Tax Stalemate

The House Ways & Means Committee last week reached its first stalemate on the 1943 tax bill. After two weeks of public hearings and a week of grinding executive sessions, its members could not agree on any of four pay-as-you-go tax plans submitted for their consideration.

The Ruml Plan, which would "forgive" all 1942 taxes, move the tax clock ahead to the present by collecting 1943 taxes on 1943 income, was not one of the four. All were modifications; all were voted down. The committee took one forward step: went on record as favoring some kind of pay-as-you-go system, with collections at the source.

With committee tempers frayed, bluff Chairman Robert L. ("Muley") Doughton resorted to an old Washington device: he appointed a subcommittee to draft a compromise. What worried Muley Doughton most, however, was that U.S. citizens, looking toward pay-as-you-go as a sensible improvement in taxation methods, were not filing their 1943 returns with anything like the alacrity they showed last year. He warned taxpayers that the March 15 installment would be due this year, as in all previous years. Best estimate was that not until after the June 15 payment would tax collections be put on a current-income basis.

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