OCR Text |
Show Censorship Through Taxation Ask anyone what the Internal Revenue Service is and you'll get such answer as this: "It's a Federal administrative administra-tive agency, whose duty is to collect taxes as provided in revenue laws passed by Congress." But the Internal Revenue Service is going far afield from its proper and established function. It is, in effect, setting itself up as a censor of what enterprises and organizations or-ganizations may say in their advertising, on pain of heavy tax penalties. It is also making decisions that are purely within the province of business management. Here is the remarkable and menacing story. Internal Revenue Service has ruled that electric utility utili-ty companies cannot regard the cast of institutional advertising, adver-tising, which presents their side of the public-vs.- private pri-vate power controversy, as a legitimate business expense, deductible in income tax returns. Internal Revenue Service has also ruled that the cost of literature opposing socialism issued by one of the country's coun-try's most respected professional organizations, the Association Asso-ciation of American Physicians and Surgeons, is exempt from tax. Internal Revenue Service has also disallowed public relations advertising placed over a four-year period by the Timkin Roller Bearing Company. This advertising discussed dis-cussed the Bill of Rights, Capitalism vs. Socialism, principles princi-ples of taxation, and other such matter. In other words, Internal Revenue Service holds that advertising designed to sell products or service is a legitimate legiti-mate business deduction but that advertising designed to maintain an economic and political climate in which private enterprise may successfully produce those products pro-ducts and services is not. It is attempting to muzzle the right of people to speak their minds freely and without penalty and, in doing that, to prevent other people from knowing or weighing both sides of controversies. ' If Internal Revenue Service's incredible stand is main-' main-' tained, no one will be immune. Anyone may be faced with the choice of bureaucratic censorship or of paying a f heavy penaly for exerting absolutely basic rights which ; are supposed to be guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. This Is one of the ways in which dictatorship begins. |