Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 704 › Conversation 704-001
Nixon & Bull on Tax Reform and IRS Withholding
Thursday, April 6, 1972 · 8:45 AM–8:58 AM ET · Oval Office
AI Summary
President Nixon met with Stephen B. Bull to discuss domestic political strategy and various administrative challenges. They focused on refining the administration's messaging on property taxes and tax reform, while criticizing the IRS for overly complicated withholding procedures that were negatively impacting public sentiment. Additionally, Nixon touched upon foreign policy risks, specifically the sensitivity of commenting on military operations in Southeast Asia, as he awaited further developments before committing to a public stance.
- Tax Reform
- IRS Withholding
- Property Tax
- Domestic Policy
- Foreign Policy
- Political Strategy
Audio
This conversation has not yet been cut into its own clip, so the player above contains the full tape segment shared with neighbouring conversations. It begins about 00:10:19 into the tape and ends around 00:11:15.
Transcript (AI-generated)
This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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· Timestamps are positions within the full tape recording.
11:00He's supposed to be finished just before that time.
11:11I haven't seen him in a long time.
14:48I'm going to sit the baby and talk to you about the gardener's book last night.
14:55You can see that this gets over and I don't want to send it back.
15:00I want to express it and send it to somebody.
15:03I want to have somebody carry it over and be sure to treat it.
15:06I put my hand over it.
15:11I don't want to see it get back to me.
15:16It's already gone.
15:20He said to tell you how pleased he was that you were going to this thing, that I was not at all concerned about your making any commitment.
15:27There was no need to.
15:28It was the fact of an appearance that was great.
15:32He knows we can't do much, doesn't he?
15:35He knows.
15:35He knows.
15:36This shows the personal interest in that.
15:40That's more important than the commitment right now.
15:42He said, no, you can't do that.
15:44Of course, he did.
15:45Of course, he did.
18:04You know, I've always made the point that the domestic council thing, you know this, is considered, well, we've just got to get these programs ready, and somebody else's job is to sell them.
18:12Now, they've gotten a better attitude this year, you know, sending the jeans off to rest.
18:16It's still not enough.
18:19Yeah.
18:20And they want to write the platform, they want to, I mean, Mitchell did a fan art.
18:24You see, John sits in our staff meeting.
18:25Yeah.
18:26So, very quickly, Mitchell said, property tax...
18:29He said, no, he didn't say, his point was, politically, what is our position?
18:37On the property tax and on tax reform generally, that's the hot issue in Wisconsin.
18:41Where are we?
18:43And our problem is we don't really have an answer.
18:47And because we don't have anything, we need some work on it.
18:51Early was the general, was the philosophic position that needs to be heard, though.
18:57and everybody basically agrees with this, we've got to turn the focus to property tax, which is our issue, and go with that.
19:03We've got to attack the other guys on the loophole business, which is the other one with some sex appeal, because we can't out-loophole-close them.
19:13But we can hit them on the fact that they're the ones that voted for the loopholes.
19:16They're the ones that put them in.
19:19And that all this talk of closing the loopholes is a bunch of election-year bullshit.
19:27you know just because we don't have an answer either so without an answer the best thing is
19:50is trying to get his mind going through this.
19:53We've got to.
19:54That's what I mean.
19:55We've got to get Connolly's position on the tax that developed on a purely political basis, which he's, as you know, he is working on.
20:03And his whole problem is trying to get his people to work on the political thing rather than a technical tax
20:15We've got that, and then we've got finally people who are aware of it trying to do something.
20:19This Cobra withholding is an utter disaster.
20:22I know we raised that with Conley and everything.
20:25Yeah, but we've got to keep pushing it harder and harder.
20:28They aren't doing enough.
20:29They say they're doing something.
20:32But I've made the case to them now, and I'm going to keep on making it.
20:36I'll push Conley up and hit Conley.
20:38Everybody says, oh, that's all taken care of.
20:40You can do it by handling a thing.
20:41And I've asked, have any of you tried to do it?
20:46I asked for the new form.
20:47What you have to do is ask for a new form.
20:50And the form is a full-length page printed on both sides that is absolutely unintelligible to me.
20:58And I do my own tax returns and understand a fair amount about how to handle tax stuff.
21:02All right.
21:03I can't figure the goddamn thing out.
21:05I can't figure it out.
21:06I sit there and look at the goddamn thing.
21:09I'm totally lost.
21:10I have the foggiest notion of what I'm supposed to do.
21:14What the effect will be if I do it?
21:16They should go on a blanket basis of saying to all employers with a little simple thing,
21:22We recommend that due to an error in treasury calculation, or tax, internal revenue service calculations, your taxes being over withheld, your paycheck can be increased by X a month by signing this form, which will add one more exemption, which is permitted you by the law.
21:41All he has to do is initial.
21:43He doesn't have to figure anything out.
21:45It should tell him simply he's going to get more money in his paycheck by signing this.
21:49It should have the government seal on it.
21:51They should go in every goddamn paycheck for the next six months.
21:54And eventually everybody will sign the thing.
21:56Then they'll stop withholding.
