Bill Offered to Correct Errors in 1986 Tax Bill

Senior tax writers in the House and Senate introduced a bill Wednesday to correct hundreds of errors discovered in the giant tax-revision measure enacted last year.

The new 450-page bill is designed solely to correct mistakes and clear up ambiguities in the law, not to make substantive changes, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in introducing the measure.

Some of those errors, for example, qualified wrong cities and states for various tax benefits from municipal bonds. A provision benefiting a handful of investors in a New Mexico coal operation inadvertently became law, although negotiators from the House and Senate had rejected it.

Besides Bentsen, others who signed the bill were Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; Rep. John J. Duncan of Tennessee, senior Republican on Ways and Means, and Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon, senior Republican on the Finance Committee.

Scores of bills that would make substantive changes in the 1986 tax law have been introduced this year. Those proposals were not in the corrections measure, but any of them could be added to the package when it is debated in the Senate and House.

Those proposals include freezing the maximum income-tax rate at the present 38.5%, rather than permitting it to drop to 33% next year, and restoring fully deductible individual retirement accounts for all workers.