Changing Lifestyles : Not Paying Taxes Is a Way of Life in Lebanon : An estimated 75% of the population hasn’t paid anything since the beginning of the civil war in 1975.

Imagine telling an IRS agent to go to hell. Well, in this Mediterranean taxpayers’ heaven, Lebanese tax collectors hear it all the time.

Hiding from the Internal Revenue Service? Welcome to the perfect tax haven. No chance they’ll catch up with you here. Lebanon’s tax collectors estimate that about 75% of the population hasn’t paid taxes since the beginning of the civil war in 1975.

A visit to the Personal Income Tax Department in the Ministry of Finance in West Beirut would be enough to send any IRS agent running. Just a few feet above the director’s chair is a bullet hole. But, the story goes, it had nothing to do with the job--and besides, it happened after hours.

The workload for a job that pays less than $100 a month is formidable. In just one corner are thousands of dusty, orange customs declarations dating to 1980--still not dealt with.

Beirut’s 114 tax collectors can console each other, but out in the Bekaa Valley, an area best compared to America’s Wild West, only one tax man rides the range trying to rope in revenue for the Lebanese government. Asked how he was doing, the answer came: “He’s still alive.”

Insufficient personnel is problem No. 1 for the Lebanese tax department. But the department would be a lot better off if it had a computer. Manual checking of returns means very few ever are.

Compared to the IRS, the Lebanese equivalent asks very little of its citizens and nothing from certain categories. A progressive tax of 6% to 32% exempts clergy, nurses, and owners of schools and hospitals. In reality, most small businesses and the rich escape scot-free.

The biggest tax burden is born by government employees and those of large companies. Lebanon’s two largest employers--Middle East Airlines, with 4,200 employees, and the American University of Beirut, with 2,430--use the withholding system.

Lebanon has not always been so forgiving on the tax front. During the 15-year civil war, rival militias levied taxes galore. Road tolls, capital gains and sales tax--you name it, and they collected on it. Everything was computerized, and no one dared to say no.

And in the prewar days, even the prostitutes paid, according to one old-timer in the department. “They were assessed according to their beauty,” he said without detail.

Today, residents of East Beirut drive daily past the shelled and burned remains of the old Ministry of Finance near their side of the old Green Line that once divided the capital--and watch as the wind scatters the charred remains of their tax records. The building burned in March, 1990.

Corporations that move to Lebanon are taxed only 22%--an incentive for investment. But tax people say that the inability of the government to check up means most companies pay about 10%.

For those who might have invested here during the war years, the government passed a law stating that business losses incurred during fighting can be deducted from the profits for eight years as long as the profit doesn’t exceed the losses. But there’s room for “compromise.”

If you happen to own a restaurant, these “compromises” can be discussed over lunch. Many enterprising business leaders have established long-term friendships with the tax agents through the years.

Should the relationship go awry, the worst that can happen is a fine; no one is in prison for tax evasion in Lebanon. The country’s bank secrecy laws, which are stricter than those of Switzerland and once enticed huge amounts from the Persian Gulf, help to hide real profits.

Got property to sell? There’s more good news: Lebanon has no capital gains tax. If you are a Lebanese citizen living overseas, you are not taxed for income earned abroad. But the tax people say many Lebanese are returning because the tax structures in France, the United States and Canada--where many settled--have made them homesick for Lebanon’s tax laws.

People who want to become Lebanese citizens for the tax advantages have been known to buy forged passports, reportedly costing about $400.

In Lebanon’s peaceful past, about 300 American companies were represented here, and the IRS came regularly to check up on them. Another U.S. link was a state-side training program that 150 Lebanese tax people benefited from.

As for its tardy Lebanese clients, the Lebanese government issued an amnesty in 1991 that covers back payments to 1980. With law and order back in business here, many an errant individual rushed to the tax division before the March 31 deadline. The crush of people--not so unlike April 14 in the United States--took on a Lebanese flavor as civil servants registering these many happy returns were slipped tips to hurry the process along.

The brains and brawn behind the new tax order in Lebanon will be the Office of the General Attorney for Financial Affairs. Its task is to implement a 1983 tax law that will include stiff fines and imprisonment for tax evasion.

As for the future, even the tax types want to see Lebanon remain a tax paradise. This will encourage Western and Gulf investment, the return of wealthy Lebanese from abroad and some semblance of order on the home front.