Wednesday July 31,1985Arhe Battalion/Page 5 ORIX) AMD NATION 'i m v \ Agency to improve customer service Associated Press . “Regardless iter we have, to consent st year, the eet above sea water corner ere in force • level is6o!HWASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, embarrassed by mi ssive problems in processing tax O rel urns this year, is shifting priori- Hs away from increased audits to improving dealings with taxpayers. ■The IRS is often too slow in ad- •s at levelsof m ttin g anc ^ correcting its errors, nil the ytai Commissioner Roscoe L. Egger Jr. said in an interview. ■“When we get the same com plaints over and over again, you ■ve to believe something needs to be corrected,” he said. ■Many of those complaints this vdar dealt with refund checks that Appropriations Com- oted to restore that )e consistent. )n firms ritv [ of the watei | bland Lake i es more that; nflow to the | , . wtre delayed because of problems the lakes, w th a new computer system. BAs ol July 12, the IRS paid $17.1 water rip m i||' lon j n interest on 1.29 million re- 'Om rn issioncijf un( j s i3 ecause t j ie agency was late in processing them. A year earlier at that time, about 895,000 refunds in cluded interest totaling $14.5 mil lion. sa ' ( * tEiat though this W V ylar's return-proc essing problems " * ^^^■ised great unhappiness within the ^Hency, he sees the snafu as an op- ^Hrtunity to focus on quality control in processing, auditing, collec tions and certainly in dealing with taxpayers. jWhile Egger is seeking to improve customer relations, the Reagan ad ministration has proposed reducing for the 12 months 1 by $30.4 million and 1,254 job slots. The House mittee has votec money and add another $147 mil lion. Although Egger is concerned that the agency is auditing too few tax re turns, Egger said that “is no longer our first priority.” Increasing audits and concentrat ing them on tax-shelter and upper- income returns has been one of Egg- er’s top goals since he took over the IRS more than four years ago. Egger calls this filing season the “When we get the same complaints . . . something needs to he corrected. ” IRS Commissioner Roscoe L. Egger Jr. am has notpre. the [RS budgel beginning Oct. T 301 with ., n/ i i orA u, erne are re- > qualify as a ience under bred in their i by the En- Mathematics xam in 152 worst ever for the agency . The agency, faced with 3.5 per cent more returns than last year, had the choice of sticking with its 15- year-old computer equipment, but Egger said the risk was too high. The cost would have been far too steep, and the personnel were not avail able, to run the old system and the new one simultaneously until the - bugs were removed, he said. The new system was tested be forehand at the Memphis service center. But when the switches were thrown in the other nine centers where returns are processed, the IRS found problems not only in the computers but also in the complex instructions that run them. The end result was delayed re fund checks; perhaps one-third of the nearly 68 million refunds mailed so far this year were late. Those delays triggered letters from taxpayers, congressional inves tigations, a backlog of unanswered correspondence that only now is be ing reduced to manageable propor tions and a spate of rumors about IRS employees shredding returns. The worst problem was at the Philadelphia service center, which last year had failed to post $300 mil lion worth of business tax payments. That foulup led to reports — none ever substantiated, Egger said —that some returns were deliberately de stroyed to reduce the work backlog. Taxpayer suspicions were fed by disclosure that a supervisor in the Austin service center had ordered documents, not tax returns, de stroyed. The supervisor was fired. The National Treasury Employ ees Union, which represents IRS workers, said the Reagan adminis tration’s budget cuts have been a big ger factor than computers in this year’s problems. Those reductions have slashed the agency’s processing work force by over 5,000 slots since 1980, even though the number of tax returns has grown by 41 million during the same period, thg. union said. Auto, oil imports push June trade deficit over $13 billion ter tsiness, Engi- Associated Press ■WASHINGTON — The United States suffered a $13.4 billion trade deficit last month, the second high est on record and a big jump in de mand for passenger cars and foreign oil added to the country’s trading w'orkdum woes ’£ overnrnent said Tuesday, tmter forr! m^ e Commerce Department said the merchandise trade deficit climbed 5.6 percent in June from the May level of $12.7 billion. The red ink included a record $4.57 bil lion monthly deficit with Japan. gThe deteriorating trade perfor mance has led to a growing push in Congress for trade barriers aimed at saving American jobs. In an effort to ward off those efforts, the Japanese on Tuesday announced a three-year trade program to open up more Jap anese markets to foreign goods by streamlining the country’s import procedures. ■ For the first six months of the year, the U.S. trade deficit — the dif- fjrence between what America im ports and what it sells abroad — to taled $70.7 billion as the country seemed assured of far surpassing last year’s record deficit of $123.3 billion. