September 2, 1982

Airline passengers began paying a higher Federal tax on tickets today in line with legislation passed 12 days ago but as yet unsigned by the President. ''It seemed clear to our lawyers that the tax increase was the intent of Congress, and since there was no reason to believe the President would not sign the tax bill, we ordered the collection of the tax,'' said Ellen Murphy, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service. William Jackman, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, said the airlines' lawyers read the law the same way, so none of the carriers raised objections to the tax increase.

In his appeal for a new effort to solve the Israeli-Arab dispute, President Reagan moved from the role of a mediator to that of a full participant in the negotations, laying out by far the most detailed formula for a settlement offered so far by the United States. A senior State Department official said tonight that there were great risks in such a course. But he said the risk of angry repudiation by one or more of the principal parties was offset by the risk that Middle Eastern nations might have misrepresented the American position without such a declaration. A Categorical Vision President Reagan, apparently guided by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, was far more categorical than any other President in describing an American vision of how to settle the Palestinian problem.

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said today that the Administration would sharply reduce the scope of sanctions it had applied against two French companies that shipped equipment to the Soviet Union for its natural gas pipeline to Western Europe. In what would be a substantial easing of penalties imposed by the United States for indirect export of its technology, the sanctions would affect only oil and gas equipment and would no longer bar corporate violators from receiving any United States products. In their ''original pristine form,'' Mr. Regan said at a briefing, the sanctions ''were a little too sweeping without giving the precise definition of what was meant.'' He said the modification he and other Administration officials had urged on President Reagan was not a relaxation but ''a clarification.''

Salvatore Odierno, the chief suspect in the slaying of Nathan Masselli, a Federal informant, was picked out of a police lineup yesterday by a witness to the slaying, law-enforcement officials disclosed. Officials said the witness had identified the 67-year-old Mr. Odierno as one of three men who fled from the scene of the slaying near Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Aug. 25. Mr. Masselli, who was 31 years old, was shot in the back of the head as he sat at the wheel of his car. The victim and his father, William P. Masselli, 55, a purported mobster, had both been questioned by Leon Silverman, a special Federal prosecutor, in his investigation of allegations that Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan had dealings with figures in organized crime. Nathan Masselli had also been cooperating with Mr. Silverman as an undercover informant and had carrried a hidden tape recorder, according to law-enforcement officials.

It sometimes seems that Long Islanders have three things in common - a belief that anyone who moves to Manhattan is enormously wealthy or short of common sense, a suspicion of local officials who want to raise property taxes and a sure knowledge that no force can improve conditions on the Long Island Expressway. The L.I.E., as it is called, is a road paved in vitriol. ''The worst highway in the world,'' said a traveling salesman. ''A chore, a bore,'' said a vacationer returning from Shelter Island. State transportation officials -who are designing a $130 million improvement campaign for the expressway and plan to start the work in 1984 - say the road's reputation is unwarranted. They point out that it is not the most dangerous or heavily traveled of highways, and not the mo*Z-lodorous or unsightly either.