Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 90, Greencastle, Putnam County, 22 December 1981 — Page 2

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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, December 22,1981

Federal income tax forms slated for mailing day after Christmas

c. 1981 N.Y. Times WASHINGTON On the day after Christmas, the Internal Revenue Service will mail out its own holiday greetings million sets of tax forms for individuals to use in paying their 1981 federal income taxes. The forms are a little simpler, apd the accompanying instructions are shorter, than last year. The color of the basic long form 1040 is still blue, however, and the tax will be just about as painful to pay. Forms are mailed to everyone who filed an individual return last year. The total of 94.5 million makes the mailing the largest single posting in American history. The forms, sorted by zip code and delivery route, already have been distributed to postal stations throughout the country, but none is to go into mailboxes until Dec. 26. "Nobody gets his form before Christmas," says Hugh W. Kent, chief of the IRS publishing services branch. "We're not going to be Scrooge." IRS. however, is not exactly carried away by the holiday spirit. On the front page of the instruction book is a stern warning from Internal Revenue Commissioner Roscoe L. Egger Jr.: "Be sure to report your taxable income from all sources. In fairness to the vast majority of taxpayers who report all their income, we make every effort to identify others who underreport.”

Reagan praises ambassador for defecting

Polish miners,workers defy orders

Bv The Associated Press Polish authorities say they will not use force to get nearly 3,000 coal miners to leave two mines in southern Poland, and Roman Catholic Church sources report encouraging signs in the church’s negotiations with the country’s ruling military council. Uncensored dispatches from Poland today quoted sources close to Polish Catholic primate Archbishop Jozef Glemp as saying that progress was being made. But the nature of the church’s negotiations was unclear. The church has been demanding early release of detainees in exchange for its support in calming public reaction to martial law. In Washington, President Reagan said the United States government would do everything it can to prevent the military crackdown from dragging on. No specific plans were announced. It was not known how many Poles have been jailed. Government spokesman Jerzy Urban on Monday denied independent reports placing the number as high as 50,000. He said approximately 5,000 people have

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been interned since Premier Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski proclaimed martial law Dec. 13, and about 1,200 of them sentenced for violating the military decree. Radio Warsaw said Monday that Polish Ambassador Romuald Spasowski, who received asylum in the United States on Sunday, will be tried in absentia for “serious crimes” against the state. It described him as a “Judas” who had betrayed his country. President Reagan praised Spasowski for his courage and for pointing out the seriousness of the Polish situation. Western reporters in Poland are not permitted to travel, in-

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Egger, who complains about the tight budget for IRS, is trying to make the tax-collecting system less costly. To save on postage, he has instructed the Postal Service not to forward the mailed tax forms to persons who have moved out of their local delivery area since last year. Persons who filed last year but have not received mailed forms by mid-January should pick up forms from a bank, savings and loan association, post office or IRS office. The tax is due April 15. Egger also has withdrawn the traditional IRS offer to help individuals fill out their returns. This year, IRS will compute your tax after you have filled in all the other figures or will offer free instructions to groups such as the elderly or handicapped... but won’t provide such instructions for one person. You still will be able to telephone an IRS office in your area to ask a specific question, but Egger is letting the IRS director in each of the 59 IRS districts decide how much staff he can allocate to such service. Says an IRS spokesman: "Many people this year may find our telephone is busy.” Egger hopes this inconvenience may be offset somewhat by what he calls the IRS effort "to simplify the tax forms and make them more readable.” Aside from some changes made necessary by this year’s tax law, Egger has consolidated the previous series of tax rate tables into a single table that generally must be used by everybody with a taxable income of less than $50,000.

ternal communications have not been restored and most dispatches are subjected to tight censorship. News organizations have been piecing together a few reliable uncensored reports from Poland, monitoring official broadcasts and gathering information from travelers, diplomatic sources and others. On Monday, dissident Poles continued strikes at coal mines in the south and refineries in the north. The government said the majority of workers were back on the job, but conceded that Solidarity “extremists” had shut some plants and mines. Radio Warsaw reported that nearly 3,000 Polish miners have

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controlled two mines in the Silesian coal fields since last Tuesday. It broadcast an appeal to miners to break their strike and go home for Christmas. “Christmas is near; your families are awaiting you,” the broadcast said. Government authorities said they were trying to talk the miners out rather than have a repeat of last week’s violence in Wojek, which left seven miners dead. Church sources said it appeared the government strategy was to allow the miners to stay underground until they come out on their own. The Soviet news agency Tass had earlier claimed Solidarity

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In the past, there was a separate table for single persons, married couples filing jointly, married couples filing separately, and heads of households. This led to the most frequent of all taxpayer errors using the wrong tax table. Consolidating the data into one table is intended to eliminate many of these errors and make filing simpler, but it does require one extra step, which some taxpayers may overlook at their own expense unless they are alert. In the past, tax reductions for personal exemptions were built into the various tables, but now the taxpayer must deduct the exemptions from his gross income blindness or being over age 65 before using the consolidated table. The consolidated table can be used for returns reporting income of up to $50,000 and with no limit on the number of exemptions, whereas the older tables went up to only $20,000 for a single person or $40,000 for couples filing jointly, with a limit of three exemptions for a single person and nine for a couple. Creation of the consolidated table enables IRS to reduce the size of the instruction book to 46 pages from last year’s 52. Two other changes will lessen the filing burden for some taxpayers with investment or retirement income. Persons with more than S4OO in interest or dividend income may now use form 1040 A. This short form has a second page to show this income.

