May 13, 1983

The House Ways and Means Committee today voted against requiring corporations and banks to withhold 10 percent from dividend and interest payments for taxes. The action came on a voice vote on a measure to repeal the withholding, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 1, The vote cleared the way for a floor debate on the issue next week. The House is all but certain to vote to repeal withholding from interest and dividend payments and the Senate is on record favoring a plan to postpone the effective date of the provision until 1987. But President Reagan is a strenuous advocate of withholding and is likely to veto a measure that eliminates or postpones it.

Commuters on the Long Island Rail Road - long accustomed to wondering whether the 7:25 A.M. will arrive before the 7:12 - have recently been playing a different kind of guessing game. Some riders refer to it as railroad roulette, and the object is to guess which four stations the L.I.R.R. will eliminate as part of a $146.5 million modernization program. The guessing began when the railroad announced two months ago that it planned to electrify the 25 miles of track between Hicksville and Ronkonkoma now served by diesels. Electrification would mean a faster commute, shaving an estimated 20 minutes off the current 72-minute trip to Pennsylvania Station from here, the railroad says.

A bill that would allow a judge to lengthen the prison term of anyone wearing bulletproof clothing while committing a violent crime received final approval yesterday in the New York State Legislature. Under the measure, wearing the clothing during such a crime would itself be a felony, and one to four years could be added to the defendant's sentence. The bill passed the Assembly yesterday by a vote of 135 to 1. It was approved by the Senate on Monday. The measure's chief sponsor in the Assembly, John C. Dearie, Democrat of the Bronx, said he expected Governor Cuomo to sign the bill.

Braniff International's board of directors agreed in principle last night to a proposal by the Hyatt Corporation that would allow the grounded airline to resume some flight operations. The plan calls for Hyatt to raise $70 million in return for 80 percent of the new airline's stock. However, Howard D. Putnam, Braniff's chairman, said that the plan still needed the approval of the bankruptcy court as well as Braniff's secured creditors. They have rejected earlier Hyatt proposals and have generally maintained that they would receive more through liquidation than might be earned by reviving some of Braniff's routes.

Henry Ford developed the moving assembly line into one of the most bountiful production systems ever known. Here, at the Ford Motor Company's light truck assembly plant, they think they have improved on the founder. They stop the line. It only stops for about 30 seconds in one location, just long enough for a pair of workers to lower the cab of a Ranger pickup truck or the body of a Bronco 2 utility vehicle onto the chassis. That brief pause, however, makes it a lot easier for the two workers to position the body and place it on the chassis without damage. ''There's no jogging, no guessing: You just line up two pins and drop it,'' said Nicholas Hertelendy, manager of manufacturing engineering at the plant. ''Can you imagine how hard you would have to work to do that on a line moving at rate of 75 an hour?''