INCOME TAX RETURNS will get a sharper look from the Bureau of Internal Revenue this year. BIR has added 650 agents to its auditing force of 11,225 men, will double-check well over 2,000,000 1955 tax returns v. an estimated 1,500,000 last year.

BLACK AUTOS are making a comeback. After slipping to 12% of the market in August of 1954, black and charcoal grey shot up to 20% of all new-car paint jobs turned out last January.

COLOR TV PRICES are fast approaching mass-market level. Sears, Roebuck will soon put out 21-in. set for $595 and Admiral will start selling 21-in. table model for $499 in June.

SUPER COKES, tried out in test markets for almost two years, are so successful that Coca-Cola cannot meet demand. With 600 of 1,100 U.S. plants converting to supply family-(26 oz.) and king-size (10-12 oz.) bottles, the bottlers have told customers that they are not restricting production, but simply cannot keep up with orders.

FLORIDA'S BIGGEST single industrial development, an aircraft factory, will be built by Howard Hughes on 30,000 acres of land near Miami. Hughes is mum on what kind of planes he will build, but the plant will reportedly cost around $50 million, employ 17,500.

TV ON TAPE will soon be in use. Ampex Corp., maker of top-quality tape recorders, has developed a new TV tape recorder that does a clearer, more economical job of reproducing TV programs than the kinescope system currently in use, can record an hour-long program on a 14-in. roll of tape. Columbia Broadcasting System has ordered three of the new machines (at $75,000 each), will substitute them for kinescopes this August.

JUNIOR JETLINERS will touch off a hot new sales race among planemakers. After Convair's announcement of its 600 m.p.h. Skylark (TIME, March 12), both Boeing (with a scaled-down 707) and Douglas (with a DC-9) are planning to build jetliners to carry 50 to 90 passengers on hops as short as 300 miles. Estimated price: around $3,000,000 per plane, or some $1,500,000 cheaper than the long-range jets already on order.

TRANSAMERICA CORP., the giant California holding company which recently spent $20 million for five banks in Utah, Idaho and Montana (TIME, April 19), is invading Wyoming. It is acquiring the Casper National Bank and the Riverton First National Bank (resources: $38 million), thus bringing its total holdings to 14 banks with deposits of $2.5 billion in ten Western states.

FEDERAL FLOOD INSURANCE is making headway in Congress. The Senate Banking Committee has approved a bill calling for a $5 billion program to insure both businessmen (up to $250,000) and home owners (up to $10,000) against a repetition of last summer's disastrous floods. Under the plan, still to be passed by the full Senate and House, the Government will pay 40% of the cost, with property owners chipping in between $2 and $10 per $1,000 of insurance.

AIR TRAVEL BOOM pushed American Airlines to a new world's record last year. The totals: 7,300,-000 passengers carried, a 100% gain for American since 1950, and the first time any airline has carried more than 7,000,000 people in a single year.

MEAT PRICES for ranchers are climbing out of their slump, will probably go higher still during late spring. On Chicago markets pork is up to $15.25 a cwt., $3 more than last month, while choice beef goes for $20.84, up $2.21 since early March, when prices were at their lowest since World War II.

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