Payroll Tax Deductions

Sirs:

Your article on "Taxation" appearing in the May 24 issue contains a statement which was no doubt an oversight, but which I believe may be confusing and possibly misleading to many people who do not have adequate information on the precise provisions for withholding under the pending pay-as-you-go legislation.

In connection with your table of payroll tax deductions under the Senate Bill, you state ". . . beginning July 1, most wage earners will find their pay checks lopped by about 20%--17% income tax plus 3% Victory tax." You do not explain, however, that the 20% is assessed not upon the full amount of the pay check, but only upon that part which is in excess of the taxpayer's personal exemptions and an allowance for average deductions. As is indicated in the attached table . . . which extends your figures to show the amount of tax withheld as a percentage of the average wage in each bracket, the rate of withholding, of course, will never reach 20% of the total wages.

It is particularly important to have this aspect of collection at source understood, because failure to make it clear will tend to create the impression that withholding means a new and additional tax, rather than merely a more convenient and efficient method of payment of the tax which would have to be paid anyway. . . .

RANDOLPH E. PAUL

General Counsel Treasury Department Washington

Startling Fact

Sirs:

I regret to inform Mr. M. D. Gallaway (TIME, May 24) that the startling fact he recently discovered concerning opinions on our postwar relations with Russia is only too prevalent in the Army Air Corps. Inquiring around, I found that many of my fellow trainees (all former college students) are quite convinced that a Russian-U.S. war is inevitable. . . .

AIR CREW STUDENT J. H. LARNED

Springfield, Mo.

Hullabaloo and Facts

Sirs:

There is too much hullabaloo about the film Mission to Moscow (TIME, May 17). It exaggerates the good in Russia, after the bad has been played up for 20 years. . . .

A documentary story of the U.S.A. . . . would probably distort the facts, if it should deal with our appeasement of Japan right up to the time of Pearl Harbor.

I wonder if a distorted film about any other nation would cause all this excitement. Too many Americans still hate and fear our biggest ally.

C. H. NORMAN South Gate, Calif.

Senator's Dream

Sirs:

In a time when statesmanship is so vitally needed, Senator Vandenberg, one of our more prominent Politics Firsters, can do no better than to dream up General Douglas MacArthur for the Republican Presidential nomination (TIME, May 17). A perfect example of Old Guard sappidity.

MacArthur has devoted a lifetime to training for military leadership. He now occupies the job he was trained for. His job is a long way from being satisfactorily concluded, and he would be the first to concede that defending Bataan and then winning a preliminary victory in New Guinea have not earned him promotion to an office he is unqualified by experience to handle.

Let Politics Firster Vandenberg quit placing his party ahead of his country. A lot of us citizens will cheerfully vote for a fourth term, thank you, rather than elect a glamorous general who has shown neither taste nor talent for the Presidency. . . .

PAUL D. AUGSBURG Robles del Rio, Calif.

Duration Plus Six

Sirs:

About this fourth term: One faction is on record as opposing anything over two, lies awake nights worrying about the "nth." The other abhors the thought of changing Presidents in the middle of a war.

Why not appease both camps with a term being served by a good many million other good Americans of "the duration plus six months."

CAPTAIN STANLEY B. WILLIAMS U.S.A.A.F.

Williams Field, Ariz.

Composer Poll

Sirs:

... In TIME, May 17, you printed the findings of Stanford University's Paul Randolph Farnsworth in a poll taken among the students of that university, putting before them the question: "Who, named in order, are the greatest composers in the history of music?" This week I put the same question before 500 students of the University of Washington; here is the result:

1) Beethoven 2) Tschaikovsky 3) Mozart 4) Wagner 5) Schubert 6) Bach 7) Richard Strauss 8) Gershwin 9) Johann Strauss 10) Liszt 11) Handel 12) Verdi. . . .

GEORGE SGALITZER

University of Washington Seattle

Total War at Home

Sirs: From the shortsighted point of view, i.e., a cold demand for higher wages and nothing else, the coal miners' recent strike cannot be justified. But you will find from the long term point of view, i.e., a complaint against the Government's failure to control inflation, the strike was entirely justified.

Washington's course on the home front has been set by a pure lack of courage, not lack of knowledge as to how to prevent inflation.

The military precedent of forcing a citizen into war has established the fact that the people are entitled to create the precedent of force, i.e., the citizenry is justified in forcing a government of little courage into the unpleasantness of total war. . . . Washington is no different from the hesitant soldier; both must be forced into unpleasantness. The soldier may die. The Government may lose the next election. The people must insist on the power of force in total war against the individual and against the Government.

I think Mr. Lewis should be congratulated by every American for his ability to see this, and for his great personal courage in accepting his obligations as a citizen in a democracy.

