College Lobbyists File Suit to Delay Levy of Meal Tax

The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts (AICUM), a lobbying group which includes Harvard, filed a class-action suit yesterday seeking to postpone the addition of an 8 per cent state meals tax to college board charges.

The suit, filed in Suffolk County Superior Court by James A. True, vice-president of AICUM, asks for a temporary restraining order to postpone levying of the meal tax until February 1.

True said yesterday that Owen Clarke, state commissioner on taxation and corporations and the defendant in the suit, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which he said requires that public hearing be held before the state adopts a regulation.

"We are not challenging substantive law," True said. "We are challenging the procedure" used by the commissioner to set the tax and "are seeking a public hearing," he said.

Clarke could not be reached for comment yesterday, but Joyce Hampers, associate commissioner for taxation and corporations, said that the Administrative Procedure Act was not applicable in the case of a ruling so that a "hearing need not be held."

R. Jerrold Gibson, director of Harvard's office of fiscal services, said last night the ruling did not allow colleges ample time to establish methods for tax collection.

Gibson said the present suit is a "lastditch effort" to postpone the tax, but he would not speculate on its chances for success.

The meal tax controversy was sparked last August 1 when Clarke issued a directive requiring that the tax, which has not been applied to college board charges since its passage in 1941, would be collected beginning September 1