Word: caplining
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With the nervous affability of a missionary who has stumbled into a cannibal camp. Internal Revenue Commissioner Mortimer M. Caplin sat down with 700 angry businessmen in Washington last week to explore "the T. & E. problem." T. & E.-for travel and entertainment-will be curtailed sharply as an expense-account item after Jan. i under the tax-law revisions passed in the last session of Congress...
Where once "the rule of reasonableness" applied in expense-account audits. Internal Revenue now expects detailed receipts and notations for such business tools as lunches, conventions and country-clubbing. "We do not want to interfere with legitimate business-expense deductions," Caplin insisted at a two-day hearing on the new rules. But 56 assorted executives who followed him to the rostrum plainly felt otherwise...
Under Commissioner Caplin, a former University of Virginia law professor who taught both Bobby and Ted Kennedy, the Government is toughening up its stand on tax loopholes and tax offenders. Personally, Caplin believes that the Government could garner at least as much money-and make the majority of taxpayers happier-by reducing tax rates to 10% in the lowest bracket and to 65% in the highest bracket while getting rid of most exemptions, and lowering oil-depletion allowances. To make present tax rules more intelligible, the IRS has cut form 1040-the long form used by more than a quarter...
...Caplin believes that much more than the tax form needs change. He has introduced something called a "quality audit," which he hopes will raise a lot more money. Revenue agents used to go over large numbers of returns, generally stopped auditing when they found one violation or error. But the IRS believes that some taxpayers, particularly businessmen, throw in an easy-to-spot violation as bait to get the audit over with while hiding the really important evasion...
...they pay too much or too little. But the taxpayer has a period of grace before the impersonal and sleepless computers go to work on the entire country in 1966-and the IRS is using the interim to 156.8 psychological advantage. "As a word to the wise," says Commissioner Caplin, "I would say that this is a very good time to clean the slate if past errors or omissions are known. In fact, if I had a friend with doubts about his personal tax records. I would advise him to drop around to his district office soon and clear them...