Taxpayers

POLITICS, rather than logic, seem to be driving the recent decision by the Annapolis City Council's finance committee to spend as much as $50,000 to finance private lawsuits by property owners to contest this year's tax differential between the city and Anne Arundel County.Pouring money down this legal rathole is likely to achieve nothing more than keeping squads of attorneys busy. It is unlikely that revisiting this issue in the courts will repeal the county's 8-cent property tax increase for Annapolis.

The 1992 election campaign has barely begun, but every wage and salary earner in America now has a chance to vote on part of President Bush's economic recovery package, a key campaign issue.Instead of asking for a ballot, they can ask their employer for a W-4 form and decline the lower tax withholding rate in the Bush plan. Or they can take home a bit more cash with each paycheck.New tax withholding schedules are to be implemented by employers starting today. The new schedules, which Mr. Bush called for in his State of the Union speech, are intended to cut tax withholding rates slightly and put a maximum this year of $345 -- for married people filing jointly -- into the pockets of low- and middle-income workers.

Members of a Baltimore taxpayers group yesterday expressed outrage and disappointment at Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's quiet proposal to help the owners of the troubled HarborView development by offering tax credits to buyers of condominiums there.They were particularly upset because the Schmoke administration, as recently as Friday, had opposed a bill they favor that would offer similar sliding-scale credits for buyers of new homes citywide.The mayor abruptly decided to support the second measure this week in the face of legislative opposition to the HarborView bill.

Now that American taxpayers are about to set up the biggest-ever vulture investment fund, let's make sure they get the same kind of action as Wall Street's traditional carrion fowl. Vulture investors swoop in where other investors fear to go, providing cash to panicked sellers and keeping shaky markets from falling even further. But they have a price: a large share of the upside when things get back to normal. Washington should demand nothing less from the banking institutions it is about to rescue.

WHEN CARROLL TAXPAYERS guarantee a loan of $1.2 million, they have a right to know more than just the name of the borrower. County officials owe the people -- who will be stuck with the bill should this business fail -- a lot more information than they have released so far on the deal to locate Unigen Pharmaceutical Inc. in Westminster's Airport Business Park.When Jack Lyburn, the county's economic development director, complied with the wishes of Unigen, a start-up biotechnology company, and refused to divulge much beyond the company's name and the number of prospective employees, he mistook his role in the county.

MARYLAND taxpayers may get a tax cut this year, but the cost is a more complicated state tax return. And it didn't have to be this way. Last session, the General Assembly reduced the state's top tax rate, cutting state income taxes about $24 for a family of four earning $40,000. But the lower tax rate won't apply to the piggy-back tax Maryland residents pay to their local governments. As a result, what had been a simple calculation has become overly difficult. To remind taxpayers that their counties refused to give up any revenue, the state requires taxpayers to figure their piggy-back rate by going through eight lines of additional calculations.

For once, the Internal Revenue Service has good news, with just five days left to meet the April 15 filing deadline.An estimated 300,000 Maryland families qualify for the earned-income tax credit this year, a program that gives working-poor families credits of up to $2,364 on federal returns and $1,182 on state returns.But U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin said yesterday that as many as 40,000 eligible households in Maryland may not know about the program. As a result, up to $40 million in tax credits could be sacrificed.

As if the Internal Revenue Service hasn't suffered enough embarrassment of late for overzealous collection practices and other abuses, the agency -- a stickler for accuracy on the part of taxpayers -- now admits that one of its figures is a whopping overestimate.Early in April, the IRS warned that more than 1 million taxpayers who should have included Schedule D, the form for reporting capital gains and losses, had failed to do so in their filings for 1997. These filers could expect the agency to send their return right back to them -- without any claimed refund.

The Maryland Taxpayers Association called on Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday to streamline government and cut back on state regulations as he takes office. "What we would like to do is begin to change the mindset," said Dee Hodges, president of the nonpartisan group. "We want them to have us [taxpayers] in mind rather than growing government for the sake of growing government." The association - which aims to promote "effective, fiscally efficient government" and asks political candidates to sign pledges not to raise taxes - endorsed Ehrlich in the gubernatorial campaign.

WASHINGTON -- The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service issued an extraordinary public apology yesterday to four individuals -- and, by extension, to all American taxpayers -- for severe mistreatment at the hands of the agency.The tax official, Michael P. Dolan, also promised immediate changes to eliminate incentives for misconduct and to make the IRS more responsive to public complaints.At the conclusion of three days of hearings on IRS abuses before the Senate Finance Committee, Dolan said he was deeply troubled by the charges leveled against his agency this week by taxpayers, current and former IRS officials and outside watchdogs.