GEORGE A. SIMONDS Cambridge, Mass.

P-38 Into F-5A

Sirs:

. . . The Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft pictured on p. 29 of your May 17 issue will not, as captioned, "Shuttle Steel to Kiska" or anywhere else. ... Its lack of armament and the odd-shaped "holes" in the hood door and fuselage stamp it unmistakably as something other than the P-38 interceptor pursuit or fighter bomber. . . .

HERMAN S. GINSBURG

Burbank, Calif.

Sirs:

. . . That's an FsA [converted P-38] in the picture, and it is loaded only with cameras that can "see" from horizon to horizon.

SERGEANT LYLE H. MACKIE U.S.A.A.F.

Peterson Army Air Field, Colo.

Some Fun

Sirs: Harken to the nadir in customer's men, as I must be, since I am not in the least dis pleased over the new bull market as described in TIME, May 24. The fact that the Stock Exchange officials and the brokers are not enjoying this boom in securities is of little concern. Is John Q. Public, the man who always gets it in the end, and the man for whom the Exchange exists and functions, having a good time?

That is the question, and the answer -- a stentorian yes! And he is undergoing this pleasurable period, happy about the whole thing, not through any assistance or guidance from the profound researchists of Wall Street.

As a matter of fact, what the boys on the Street are really grousing about, in my opinion, is that they, in most instances, shooed their clients away from the low-priced vehicles that have so magnificently spiraled.

Certainly the market will boomerang one of these days . . . but not until the buying power of potential security purchasers is completely exhausted. And with the backlash will come a paring of prices that will shear off points from the blue chips as well as the canine variety. . .

SAM GLASSER

San Antonio

Blood Typing for Travelers

Sirs:

Your article (TIME, May 24) describing how Dr. Frank H. Kelly of Argos, Ind., tattoos a person's blood type on the donor's body is worthy of universal extension. . . .

Before leaving on Government service overseas in Africa, the thought occurred to me that, with considerable airplane travel necessary, an accident or other causes, such as black-water fever and malaria which break down the blood, might require a blood transfusion in places where laboratory facilities or other modern means were lacking. I therefore had my blood typed by the local hospital and carried the data in my passport. . . . My doctor's letter read:

"Blood Typing--the patient's blood type by my test proves to be a) Moss Type No. 2 ; b) Jansky Type No. 2 ; c) or in International Type 'A'.'

"If a donor, the patient's blood (type Moss No. 2; Jansky No. 2; International Type 'A') can be mixed with Moss No. 4; Jansky No. 1; International Type 'O'.

"If a receiver, the patient can receive blood from: a type II Moss; or, a type IV Moss; or, a type II Jansky; or, a type I Jansky; or, a type 'A' International; or, a type 'O' International."

. . . Vital information of this type should be stapled in the back of every traveler's passport. . . . Dr. Kelly's idea of tattooing it on the body itself is even better. . . .

HIRAM B. D. BLAUVELT Oradell, NJ.

Rhetorical Question

Sirs: According to your Books department (TIME, May 17) Professors James Burnham and Sidney Hook, top-ranking specialists on Marxism, are now "concerned with the question of whether democracy, in the sense of government by the people, is possible at all. . . ."

Shouldn't somebody tell the professors . . . about the republic in North America where democracy has been considerably exercised in a representative way for 154 years?

BERNARD J. MULLANEY

Fitzwilliam, N.H.

Bunk on Discs

Sirs: It was a pleasure to read the story of Trumpeter Bunk Johnson's San Francisco triumph (TIME, May 24). . . .

Last summer ... a new "Original Superior Band" was assembled in New Orleans -- and Bunk, at the age of 62, made his first records . . . the most exciting new discs in many years. They are issued by the Jazz Man Record Shop in Hollywood.

EUGENE WILLIAMS

New York City

Plus & Minus Taxes

Sirs:

Here's a better plan than the Ruml Plan: let each person's income tax be adjusted up or down by an added factor which takes account of the increase or decrease of that individual income over the preceding year.

If I receive $4,000 this year and had only $2,000 last year, I can pay a stiff tax and still expand my scale of living, while my neighbor who gets $4,000 this year and who had $6,000 the preceding year, will have to dis locate his living beyond all reason. Those who are sharing the great increases in national yearly income are the ones who can and should shoulder the great tax increases. . . .

Let net taxable income be computed in the regular manner. Then from this figure sub tract the corresponding figure for the pre ceding tax year. If the result is plus, add to the normal income tax a new surtax on the increment only, based upon a stiff sliding scale. If the result is minus, subtract an amount from the normal tax, based upon another and more moderate scale. Here again, the abatement is to be based on the decrement only. . . .

WILLIAM B. ELMER

Sharon, Pa.

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