Taxes: Computed & Uncomputed Bonus

One of Washington's more arcane arts is estimating beforehand the amount of revenue the Federal Government will receive in any given period. To predict how much money U.S. corporations and 65 million individual taxpayers will be paying in taxes, the Treasury feeds a complex series of figures, estimates and hunches into its computers. In recent years it has been able to guess within one-half of 1 % of the vital figure. Not so this year. As the fiscal year ended this week, the Treasury found itself with a puzzling $1.6 billion more than the $47 billion it had estimated it...

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