Taxmen order pay-up

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 6

Taxmen order pay-up

NZPA-AP Little Rock,

Arkansas

United States Government tax collectors, after an audit of George Bush’s 1981 tax returns, had directed the Vice-President to pay an extra SUSI9B,OOO ($396,000) in taxes and interest, his lawyers revealed yesterday. The Internal Revenue Service required most of the extra payments — now being contested by Mr Bush — after disallowing a tax deferral that he had claimed on profits from the sale of his house in Houston, Texas. The tax agency also required that part of a $U591,852 ($183,704) election campaign fund surplus that Mr Bush received be counted as income. Mr Bush and his wife, Barbara, paid $U5245,491 ($490,982) in Federal Government income taxes in 1981. His lawyers said that he was contesting $U5144,128 ($288,256) of the additional tax payment, plus $U554,000 ($108,000) in interest that he had been required to pay after the audit.

A lawyer, Dean Burch, said that the I.R.S. ruling will be appealed against and that it would be carried to the Tax Court if required.

The contested tax return came to light when Bush campaign aides released the Vice-President’s tax returns for the years 1981,1982, and 1983. Mr Bush had declined to release those returns earlier asserting that the terms of a 1981 blind trust had forbidden him from seeing the returns or making them public. Mr Burch told a news conference in Little Rock, after a Bush campaign appearance, that the trust had been modified to permit the tax returns to be released. Mr Bush did not attend the session, heading for a later appearance in Tulsa, Oklahoma. aj