activists had dynamited shut one of the entrances to the Ziemowit mine in Tychy region and threatened to close the other outlet trapping 1,300 miners inside if the government tried to apply force. Warsaw Radio claimed Solidarity strike leaders "have restricted ali information, distorting news from the miners’ families, and are using intimidation. Today they refused to allow doctors, mining office experts and priests down the mine. Contact is being maintained by telephone. The strikers are receiving food parcels from their families and soup cooked in the mines.” Church sources reported that

Two critical after grain plant explosion

DANVILLE, 111. (AP) - Two men were left in critical condition after two explosions ripped through a grain processing plant in downtown Danville, injuring 16 workers and damaging property for several blocks around the plant. Cause of the explosion Monday at the Lauhoff Grain Co. remained under investigation today. The two men in critical condition, John West and Jeff Slavik, were taken to the

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priests have conducted Masses for the striking miners. The radio said 874 miners had quit the protest and authorities hoped to resolve the impasse without force. Tass reported Monday that “Solidarity thugs” were barricaded in the Katowice steel works, not far from the Tychy mines, and were blackmailing authorities by threatening to blow up the furnaces. The news agency did not say when the incident began or how many strikers were involved. A recent visitor to the Baltic port city of Gdansk, birthplace of Solidarity, reported seeing “hundreds of spent teargas cannisters” in the streets and broken windows near the Lenin shipyards. Tanks continued to surround two refineries in Gdansk and Plock where workers were said to be on strike, according to uncensored dispatches. Urban said Solidarity leader Lech Walesa “is currently staying in Warsaw,” has been visited by his wife and children and was seen Sunday by a priest who said Mass.

Memorial Medical Center burn unit in Springfield, where their conditions were listed as critical Monday night, a hospital spokeswoman said. Nine other persons were in fair, stable or good condition at St. Elizabeth Hospital and Lakewood Medical Center in Danville, spokesmen at those institutions said. Five persons were treated and released. “There was this boom, then another boom,” said Tim Hasser of Earl Park, Ind., who was delivering a truck load of soybeans and was about 50 feet away from the blasts.

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And retired taxpayers may now show all their pension and annuity income on the front page of form 1040. They no longer have to attach a separate Schedule E. ; Because of tax law changes, there is a separate schedule tor excluding up to SI,OOO per person of income from All-Savers Certificates, and a schedule for excluding up to $125,000 instead ol SIOO,OOO of profits on the sale of a home under some circumstances by persons at least 55 years of age, and an alternative method of computing the tax on capital gains realized by high-income individuals since June 10. But don’t look for the forms to take into account three of the most widely publicized provisions of this year’s tax bill reduction of the “marriage penalty” for two-income families, charitable contribution deductions for people who don’t itemize their deductions, and increased child and dependent care credits. These provisions don’t go into effect until next year. And don’t expect the reduction in tax rates to have much effect this year. The reduction was 5 percent, but it wasn’t effective until the last quarter of the year, beginning Oct. 1. So IRS tables reflect a reduction of one-fourth of the 5 percent, or IIAl l A percent for the entire year. The reduction of l'/ 4 percent applies to earnings throughout the year. Even if all your earnings were in the last quarter of the year, your tax rates still go down only 1 >/ 4 percent.

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REP. ANDREW JACOBS

Democrats blame high interest for many Hoosier ills

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Four Indiana Democratic congressmen blame high interest rates for much of the state’s economic difficulties and say they don’t expect things to get better unless President Reagan’s economic program is re-evaluated. The 258,000 people who are unemployed will find little solace in a short-term drop in interest rates, Rep. Floyd Fithian told a House subcommittee meeting in Indianapolis Monday. “I think we all see a return of higher interest rates,” he told the subcommittee on domestic monetary policy of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee. Fithian said unemployment in Indiana is “worse than in most states. This is to a considerable degree the result of high interest rates. “If interest rates don’t come down here, life will be very difficult” with a chronic housing shortage pushing the elderly out and 7-8 percent unemployment for the next decade. Rep. Dave Evans predicted Indiana unemployment will go

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REP. FLOYD FITHIAN:

beyond the current 10V 2 percent. “I think things are goipg to get worse before they sUJrt getting better here.” Rep. Philip Sharp did not attend the hearing but send; a statement saying interest rates the last 15 months have resulted in thousands of people losipg jobs in the automobile, housing, real estate and construction Industries. “Although short-term rates have dropped significantly ;in the last six weeks, it comes too late for many and has had little effect in many sectors which depend on long-term interest rates such as housing,” he said. He said the Federal Reserve Board’s efforts to cut inflation through high interest rates mey result in long-term unemployment for thousands of Hoosiers and it is time to reevaluate the consequences-of Reagan’s economic program.Rep. Andrew Jacobs said, “The administration will not agree to correct the tragic injustice of its own new tax law, which more than anything else is driving interest rates up and the economy down.” Evans and the subcommittee chairman. Rep. Walter E. Fauntroy, a Democrat from the District of Columbia, held a news conference before the hearing. Fauntroy said 50,000 small businesses went bankrupt last year. Fauntroy and Evans said some of the options that could be considered by Congress after the Christmas recess include: —Reconsidering the 10 percent income tax cut ayd perhaps delaying it six months so the government can use the money to alleviate some of the burgeoning federal deficit. •- —Pulling back tax breaks used by some larger industries to buy up other industries. * —Cutting military spending Fauntroy said there should j>e a more comprehensive Approach by Congress, the Administration and the Federal Reserve Board in dealing wfth fiscal and monetary policy.. ; “By looking at how this yeaf’s high interest rates affected economic activity in the Indianapolis area and in otljrr areas, and particularly hOw credit conditions have affected long-term capital investment, we on this subcommittee ancCjn the Congress hope to get a better idea of now to proceed on ®ie monetary, credit and fis&l questions before us."