O'Neill prepares tax overhaul plan

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, once pegged as the Cabinet member most likely to depart after the Nov. 5 elections, is making plans for a post-election administration effort to overhaul the nation's tax system.

More than 100 Treasury Department experts are compiling a list of possible changes to the 9,500-page U.S. tax code, from simplifying regulations on savings bond sales to scrapping income taxes in favor of consumption or value-added taxes.

O'Neill, who as chief executive officer of Alcoa in the 1990s called for an end to the corporate income tax, said President Bush will decide whether he wants to tinker with the code or propose the most radical change in the tax laws since Ronald Reagan's presidency.

``I'm going to send the boss a package soon,'' O'Neill said in an interview. ``We're giving him a diagnosis: What is it that causes complexity, what is it that could let people stop paying for professional advice to do their taxes, and are there ways to make sure people pay their fair share with more certainty.''

. . . O'Neill cites conversations with workers and managers at companies ranging from a Paccar Kenworth truck plant in Seattle to the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory in Kentucky.

``There's a whole lot of people who don't like this abomination of a tax code, and I'm one of them,'' he told a Chamber of Commerce gathering in Scottsdale, Ariz. ``It's 9,500 pages of absolute gibberish, and as I go around the country, people are upfront about telling me it's a mess.''

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