While this argument is relevant, it, too, is only part of the story and fects may be submerged or swamped by other opposite effects of the tax laws and inflation. For one thing, capital costs in a large sense are not in curred when capital is acquired because, at the margin, much of capital acquisition is debt-financed. Costs incurred are the amortization of the debt which in large part involves interest payments. With inflation there is a rise in nominal interest payments which are tax-deductible, while the capital gains implicit in reductions in the al value of debt liability are not The interaction of inflation and the system thus encourages the acquisition of physical assets. This has certainly been clear enough to at least a generation of home owners since world War I. Business investment would appear to have p similarly. if less spectacularly. because business in come, unlike the imputed rent of home owners, is taxed.