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Real bribes are clumsier and rarer; in the present atmosphere, Congressmen even think twice about accepting a ride home in the private plane of a friendly defense contractor. The limit one federal tax collector used to go in accepting favors was a 12-lb. ham. Former Senator Paul Douglas, an incorruptible man, made a $2.50 present his ceiling, which nowadays would not keep a man in good cigars. But Douglas remembered that if one asked a corrupt policeman where things went wrong, he would say "It all began with a cigar." Then a bottle of whisky; after that a case; then something for "the little woman," which by gradual stages led to the $9,500 "natural royal pastel mink coat" that figured so prominently in the corruption of the last days of the Truman Administration. Those days made a familiar name of T. Lamar Caudle, the folksy bribe-taking head of the tax division in the Justice Department.
In the two decades since, the bureaucrats in the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service have been singularly free of such scandal. Where the federal income tax raises hackles is in the loopholes and exemptions written into the law to enable the rich and the favored to avoid high taxes. Tax collection is less criticized. The IRS collected an astonishing $238 billion in taxes in fiscal 1973, and Donald C. Alexander, its commissioner, believes that only about $6 billion in legally taxable money got away. Such faithful "voluntary self-assessment" is sometimes cited as evidence of American moral superiority over Latin nations, where income taxes are negotiated or avoided. In this case, however, prudence more than honesty may be the American virtue to be esteemed. By fiscal 1974, computers will be able to match up tax returns instantly with W-2 forms, and by 1975 with all interest and dividend payments.
The elusive boundary between what is ethically dubious and patently illegal troubles moralists. That problem surfaced in the heartfelt remarks that Oregon's Freshman Republican Senator Robert Packwood made to the President at a White House meeting: "For too long this Administration has given the public the impression that its standard of conduct was not that it must be above suspicion but that it must merely be above criminal guilt." The milk producers' $527,500 contribution was followed by a Government reversal of policy, permitting milk-price supports to be raised. Not all contributions led to happy and immediate consequences. Quids do not have to have direct quos in a day when increased federal power has such discretionary say over business—over price rises, tariffs, tax investigations, antitrust prosecutions, Government loans, rate structures, contracts, subsidies, allocations of raw materials, licenses. Every major corporation has matters pending with Government, and many (who preferred Nixon to McGovern anyway) got the message that the Nixon Administration could be selective in rewarding friends and punishing enemies.