EDITORIAL NO REFORM UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER.

Byline: KIMIT MUSTON Local View

I am not suggesting the apocalypse is imminent, but maybe we should raise the apocalypse-alert level to yellow or something. Mount St. Helens is rumbling again.

The San Andreas is shaking again. Washington, D.C., is about to join the National League again. And the icing on the old doomsday cake: The L.A. City Council is considering business-tax reform, again. If I were Satan, I might be ordering Mukluks for my entire staff.

But then again the old San Andreas pops a 6 in Parkfield, Calif., every 20 to 30 years. If Mount St. Helens didn't explode periodically, it wouldn't even be a volcano, it would just be a big rock. And last time it was the San Diego Padres who were supposed to revive the old Senators in our nation's capital - they even printed up baseball trading cards saying so - but the Padres are still the Padres, and if you want to see baseball in D.C., you still have to find a sports bar. And reform of L.A.'s medieval business-tax code has been a political hot potato since the day after the current tax code became law.

Would you believe that in L.A. not only does City Hall tax the receipts of restaurants, it also taxes every table and chair used to earn those receipts? The code also taxes the table and chair in the kitchen the owner sits at while he or she adds up those receipts. Does the owner use a calculator? If so, that, too, can be taxed. And the oven. And the sink, and the cabinet that holds the dishes. It's the equivalent to taxing the waiter for owning a white shirt and dark pants.

Under the federal tax code, the cost of tables and chairs and calculators is considered a business expenses and is thus tax-deductible. If you want to run a restaurant, you will need tables and chairs. But in Los Angeles, such items are considered assets, and thus City Hall gets to suck up money that might otherwise have gone to some average Joe's salary.

In other words, the salaries at City Hall come before the salaries of everybody else in town.

As you might imagine, local business leaders have been screaming about this system for decades. And for decades, the pols have been promising to look into the issue. No, seriously, they will look into it. Maybe next week. Or maybe after the next election. You know, tax revenues are down right now so this wouldn't be a good time. Or, since tax revenues are up, why do we need to reform the tax code? This is not a governmental version of Catch-22. This is Catch-22 as government.

The latest catch is a study released by the city's Office of Finance, which claims that reforming the tax code would cost, that's cost the city $95 million in lost revenue. The study suggests delaying tax ``reform'' until at least 2006, and even then phasing it in over at least five or six years.

But the study didn't even consider the possibilities of increased tax revenues from business expansion, new jobs, new stores and more tables in the restaurants. Those are unknowns at the moment, but could tax reform really be considered a gamble?

The L.A. City Council members have only to notice the number of vibrant communities that surround L.A., feeding off our bureaucratic inefficiencies and economic droppings. In these business-tax havens, business taxes are lower, but for the cities, income tax and sales tax revenues more than make up the difference. Many of the larger corporations that feed these communities once paid taxes in L.A., but no more. Does the City Council think it is a mere coincidence that no major national corporation has its headquarters in L.A.? They've all left to places that encourage business.

Of course, the pols would have to be blind and stupid to miss all this, but they are also greedy for the campaign contributions from the City Hall unions, and the unions' priority is not more jobs for us, but to protect their current jobs.

I won't say that hell will freeze over before we get serious tax reform. Council members Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti are pushing this issue very hard right now. But it's been pushed before and I fear it will have to be pushed again.

Ah, there's that word, again - ``again.'' My guess is that Satan shouldn't rush to unpack his long underwear again.