Ten Percent down the Line

Cutting taxes for the first time in 16 years was too urgent a job for the House Ways & Means Committee to share it with the public. Last week it took Treasury Secretary Vinson's tax-reduction program behind closed doors, came out in a record-breaking four days with a tax bill which would 1) give individual taxpayers at least a 10% reduction in income taxes, and 2) take 12,000,000 lower-bracket Americans off the tax rolls altogether.

The finished product was not exactly what onetime Ways & Means Committee member Vinson had asked, but it was close. The bill provided for a total tax reduction of $5.3 billion (some $300 million more than Vinson had suggested). It also extended to all levels the relief which the Treasury plan would have concentrated mainly in the lower brackets. The committee also rejected Vinson's proposal for repeal of the excess-profits tax on corporations. Instead it substituted a cut from 85 1/2% to 60% and a promise of total repeal in 1947.

Also due to be dropped (July 1, 1946), if Congress adopts the Committee's plan, are the $5 "use" tax on automobiles and the wartime increases in excise taxes on admissions, transportation, furs, jewelry, alcoholic beverages, telephone bills and light bulbs. Due to be frozen at present levels (1%) are social-security taxes paid by employer and employe.

Proud of its handiwork, the Ways & Means Committee prepared at week's end to take its tax bill to the House floor, to push it through under the "gag" rule, which bars the submission of amendments by any but committee members.

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