September 10, 1986

Zaking issue with Representative Dan Rostenkowski, Senator Bob Packwood said today that following enactment of a new income tax system this year, tax rates would not be raised ''in the foreseeable future.'' ''As far as I'm concerned, we ought to leave this code as it is, including the rates, for a long enough period of time so that everyone can get used to it, invest under it and see how it works out,'' Senator Packwood, chairman of the Finance Committee, told a group of business executives. Last week Mr. Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that a tax increase in the near future was inevitable to reduce the Federal budget deficit. The Illinois Democrat said the fairest way to increase revenues would be to raise tax rates above the new levels set by Congressional conferees in the tax revision measure they approved last month.

DURING the day, Mary is someone ambitious women could easily envy. At 37 years old, she is a highly paid hotel manager, divorced mother of a 10-year-old and 12-year-old, maker of homemade granola, community activist - in all, a ''pillar of the community,'' as she mockingly describes herself. But at least one night a week, when the ''stress of everything in the world being my responsibility gets overwhelming,'' Mary, who would not allow her last name to be used, turns into someone far less enviable. She is a bulimic, a binge eater who stuffs down junk food, regurgitates it and eats some more. Why? ''I guess women develop different mechanisms to deal with stress,'' she says.

City officials said yesterday that they may move at least 200 more homeless families into two hotels in a midtown Manhattan area that already has the highest concentration of homeless families in the city. The referrals would increase by about 20 percent the number of homeless families in nine hotels in the general area, from 25th to 32d Streets. Suzanne Trazoff, a spokesman for the Human Resources Administration, said the city had been negotiating to place the families, a total of about 800 people, in the Collingwood Hotel at 45 West 35th Street, and in the Kenmore Hall Hotel at 145 East 23d Street.

In a surprise announcement, Robert A. Beck, the longtime chairman and chief executive of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, said yesterday that he would resign early next year. Mr. Beck, who will be 61 years old next month, will be succeeded on Feb. 5 by Robert C. Winters, 54, one of the two vice chairmen of the company, the nation's largest insurance concern. Mr. Beck said in an interview yesterday that he had told the board a couple of years ago of his intention to leave his post before reaching 65, the mandatory age for retirement of senior officers. ''I decided I was right physically and mentally and, after 13 years as president and then chairman, it was time to go,'' said Mr. Beck, who will become chairman emeritus and a consultant to the company. Transformed Company Mr. Beck's tenure was marked by aggressive growth and diversification that turned Prudential into a major player in the financial services industry. The insurer acquired the Bache Group, the giant New York brokerage firm now known as Prudential-Bache Securities, in 1981. Four years later, Prudential bought Jennison Associates, a New York asset management company, and also re-entered the home mortgage business and acquired a foreign management company.

''Her mother carried her for nine months, and I am honored to give her part of me.'' - Senator Jake Garn, who is donating a kidney to his daughter. [ A13:2. ]