1917, and since that date every State in the Union but three has enacted, re-enacted or radically amended its inheritance tax statute, and some of them have done this a dozen times. The Federal statute had been amended three or four times and the changes since the last edition are the most radical of all. This act has been construed by several hundred decisions since the first edition was published. In that edition the Federal act was covered in a few pages, while now it requires a small volume for this portion of the subject alone. Since the first edition was published there have been over one thousand decisions by the courts of the various jurisdictions, all of which have been analyzed, digested and classified under appropriate topics. The original design of the book divided the subject into six parts: The Tax, The Transfer, The Parties, The Property, Procedure, and The Statutes. This arrangement was followed in the editions of 1919 and 1922, although it was found cumbersome and inadequate even for the third edition. PLAN OF THE FOURTH EDITION The whole scheme of the book has now been altered. The present volume is divided into four distinct parts. First, the Federal statute, with digest of decisions, procedure, rules and regulations, and forms. Second, a general treatise, subdivided into twentyfour chapters, which undertakes to classify and analyze the law of the entire subject, with citations from every State in the Union and a theoretical discussion of the many and intricate problems |