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Show i . : ' Weekly gpeteiian'ff'.-Tax gpeteiian'ff'.-Tax deadbeats get more help revenue at $2.8 billion in 1990. Where did the sudden increase come from? The budget experts forgot to include the $300 million annual cost of the 7,500 examiners, as they had in the 1989 estimate. The Internal Revenue Service doesn't trust anyone. The tax men are planning to retain a private firm to monitor radio stations across the country to make sure they run Internal Revenue announcements as they claim. Unlike regular commercials, commer-cials, the IRS announcements are aired free. But broadcasting such public-service announcements is part of a station's licensing obligation, so the IRS wants to make sure no station is cheating on its promise. SHEIK SHORTS : A new phenom-i enon has appeared in Saudi Arabia: the American-style workaholic; It's a v radical departure from the old days when, as a State Department report observes, the hard work was left to foreigners and a Saudi could make money just by getting up in the morning. The new Saudi strivers appear to be suffering from all the symptoms of their American role models. There are a "higher incidence of heart attacks, hypertension and ... the other side effects of Western progress . . . - (and) Western-style press of business. " . Looking for some "really hot" property? Call a Saudi Arabian princess. A state Department document docu-ment discloses that real estate is becoming a hobby among wellborn Saudi women. "Royal princesses with nothing else to do often buy and sell real-estate holdings as a sort of pastime," the document notes. Copyright, 1985. United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Washington Some of the nation's na-tion's richest corporatons not only get a free ride at income-tax time, but are given fat "bon voyage" gifts by the federal government as they climb on the average taxpayer's backs. Our associate Corky Johnson checked the tax status of several companies against the multimillion-dollar multimillion-dollar grants they got from the federally funded U.S. Snythetic Fuels Corp. The grants are to encourage development of alternative alterna-tive energy sources to lessen dependence on imported oil. And though nothing has panned out yet, Synfuels is not downhearted. It still has about $8 billion to give away, and appears determined to get rid of , every last penny. . , ... Some of the recipients of the Synfuels largesse already have a pretty good deal going with Uncle Sam. Thanks to congressionally approved tax breaks, they have not only paid no income taxes at all, but have actually received rebates or tax credits in the millions of dollars. It's all perfectly legal, but it does produce some bizarre examples of corporate welfare, like these: General Electric: President Reagan's Rea-gan's former employer was recently indicted for fraud on defense contracts, but Synfuels has no qualms about GE. As part of a consortium building a coal gasification gasifica-tion plant in California, GE will share in $120 million of Synfuels funding. A GE subsidiary, Ladd Petroleum, will get up to $100 million for another synthetic-fuel plant in that state. And the directors of a GE project in Detroit will ask for Synfuels funding later this year, as well as $270 million from the Energy Depart ment. In 19811983, GE paid no income taxes on its combined profits in $6.5 billion. In fact, it got $283 million in tax rebates for those three years. A company spokesman said GE did pay income taxes for 1984: $185 million. Dow Chemical: This Fortune-500 Fortune-500 welfare client has been guaranteed $620 million for the fuel it is trying to develop in Louisiana. Although Dow made $776 million in profits in 1981-1983, its $223 million in tax refunds gave it a "negative tax rate" of 28 percent. Tenneco: Although the General Accounting Office has concluded that the Great Plains gasification plant in North Dakota could do without federal help, Synfuels has insisted on giving it $790 million in subsidies. Tenneco owns 30. percent of the project. The company will also share in $2.2, billion worth of Synfuels loan-and-price guarantees to produce oil from Colorado coal shale. In 1981-1983 Tenneco made $2.6 billion in profits, paid no income taxes, and collected $189 million in tax benefits. In what is becoming something of a tradition on Capitol Hill, legislation has been introduced again this year to kill Synfuels outright. But it has powerful friends in Congress, and the best that can be hoped for is probably another compromise, like . the one last year cutting $5 4 billion off the corporation's budget. MORE TAX TALES: The Reagan administration has asked for 7,500 additional examiners in the Internal Revenue Service over the next three years, estimating that they will be able to squeeze out $2.6 billion in lost taxes by 1989. Then, instead of leveling off or declining as taxpayers tax-payers learn the risks of cheating budget proposal estimates additional |