August 8, 1984

The best- known Republican proposal for a so- called flat tax would cut taxes for upper-income taxpayers by about 15 percent while raising taxes 2 to 3 percent for middle-income taxpayers, according to a preliminary analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation released today. The proposal is the Fair and Simple Tax, or FAST, plan backed by Representative Jack Kemp, Republican of New York, and Senator Robert W. Kasten Jr., Republican of Wisconsin. The analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee also found that the best-known Democratic proposal for tax simplification would not change the current distribution of the tax burden among income clases. This proposal, the Fair Tax Plan, is co-sponsored by Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri.

Legislation that would open Japan's huge telephone market to competition will probably not be passed by Japan's Parliament in the current session, which ends today. The legislation, anxiously awaited by American telecommunications companies as well as Japanese, would turn the state-owned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation into a private company starting next April 1 and end its monopoly over telephone service. While there is still a remote chance that a compromise on the package will be reached today, Japanese newspapers this morning were reporting that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had essentially given up and decided to hold the package of three telecommunications bills over until the next session. The important question now is how soon the next session of Parliament will be held. The bills are expected eventually to pass, but how soon they pass will determine whether the N.T.T. reorganization will have to be postponed beyond April 1.

Governor Cuomo said today that he had ordered state officials to review charges of child abuse at a Bronx day-care center to determine if the situation was isolated or part of a widespread problem. The Governor announced the first state involvement in the day-care case as the City Comptroller, Harrison J. Goldin, proposed that all child-care services be taken away from New York City's Human Resources Administration and put into a new agency reporting directly to the Mayor. ''We've had a lack of accountability,'' Mr. Goldin said. In a news conference at City Hall, Mayor Koch was noncommittal on the proposal, but said Mr. Goldin's idea would be examined.

The Administration sent Navy minesweeping helicopters and about 200 servicemen on their way to the Middle East today to help Egypt rid the Gulf of Suez area of explosives that have damaged commercial shipping. The military force began leaving the Norfolk, Va., Naval Air Station at midnight Monday aboard C-5 jet transports, according to the Department of Defense. Pentagon sources said the airlift, which will take two days to complete, was destined for Rota, Spain, site of a large United States base near Gibraltar. From there, they said, the helicopters will be loaded onto a Navy ship for transport across the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, where joint minesweeping operations with the Egyptians are to begin within 10 days.

To the surprise of some of his own supporters, President Reagan's re-election campaign has been thrown on the defensive and caught up in uncertain statements and apparent contradictions over the issue of raising taxes to reduce the Federal deficit. Two weeks ago the President's top aides seemed delighted by the unusual statement of Walter F. Mondale that he would raise taxes if elected President. A senior White House official predicted then that Mr. Reagan would easily dismiss the Democratic Presidential nominee's parallel contention that the President would also raise taxes in 1985. Indeed, the day after Mr. Mondale made his assertion, in his acceptance speech in San Francisco, a senior White House aide assured a reporter that the Reagan campaign had just been handed a wonderful gift: an undreamed-of opportunity to hammer at one of Mr. Reagan's favorite messages. Impression Seen Unchanged White House officials maintained today that their basic point was still getting across. ''We still think the impression is out there that Ronald Reagan doesn't want to raise taxes, and Walter Mondale does want to raise taxes,'' said one Presidential aide.