Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 29

COURIER-POST, Monday, July 1, 1991 ill would alio aymenfs -car I. I WASHINGTON (AP) -The days of paying federal k-n1- 8 piece of plflstic may on the way- A bill introduced by senior tai-writers in Congress would authorize the Internal Revenue Service to accept credit cards for all tai payments. The law now requires checks or money orders. proposal is included among scores of changes that would fit under the broad umbrella of tax simplification. Most of the changes affect only corporations and partnerships.

Several sections are designed to rid the tax law of outdated provisions, including the requirement for Treasury Department approval before a brewery can destroy spoiled beer. The bill was introduced recently by the chairmen and senior Republicans of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees: Reps. Dan Rostenkowski, and Bill Archer, R-Texas; and Sens. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, and Bob Packwood, R-Ore. "It's filled with lots of miscellany and some of them may be more rationalization than simplification," said one congressional aide.

She included in that category a provision designed to relieve some handicapped drivers from the new luxury tax on expensive cars. The bill was drafted over four months by congressional staffers with advice from the Treasury Department and IRS. The Ways and Means Committee hopes to hold hearings later this month. There is considerable doubt that any tax bill, including this one, will be passed this year. For one thing, Congress is operating under an agreement requiring that any tax cut be offset by a spending reduction or a tax increase.

Also, tax professionals are having trouble keeping up with the huge number of tax changes enacted over the past decade. Besides allowing taxpaying with a credit card, the bill would: Increase from $49 a quarter to $299 a year the maximum wage a person may pay to a household employee without withholding Social Security taxes. Delay to July 15 the second quarterly estimated tax payment now due each June 15. Estimated payments are required of those whose tax withholdings from paychecks do not cover at least 90 percent of tax liability. Simplify the rolling over of proceeds from the sale of a principal home when a new home is purchased.

This would result in one set of rules whether or not a home is sold in connection with a change in jobs. Make an annual adjustment for inflation in the-maximum amount of unearned income, such as interest, that is received by a child under 14 and that I may be listed on a parent's tax return. That amount I AAA i I now is Exempt from the new 10 percent luxury tax on. cars any accessory required to help a disabled person' use the vehicle. The tax applies to the amount of sales price exceeding $30,000, including accessories installed within six months after the vehicle was bought.

Eliminate the requirement that the IRS disclose whether a prospective juror in a federal tax case' has ever undergone a tax audit. Repeal the requirement that wholesale liquor dealers post a prominent sign identifying their busi-, ness. Japanese investors Satellite technology offers tips to travelers spend less in U.S. tlllllallllll: I. r.

i Japan's Wary I Investors total direct Japanese foreign Investment: In billions of U.S. dollars' i --'I 60,,, 50 56.91 40 20 JL. 26.13 iwiMiiwTiBirtn in xiiwwiWiafttoiHiti if it i 85 '86 '87 "88 "89 '90 i' i a TOKYO (AP) Japanese buyouts of Columbia Pictures, Rockefeller Center and other U.S. landmarks left many Americans afraid the buying would never stop. Now they might start worrying that it will.

The Japanese investment boom in the United States is waning, and with it a lifeline of capital that could help the U.S. economy as it pulls out of recession. Instead of buying American, Japanese investors are keeping their money at home or seeking better deals elsewhere, economists say. "The bottom line is that the lack of Japanese investment has dampened economic growth and it couldn't have happened at a worse time," says economist Maria Ramirez, president of Ramirez Capital Consultants Inc. With a series of inflatjon-chill-ing interest rate increases, Japan's central bank has cut off the seemingly limitless supply of cheap money that has made Japan the world's largest capital exporter.

According to the Finance Min- -istry, direct Japanese investment in the United States dropped 20 percent to $26.13 billion in 1990 from its peak of $32.54 billion in 1989. In its annual survey of overseas investment, the Toyo Keizai Data Bank reported that Japanese companies had withdrawn from more than 200 of 12,500 overseas ventures, the vast majority in the past two years. The decline is most obvious in non-manufacturing sectors such as real estate and finance, says Yasuhiko Sasai of the Japan External Trade Organization. Real estate investment in the United States has plunged from more than $14 billion in 1989 to $3 billion in 1990. The estimated total for this year is about $5 billion, says the Association of Foreign Investors in U.S.

Real Estate. That decline helps keep property prices depressed in the United States. Japanese investors also are shying away from the U.S. stock mar-ket. When credit was cheap, banks were aggressively looking overseas SAN JOSE, Calif.

(AP) Early man looked toward the starry skies to help find his way. Now, a celestial navigation system orbiting the Earth is answering the age-old question: "Where am Several companies have been gearing up for a decade to bring the satellite Global Positioning System into everyday use for navigating everything from cars, planes, boats and oil tankers to surveying land or measuring critical movement in earthquake faults and dams, The positioning system, developed by the U.S. military, was used successfully during the Persian Gulf War; And industry analysts and scientists say GPS now is ready to grow into a multibillion-dollar business. "It's one of those technologies that's about to take off fast," said Stephen Colwell of the Global Positioning System Association. The Sunnyvale-based trade group, organized just last summer, predicts annual sales will grow to $6 billion by 1995 compared to about $500 million now.

