MOST people sense a peculiarly bitter injustice in the fact that the arrival of spring, with all its pleasures, coincides so harshly with the time of the Big Bite, better known as Income Tax Day. For some journalists, however, the pains and problems that arrive inexorably on April 15 are at least mildly alleviated by the opportunity to complain in print about the assorted inequities of the U.S. tax structure--and to suggest remedies as well.

To this rewarding assignment, Associate Editor Gurney Breckenfeld, who wrote this week's Business story, "Why Tax Reform Is So Urgent and So Unlikely," brings more enthusiasm and experience than most. About a decade ago, Breckenfeld's involvement in the murky problems of housing finance, real estate taxes, urban renewal, planning and zoning convinced him that taxes do more than anything else to shape man's environment. "I'm more than upset," he says, "at how badly real estate taxes have been misused over the years. It's like peeling an onion--you take away layer after layer and uncover an interconnected nest of unintended social and economic evils. And federal taxes simply compound these evils."

Breckenfeld came by his expertise in environmental problems through his long association with two former Time Inc. magazines, Architectural Forum and House & Home. Born in San Francisco, he was graduated from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1941 and, after four years in the Army, spent five years on the San Francisco Examiner before coming to Architectural Forum in 1951. In 1954, he went to work full-time for House & Home and rose to become managing editor before its sale in 1964. Next step was TIME, where he specializes in economic affairs. Outside the office, a major interest is the Blue Hill Troupe, which stages Gilbert & Sullivan operettas in the New York area. For Blue Hill, taxes pose no problems at all. As the troupe's constitution puts it:

To prove our motives profitless

With no uncertain clarity

Our net returns we always give

To somen deserving charity.

The Cover: Detail from an oil painting by Thomas Edgar Stephens that hangs in the Cabinet Room of the White House. The British-born painter who scorned showing his works in exhibitions or galleries died in 1966 at the age of 80. He was proudest of two accomplishments in his life: he was the man who convinced President Dwight Eisenhower to take up painting, and he himself painted the last portrait from life of Sir Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. Other Stephens portraits now hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, in the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library at Abilene, Kansas. This is Dwight Eisenhower's 17th appearance on a TIME cover.

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