GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

Revenge is a dish best served cold -- and on White House china. While drafting its recently submitted budget, the Bush Administration secretly proposed that the IRS target its stringent audits not on wealthy individuals and companies (whose lawyers can often stall a case for years) but on middle- and lower- income taxpayers (who generally pay up without protest and provide immediate revenue). IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg rejected the cash-now plan, calling it "no-good tax policy." But his request to spend an additional $76 million to catch rich tax cheats was pared down to a puny $6 million. Could it be that the President remembers the pain of coughing up to the taxman? He was furious when an IRS audit in 1984 forced him to pay nearly $200,000 in taxes, interest and penalties on the sale of an $843,000 house in Houston. In 1988 George Bush ridiculed Michael Dukakis' plan to catch more tax avoiders and railed against "putting an IRS agent in every kitchen." What he really meant, it seems, is that he didn't want a taxman in every boardroom.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart