The Devil's Dues

"I came over here," said Harry Truman to a roomful of bankers in Washington's Carlton Hotel last week, "to let you know, in spite of certain information which has been pretty well distributed, that I do not wear horns and I haven't a tail." The bankers laughed heartily.

This week the President sent his tax message to Congress. It was by no means all the devil's work. In asking Congress for $1 billion in additional taxes, Harry Truman did aim a pitchfork jab in the general direction of big estates and corporate profits. To another section of business he was kind: he called for reduction of the whopping wartime excise taxes on such items as plane, train and bus travel, freight shipments, long-distance telephone calls, cosmetics and handbags.

Excise taxes, the President said, should be reduced only if the tax revenue is made up elsewhere. This could be done in part, he suggested, by plugging the loopholes. Loophole No. 1 is the law which allows "the oil and mining interests" to pay only "token contributions" from their huge incomes, he said. He told of one oilman who earned $5,000,000 in a single year and paid no income tax.

Other areas the President thought worth scouting for more revenue: a few tax-exempt educational and charitable organizations which persist in "glaring abuses" of the exemptions, life insurance companies which "have unintentionally been relieved of income taxes since 1946," and short-lived Hollywood corporations de signed to dodge paying big taxes. He wanted to trim corporation income taxes in the bracket between $25,000 and $50,000 a year, proposed a "moderate" tax increase on any profits that jutted beyond the $50,000 level.

Last week the President also: P: Crisply commented on his ex-friend and ex-Secretary of State, Jimmy Byrnes, who is running for governor of South Carolina and kicking the Fair Deal around. Mr. Byrnes, the President told his news conference, is a free agent to do as he damn pleases.

P: Stood respectfully at Arlington National Cemetery as a caisson slowly carried the flag-draped casket of his friend, General of the Army Hap Arnold, off through the snow to a grave near John J. Pershing.

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