A symbolic “fund raising” drive will be conducted by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry July 15 as a means of denouncing the move by the USSR to extract a tax of 30 percent from all money sent abroad to Soviet citizens. The new tax was first reported last May and officially announced a week ago is due to go into effect next Jan. 1. It is anticipated that the tax will impose a hardship on Jewish activists and others in the USSR who have been deprived of jobs because of applying for exit visas and therefore have no income except the money sent from abroad.
Participants in the July 15 “fund drive” — to take the form of a curbside collection of pennies in front of the U.S.-USSR Trade Mission in Manhattan — will be members of constituent agencies of the Greater New York Conference and representatives of charitable and interfaith groups. Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference Executive Director, said that the monies collected on July 15 will be turned over to the USSR Trade Mission, along with a vigorous protest that the Soviet Union revoke the 30 percent tax.
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