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the Treasury of the State, as is proper they should; but the
receipts from Auction Duties, unless they amount to a sum
exceeding twenty thousand dollars, annually, go to the
Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, for the improvement
of a channel in the Chesapeake bay and Patapsco river.

During my official term there has not been received, in
any one year, one-third of the sum named. It has moreover
been difficult for this Department to obtain from certain of
the licensed Auctioneers reports of their sales, and several
of them are now in default in regard thereto.

At best this office is only made, by the existing laws, on
that subject, Code, vol. 2, art. 4, the accountant between the
Auctioneers and the Mayor and City Council in regard to
the duties, whilst the receipts from this source only enter the
Treasury to be shortly withdrawn therefrom ; thus imposing
an unnecessary labor upon this Department. I suggest that
the law be so changed in regard to the duties, as to cause
the Auctioneers to render their accounts to some officer of
Baltimore City, and that the payment of the duties be made
directly to him.

Sometime in the early part of the past Fiscal Year, the
Assessors and Collectors of the United States' Tax? set up a
claim on their part, to bring the revenues of the State from
Dividends and Interest received by the State from its Stocks
and Mortgages in Banks, Bail Roads and other Corporations.,
under the operation of the United States' Tax Law of 1862.
I did not consider this claim well founded, and consulted
with Thomas S. Alexander, Esq., of Baltimore City, whose
judgment of the question, I found to agree with my own.
With his valuable aid the whole question was argued,before
the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and resulted in the
exemption of the State, by the decision of the Commissioner,
from the payment of any Tax whatever. By this decision, at
least twenty thousand dollars, annually, will be saved to the

Treasury.

Whilst this exemption was thus secured to the State, and
the Banks and other Corporations having Dividends and
Interest to pay the State, were absolved from the payment of
the Tax of three per cent, on these Dividends and Interest