Backed by organized labor groups, supported by men and women in all walks of life, and perhaps the subject of more honest letters than Congress has received in many months, the Carlson version of the Ruml Plan lost in the House Tuesday as a result of Administration protests that large taxpayers would be "forgiven" their taxes.

As at present set up, however, the whole system of voting, paying, and collecting income taxes is hopelessly muddled. Until almost the end of the year in which he is earning his income, the taxpayer doesn't know how much he will have to pay as taxes, and is therefore forced to pay out of current income. If in any year his earnings dwindle, the taxpayer is practically driven to don the proverbial barrel.

Partially as a result of the unfortunate impression Beardsley Ruml created in Congress by trying to sell himself and Macy's as riders to his plan, Pay-as-you-earn advocates had agreed on the modified Carlson Bill. This bill would cancel all 1942 income payments, except by those persons receiving over $20,000 a year who made more in 1942 than they will in 1943. These persons will pay taxes on the year of highest income, and payment on the other will be cancelled.

This modified proposal was opposed by the Treasury as still being "heresy," and in its place, the Administration advanced the Doughton Bill for voluntary Pay-as-you-earn without "forgiveness." This would have "rewarded" those taxpayers who were able to pay two years' taxes by July 1 with a 1 to 4 per cent reduction in their 1942 liabilities. That this would benefit only those who were wealthy enough to have considerable savings and that it would, therefore, help the rich and not the poor seems not to have occurred to Randolph Paul and the other Treasury experts.

At the same time that Pay-as-you earn was defeated, the plans for a 20 per cent withholding tax on incomes, regarded by all as one of the few effective, weapons to combat inflation, was recommitted, was it was obviously impossible, for most persons to pay last year's taxes and this at the same time.

In spite of the tremendous ground swell of public opinion which is evidently behind the idea of an effective Pay-as-you-earn plan, the Gallup Poll reporting from 81 to 87 per cent in the various categories polled in favor of it, Chairman Doughton of the House Ways and Means Committee has seen fit to maneuver the whole question back into his committee with the intention of killing it or at least holding it up for the rest of this year. He is "gloriously satisfied." But those Americans who are faced with the ever-recurring problem of paying last year's taxes with this year's income are not.