Tax Time

Champions Tour golfer Jim Thorpe, imprisoned since April for failing to pay income taxes, has told a friend he's on track for an early release later this month. Barring complications, Mike Lewis said Wednesday, Thorpe is scheduled for a Jan. 26 release from the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp located at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Thorpe's first stop would be an Orlando-area halfway house, then home sentencing while he works at a local golf course.

It's retirement account time.More Americans think about their Individual Retirement Accounts and Keogh plans for the self-employed at tax time than any other time of the year. Whether they contribute new money or not, they ponder whether to shift around their retirement holdings. In many cases, the dollars are substantial.Whatever Congress eventually decides about the future features of IRAs, be sure to diversify retirement holdings and take into account all recent trends in interest rates and financial markets.

DO YOU wish to be generous and also save taxes? "Stocks and mutual funds are increasingly finding their way into collection plates as the stock market's multi-rise has blessed donors with large paper profits," says Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine. "Giving away assets that soared in value lets you shed your tax bill and play benefactor. If you have owned the asset for over a year, you can deduct its full market value without reporting any appreciation as taxable income."Want to lay your hands on some money?

It's that dreadful time of year that accountants happily call tax season. Microsoft offers an excellent scheme that bundles H&R Block's Kiplinger Tax Cut software with the new version of Microsoft's Money product for keeping home accounts and plotting saving/investing strategies. It would take a tax accountant to explain the skein of rebates in the offer, but you buy Money in either Standard ($35) or Deluxe ($65) editions and then you get a rebate of up to $35 if you buy Tax Cut ($10 or $20)

EXCUSE MY DUST, BUT I HAVE TO write this fairly fast. That's because I'm due at the tax accountant's office before noon to go over my income tax returns.I know what you're thinking. That I'm disorganized. A procrastinator. Someone who puts off things until the absolute last minute. In other words, the kind of person who makes you feel quite superior and extremely good about yourself.Look, that's OK with me. As long as you don't get it in your head to write me about how you did your tax returns early this year or how you already used your refund check to pay for the new kitchen floor and how if I had been more on the ball I wouldn't be facing down this deadline right now and could pay more attention to this column.

Guess what many U.S. taxpayers haven't been doing as they listen intently to ongoing debate about proposed 1993 tax increases?They haven't been doing their tax returns for the 1992 tax year, that's what.Filings are running behind last year's pace. That's partly due to taxpayer expectations of smaller refunds thanks to withholding changes ordered by George Bush to stimulate consumer spending and partly due to pure procrastination.Four out of 10 U.S. taxpayers will file their returns in April, one-third of them the week before the deadline.

Call it premonition. It was 1989 and John and Kathy McQueeny were building a custom home on Kent Island. The setting couldn't be more idyllic -- 24 acres accessed by a long drive winding through a wooded area and around three 1-acre ponds and then opening to spacious fields running down to water's edge.The home, a 4,500 square-foot, two-story brick traditional, sited to take maximum advantage of a panoramic view of the Chesapeake Bay, was nearly complete. All the McQueenys needed was an address.

As Washington politicians search for budget solutions, imagine if there were a magical revenue source that operated not unlike a national consumption tax that many conservatives prefer and would mitigate global warming to please liberals, all while helping repair America's infrastructure and strengthening our national security, to the delight of almost everyone. Actually, such a tax already exists: It's called the federal gasoline tax, and it's been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon for two decades.

Thousands of taxpayers celebrated Procrastinator's Night yesterday -- an unofficial holiday marked by long lines in and around Baltimore's main post office in the crush to beat the midnight deadline for filing federal and state returns.They came by car and truck, taxi and bus, motorcycle and 10-speed bike, some even walking on crutches braving bumper-to-bumper madness on East Fayette Street, outside the only postal facility in the metropolitan area open until the Internal Revenue Service witching hour.

You can't think of one more way to shrink your 1990 taxable income and are ready to mail your returns to the IRS and Annapolis. But what about 1991? Is there anything you can do -- now -- to have more of this year's income left after taxes?You may wish to consider a Maryland municipal bond fund to supplement or replace investments earning taxable income. Such a fund, invested only in Maryland state and local government bonds, would provide you with income that's exempt from federal, state and county income taxes.