21:58I thought we had a new IRS director.
22:00You see, this is the IRS director.
22:03It's a treasure there.
22:05It goes beyond that.
22:06They're afraid to admit they made a mistake.
22:10What happened?
22:11It's an absolute comedy of errors.
22:14Some clown recalculated the withholding tables.
22:19to take into account the people who hold two jobs or the people whose wives work and are therefore under without.
22:27But the problem is most people don't hold two jobs or have their wives work.
22:31So now we're withholding as if you did, which takes too much money out of your paycheck.
22:39And it takes a lot too much out.
22:43I know.
22:43I know the issue.
22:44The point is it's just crazy to do that.
22:49They would start a television spot cam.
22:51They'd do all that.
22:53But you see, you do all that, and then when the guy says, oh, okay, I'll do it, what he has to do is ask for a W-4.
22:59When he gets a W-4, he's going to look at it and say, all right, it's beautiful.
23:07All right, we'll move on to this.
23:11We have to get our return this year.
23:12We've got to do it fast because, Jesus, that's money that we're just taking out of the public sector.
23:18They get it back next year.
23:21They get it back in April.
23:23When they file their return next year, they won't mind it.
23:25They've overpaid their tax.
23:27They won't get it until April of next year.
23:32So this year, we underwithheld.
23:34So this year, we've just compounded here.
23:36This year in April, right now, when they're filing their taxes, they're going to find they owe tax because they didn't withhold enough.
23:42So we've done everything as wrong as we could from a timing viewpoint.
23:48Taking the money away this year, then we're taking more of it away the rest of this year in order to give it back next year.
23:56So impressing the economy.
23:58Do you think it's psychological?
24:04It's pretty diabolical, but I'd worry about it.
24:07If it was, we ought to find the guy, because he's a hell of a lot smarter than anybody we've got.
24:12Start using him.
24:15Well, let's start.
24:16Who can follow up on this?
24:19We're pushing on it.
24:20It's one that's just going to take a lot of pressure.
24:24And you've got to dramatize it.
24:25Nobody believes you.
24:26All our guys said, oh, it's all taken care of.
24:30And the only way you can sell them is to get them to look at that damn W-4 and say, you fill it out for yourself now and decide how much you want, how you want your checking to handle.
24:38They don't know.
24:41These are intelligent guys.
24:48George Nelson's probably one of the tax guys, one of his tax experts.
24:51God wanted to handle his own, and he could figure it out.
24:54He could figure out what to do himself.
24:56Oh, they've just got to leave.
25:03In terms of a couple of things, it's capital loss carryover.
25:08They've gotten it so tangled up now because they've changed the method on which you carry it over.
25:15It looks like a joke.
25:17Yeah.
25:19But on the property tax, the problem is we did wrap the issue early.
25:24The difficulty is with the way it is, however, that we pulled off because they began to hammer us on the value added.
25:34But we can still be forced.
25:35We've done it.
25:36I'm talking about it.
25:37Let's... Why, uh... Oh, I would attack them, of course.
25:43But why don't we talk a little about the loopholes?
25:47I think, actually, we care.
25:49Well, then we got free.
25:51Yeah, we'll leave someone behind as businessmen again.
25:53But, you know, I can't say that our business venture has been more of a discordant adventure as far as I'm concerned.
26:00We've got a story, incidentally, on the loophole thing.
26:03The dramatic thing is these 200 people who earned over a quarter of a million dollars to pay no taxes, actually.
26:10We've got a great story on that.
26:13We made them pay.
26:14We eliminated them.
26:15We ended the 69 law.
26:17That was a bad law to put through.
26:20We were created by a Democratic Congress under Democratic... Well, the story is that the 69 law, it reformed.
26:27So everybody had to pay something.
26:29fortunately they not, that part of our thing got through.
26:34I know what happened.
26:35But of course a lot of the bad things got through.
26:38But the difficulty is that the notorious leaders of the Ministry of Counsel they did not realize the necessity of PR.
26:50It's funny because John,
26:55You can't take it on and then get us people.
26:57We just gotta do the job and do it well if you don't follow us.
27:04But John and other fields have a record in doing the drug thing.
27:07I'll do the numbers, I'm not gonna do the drug thing.
27:09So I told you, I think that's a good one.
27:12Go ahead, let's hit our issues.
27:14Don't just fight in their ground.
27:16Let's hear these present general votes here.
27:20I missed you so loud.
27:21Here's the thought that they said you had to come together.
27:30Give word to Henry that the folks standing by are meeting with the president.
27:33The folks are waiting.
27:34He can wait and just say that I'll tell Henry I'll have to be here by 9.30 because I've got to go.
27:39I've got to leave because Henry can step out on the macro and go back if necessary.
27:53Well, apart from all that, you have to realize
28:00It's part of the campaign growth.
28:04But for that one, the property tax has got to be bought.
28:11We've just got to be in a position to be for something like this thing here.
28:17I'm not saying a hell of a lot, but it's better than saying nothing.
28:22Why doesn't the audience go?
28:24Why doesn't the goddamned Democrats have the audience?
28:27We'll get some.
