Wednesday July 31,1985Arhe Battalion/Page 5
ORIX) AMD NATION
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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.
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