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, assessing the latest bad news, said the dollar was still too strong compared with other curren cies for American industry to be able to compete in world markets. A strong dollar hurts export sales and opens the country to a flood of cheaper imports. While the dollar has declined by about 12 percent from its record highs in February, it is still 40 percent above its 1980 aver age* The battering U.S. manufacturers have taken from foreign competi tion is cited for the sluggish perfor mance the overall economy has turned in this year. The gross na tional product has advanced at a barely discernible 1 percent annual rate in the first six months of 1985. Because of the weak growth, the Reagan administration on Monday was forced to lower its forecast for growth for the whole year to 3 per cent. However, many private ana lysts say this estimate is still too opti mistic. “The dollar has not declined enough to get us out of the compet itive hole we have gotten ourselves into,” said Jerry Jasinowski, chief economist for the National Associa tion of Manufacturers. Jasinowski said growth in the cur rent quarter will be “substantially weaker than the administration ex pects because of the continuing drag of the trade deficit and the unwil lingness of businessmen to build up inventories because of what has been going on.” While Jasinowski predicted the economy would begin to turn around in the last three months of the year, David Levy, an economist at Levy Economic Forecasts, a pri vate consulting firm, was far more pessimistic. n Jctors J-BIKE I College Maiiij| brthgate "Miami Vice's" third showing gets high ratine Associated Press NEW YORK — How hot is NEC's “Miami Vice?” So hot that the third broadcast of its two- hour opening episode ranked No. 3 in the ratings last week and performed better than when the show was first repeated last Jan uary. . Figures released Tuesday by theA.C. Nielsen Co. showed “Mi ami Vice” only trailing repeats of NEC’s “The Cosby Show” and ‘Family Ties” and leading the network to its 10th consecutive prime-time victory and 13th in the last 14 weeks. NBC researchers say since Nielsen has been measuring na tional ratings in the last 25 years, the network has never won 10 weeks in a row. Since the end of the traditional rime-time season April 21, NBC as won every week except for CBS’ victory in May when “Dal las” ended its season with the death of Bobby Ewing. Last week’s Top Ten illus trated viewers’ 'summer prefer ence for comedy and action re runs. Seven of the favored shows were comedies. High technology goes into vegetable fields Associated Press CINNAMINSON, N.J. — High technology has ventured into the vegetable fields as scientists try to put more snap and sweetness in car rots, find the perfect tomato and create celery with no strings at tached. In the laboratories and green houses of its sprawling headquar ters, DNA Plant Technology Corp. applies plant genetics to develop vegetables with desirable character istics such as resistance to disease or improved texture and flavor. Using nutrients to promote cell growth in tissues placed in labo ratory dishes, the scientists can ob tain up to 10,000 plants from a sin gle leaf, and then identify and breed the ones with superior traits. The company’s process, called “somaclonal variation,” is similar to the centuries-old use of crossbreed ing to obtain a variety of plants but is much faster and has a somewhat dif ferent aim in mind. John Marsden, the company’s ex ecutive vice president, said, “Most of the plant breeding in the past was for the benefit of the farmer, im proving things like crop yield. Our work is mostly for the consumer.” The company plans to put its first product on the market early next year, packages of celery and carrot said the scientists tailored the vegeta bles to consumer preferences by making carrots sweeter and taking the annoying strings out of celery. VegiSnax will be test-marketed under an agreement with Kraft Inc. and will be sold in packages de signed to give the snacks a shelf life of five weeks, company officials said. DNA Plant Technology started in 1981 when a pair of enterprising sci entists trading the security of regu lar paychecks for the chance to test their skills in the marketplace. When William R. Sharp and Da vid A. Evans submitted their resig nations to Campbell Soup Co., their bosses were more intrigued than up set. Campbell invested heavily in the new company, providing a 32-acre site for its headquarters in exchange for stock and signing a $2.4 million dollar contract for researchers to de velop improved tomatoes. While the bulk of the new compa ny’s research has involved improv ing plants for customers who like to keep their projects confidential, Campbell has been quite open about what it wants from the laboratory — tomatoes that can be grown all year with consistently good flavor and color. DNA Plant Technology officials say their process is natural and in volves no splitting of genes or clon ing of cells. AKo Wrint, LIGHT *N CRISPY -FRESH BAKED YEAST ROLL^ Ca«n*o »ppe«ranc®* by COLE SLAW ♦ POTATO SALAD * FRENCH FRIES * FRESHLY BREWED TEA«CORN-ON-THE-COB * MASHED POTATOES * CREAM GRAVY ♦ JALAPENO PEPPERS Product and Otr»ct*