28:28You see, here again, I know early women, particularly Harper, feel so strongly and I know very well that there are only 2% of the Catholics that care about private schools.
28:38All right, let's suppose this.
28:40I mean, let's suppose who that 2% is.
28:43It's this audience.
28:45Catholics have an enormous influence by their priests and by their teachers.
28:52A lot more than Protestants.
28:53We all pay attention to Protestants.
28:57This is worth doing if you do nothing to get Cardinal Cook and Cardinal Crowe standing there saying President Nixon is a hell of a good man.
29:05That's right.
29:07And Crowe's going to say that.
29:08Because he's got the guts to stand up for us.
29:10He's got the guts to come to our meeting.
29:12Hubert Humphrey asked to address this meeting.
29:14I heard that today, and they turned him down.
29:15Well, you can't.
29:16One of the advantages of being in Cleveland City.
31:32Rogers is so insanely jealous of Henry, he won't get up and brag about it.
31:36Maybe Henry's got to do that.
31:37I think so.
31:38I guess not.
31:40I think so.
31:40I think so.
31:44We really have a problem here.
31:45Rogers is not going to do a damn thing until he sees how this is going to come out.
31:50He's not going to say a word.
31:56Justifies it, of course, in its own way.
31:59But the important thing is how it comes out.
32:00Very true.
32:08Laos and Cambodia came out basically the same way, but we scored well on Cambodia because we scored bad in Laos.
32:16We scored bad in Laos because we tried to stay away from Laos and we tried to stay on Cambodia.
32:21At the time, we were criticized as being wrong in Cambodia for wrapping it around us and dragging right on Laos by laying low and letting it go around being scarred with it.
32:31Yet, we've gotten a lot worse scar from Laos than from Cambodia.
32:35And no plus, but Laos provides two primarily.
32:40I must say, he's very, very enthusiastic.
32:41He's supportive of our actors, you know.
32:46He was the one that he wanted and he said, well, you know, we're doing great.
32:48We're getting away with it.
32:51He went up to the committee and all the rest.
32:56But we took on him too late, Bob.
32:57We took on him too late.
32:59Remember, I'm in the press conference.
33:01Yeah.
33:02In the office, which is also in the studio.
33:05Yeah.
33:05Because you can't.
33:07We found out.
33:07It's your story in that.
33:10The problem I have right now, and it is going to be a very serious one that we're going to have to fight on Tuesday, actually, I was very excited to have him give me a hand up, but anyway.
33:23It's whether to step into this thing at this point, with the press conference, because I'm afraid it is probably going to be too risky to do so.
33:33You know what I mean?
33:37See, everything new ones.
33:40I mean, no question about my being able to justify what I'm getting at.
34:01I can say why we are doing what we are doing.
34:04I can say that the United States will, you know, continue to do, you know, use our airport, our airport to save American lives.
34:17I think there's an enormous justification for that.
34:18The critical question, though, is how does it come out?
34:23That's what I'm going to ask you.
34:27Do you see my point?
34:32You don't want to get out on a limb on that, because that's what you have to live with.
34:36Agreed?
34:40Yep, insured.
34:41That's what we have to live with.
34:45You can't run out and say you know what's going on.
34:47Well, we don't know.
34:49Oh!
34:53The weather's starting to break up.
34:55It's a shock, though.
35:01There's something in the news.
35:03Oh, they might even get up in the news.
35:05It's too late.
35:06Well, Henry called me at 8 o'clock last night and he had the news.
35:08But they may not get it yet.
35:11It may take them a little while before they get it.
35:15The kids have told me that Henry's on a good-looking girl.
35:18It's a cherry blossom.
35:20I mean, it's just...
35:40Is Trish out there with these people?
36:02Yes, sir.
36:05What?
36:11They're out here in Congress.
36:26I'm going to leave the office.
36:30Thank you.
36:31Thank you.
36:34Thank you.
NARA Description
On April 6, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 8:45 am and 8:58 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 704-001 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 704-1
Date: April 6, 1972
Time: Unknown between 8:45 am and 8:58 am
Location: Oval Office
The President met with Stephen B. Bull.
Henry A. Kissinger's schedule
Bull left at an unknown time before 8:58 am.Also recorded on April 6, 1972
- 022-090 7:00 PM · 9 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger talked on the telephone from 7:00 pm to 7:09 pm.
- 022-091 7:09 PM · 9 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 7:09 pm and 7:12 pm.
- 022-092 7:09 PM · 6 sec — unknown person(s) and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 7:09 pm and 7:12 pm.
- 022-093 7:12 PM · 19 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson talked on the telephone from 7:12 pm to 7:31 pm.
- 704-002 8:45 AM · 27 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 8:45 am and 8:58 am.
- 704-003 8:58 AM · 25 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 8:58 am to 9:26 am.
- 329-013 9:26 AM · 44 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, and John W. Vogt, Jr. met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 9:26 am to 10:10 am.
- 704-004 9:26 AM · 1 min — unknown person(s) and United States Secret Service agents met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 9:26 am and 11:59 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 704-001, April 6, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/704-001 (accessed October 1, 2026).