"The commercial applications of this are just unreal. It will touch just about everybody's lives within a few years just like the personal computer and cellular phone have," Colwell said. Companies already are coming out with hand-held GPS receivers that tap into the satellite navigation system, said Glen Gibbons, editor of GPS World magazine in Eugene, Ore. Hikers and boaters can buy walkman-sized receivers for about $2,000 each still out of price range for most people. But Rockwell Communications, a division of Rockwell International recently introduced a $450 playing card-sized GPS receiver component that promises to bring down size and price.

"Within three to five years, I bet we see the price drop on those simple GPS receivers to about $100," predicted Gibbons. "People won't have to ever get lost." The Air Force invented the GPS system in the mid-1970s to coordinate movements of troops and missiles and to keep an eye on the enemy. Rockwell International was contracted to develop the satellites. During the Gulf War, soldiers used GPS to find home base through blinding sand storms and to track troops and move supplies, among other things. GPS receivers give users position and navigation data taken from satellites orbiting 11,000 miles above the Earth.

At least three satellites are needed to trian- gulate most 'location information and four for 3-D uses. The technology is based on the world's most precise timepieces. Each of the satellites has four atomic clocks that are so accurate they will lose or gain only one second over 70,000 years. Radio signals are beamed constantly from the satellites and the GPS receivers lock onto the signals. The receiver takes time and range data and converts that information to navigation and position data, figuring out latitude, longitude and altitude as well as constantly calibrating the time.

Someone with a GPS receiver also can punch in data from a specific location so they can find that same spot later after driving or taking a hike, for example. Or the receivers can be used to see if the spot has moved, such as for tracking movement of earthquake faults or dam walls. "GPS gives us very precise information about how fast one part of the earth is moving compared to another, which helps us determine the amount of strain accumulating," said Lucy Jones, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist "Before, all we had to go on was satellite pictures that weren't all that precise." Until two years ago, only half dozen of the $65 million satellites were up, although it takes at least 21 satellites to provide global around-the-clock positioning information. The delay halted commercial development by large companies, but small ones such as Trimble Navigation Ltd.

in Sunnyvale and Magellan Corp. in Monrovia trudged on. "Just a few years ago it wasn'tall that obvious that the GPS satellite system was going to be completed," Baid Charlie Trimble, who founded Trimble in 1978. "We were confident this was something too good to drop and so we kept putting money into (research and development) at least $20 million worth." One of the main delays in launching the Rockwell International satellites came after the disastrous Jan. 28, 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion.

The space shuttle had been taking up the sat- fif JP Associated Press Eye in the Sky. Charles Trimble displays some of his company's navigation equipment, which uses satellite technology developed by the military. for investment opportunities unav Jk vailable in Japan because of government restrictions. Now, says Chungha Cha Yasuda Trust and Banking scarcity of funds has dried up once" lucrative investment markets in real estate, mergers and acquisi- tions and aircraft leasing, other areas. Japanese companies have been less inclined to pull back from their factories in the Unite1 States.

But difficulties encountered by manufacturers who moved production to the United and other countries the past fie', years, partly to smooth trade fric: 1 tion, may be discouraging morel such ventures. J'. ellites, but the military began using a Delta II rocket to send them into orbit in 1989. Now, 16 satellites are up, another is scheduled to be launched in June and the proposed 24-satellite constellation with three extras is expected to be up by 1993, setting the stage for a commercial boom. "What we're going to see now is more people getting into the market and prices for commercial products falling as competition increases," said Theresa Murphy, a GPS industry analyst for Smith Barney, Harris Upham Co.

in San Francisco. Land surveyors and boaters have been using GPS receivers for navigation and positioning for several years as a small commercial industry grew despite the high cost $4,000 to $5,000 for the cheapest sophisticated receivers at the time and lack of 24-hour access to the signal sending satellites. The Southern California Earthquake Center and the USGS continues to expand use of GPS receivers to help predict earthquakes, while the same theory is at work to measure dam movement that can signal collapse. Cities from Los Angeles to Houston to Chicago also are getting involved, computer mapping areas in hopes of using GPS to direct buses and emergency vehicles and create "intelligent highways" to help drivers navigate the safest and fastest routes. GPS-guided drivers will be told which routes are less crowded at certain times and the locations of accident sites to avoid.

Most American car companies also are working on putting GPS receivers into vehicles, and Japan's Mazda already has a GPS receiver in its top-of-the-line Eunos Cosmo car. Financial Strategies for World Bank lending hits record level Successful Retirement REVOLUTIONARY Poland got $1.4 billion; lending to Romania was resumed; Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia got loans for the first time. Additional lending because of the Gulf War was put at more than $1.4 billion for the 12 months ended June 30. But reducing poverty is the bank's main object, said President Barber Conable at a news WASHINGTON (AP) New loans approved by the World Bank, the largest source of aid for the Third World, hit a record $24.2 billion in the past year. That was up from $22.7 billion the previous year, according to a review made public yesterday.

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