Dole Treads With Care as He Fends Off Flat-Tax Demands

Bob Dole, once derided as “tax collector for the welfare state,” tried to use Monday’s tax filing deadline to turn the nation’s simmering taxpayer revolution to his own advantage as he battled for general election votes in this suburban Philadelphia community.

Blaming President Clinton for what he called the biggest tax increase in American history, enacted during Clinton’s first year in the White House, Dole told several hundred enthusiastic supporters: “It’s time for him to go back to Little Rock.”

But taxes have never been an easy issue for Dole. His own concern with the deficit led him to push through a substantial tax increase early in the Reagan presidency. That prompted Newt Gingrich, then a junior Republican member of the House, to tag him with the “tax collector” label.

Now, campaigning as presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Dole has to fend off demands for a flat tax from Republicans who favor the idea--in this case, a dozen small-business owners who peppered him with complaints about the onerous reporting and compliance requirements of the current code.

As he has been throughout the campaign, Dole was cautious. “We’re looking at a single rate concept,” he told the group gathered around several folding tables in the Philly Sports Cafe. But he added: “We want to make certain in this so-called flat tax, single rate, whatever, that before we adopt that as a party position that we’re not shifting the tax burden from the big people to the group of people around here.”

Jonathan Newman, a bicycle shop owner, enumerated to Dole 14 taxes that he must pay as a small-business owner. “Every time I turn around, there’s another form to fill out, another tax to pay, whatever,” he fumed.

Nancy Avigliano, owner of the 2-week-old Sun Valley Pizza parlor, recalled that “even before we sold our first pizza, we were paying corporate taxes.”

“Simplify,” another businessman shouted out.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Dole’s campaign aides made public his 1995 tax returns, showing that he and wife Elizabeth earned $583,869 and paid $136,848 in taxes. Most of the Doles’ income came from his $149,000 Senate salary, Mrs. Dole’s $175,000 salary as president of the American Red Cross, from which she took an unpaid leave last Oct. 31, more than $112,000 in capital gains from investments and $100,000 that Mrs. Dole earned in speech fees.

Mrs. Dole contributed more than $50,000 to charity, which would account for all her speech earnings except for a $49,000 contribution to her private retirement fund and about $2,000 in expenses connected with her speech writing.