President Clinton's proposed energy tax, now before the House of Representatives, is supposed to extract $33 billion a year from hapless citizens $320 from the average household, and a great deal more from middle-class and rural households. It will actually net the Treasury much less, but what a honey pot for lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, and -of course -politicians who want to bestow favors. All the evils that Bill Clinton campaigned against.

There are many other things wrong with plan to tax energy based on the British thermal unit (Btu), the amount needed to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Not the least is arbitrariness. You see, if the energy comes from coal, natural gas, or nuclear, then the tax is "only" 26 cents per million Btu. But if derived from petroleum, it's subject to a surtax and taxed at 61 cents (roughly $3.50 per`42-gallon barrel). Renewable energy sources, like solar, wind, or geothermal, miraculously create tax-free Btu's unless the source is hydropower, another form of renewable energy. Hydro's Btu's are counted like those of nuclear even though hydra doesn't put out any heat. But aluminum producers using hydroelectricity just won an exemption from the tax, thanks to the House Ways and Means Committee.

It gets worse.

What about liquified natural gas LNG? Even though liquid like oil, its tax will be 26 cents. What about butane and propane produced from the distillation of petroleum in refineries? The decision to exempt them from the oil surtax must have taken a lawyer or likely more than one and a few lobbyists.

Lobbying becomes even more crucial and lucrative with liquid transportation fuels that have to be manufactured and are often blended with (oil-based) gasoline like methanol (from gas) and ethanol (from farm crops). Will the tax be 61 cents, 26 cents, or zero?

If you are familiar with the awesome persuasiveness of corn processor Archer-Daniels-Midland, you might guess zero for corn-based ethanol. In fact, the administration last month informed Sen. Robert Kerrey, D-Neb., by letter of its decision to completely exempt empt both methanol and ethanol from the Btu tax while at the same time the Senate voted down a resolution by Democratic Senators Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Tom Harken of Iowa to exempt ethanol. Now the House Committee has decided not to exempt. What a zoo!

When the Btu tax moves to the Senate where it may be killed we will witness a dazzling display of political science in action as lobbyists carve out special exemptions for different producer and user groups.

Exporters, of course, will put forth claims based on international competitiveness, and try to include all products produced from fossil fuels.

What about farmers, who export much of their product? If their chemical fertilizer is made from gas, will it be taxed?

Will coal exporters have to pay the tax on transportation from mine to the port? Will domestic industries succeed in taxing all imports according to their energy contents and will this raise havoc with international trade agreements?

What about producers of methanol? Will they be exempt from tax on natural gas used as a feedstock? And what about producers of ethanol: will they pay tax on the considerable energy used to refine corn into a transportation fuel?

Will Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and George Mitchell of Maine succeed in eliminating the on oil surtax on home heating oil, the preferred fuel in New England? You bet!

It's a big mystery why Bill Clinton singled out oil for punishment. He and Al Gore seemingly were worried about the environment and global warming, but oil puts out less carbon dioxide per Btu than coal. Could-it be that coal senators are too powerful and the political, price too high? But even So, this lower coal tax will fall more heavily, percentage-wise, on western low-sulfur coal and lignite, which are the cheapest coals and also the least polluting. Now that's something to think about.

The usual excuse for a surtax on oil is that it will reduce imports and advance national security. But this standard rhetoric doesn't hold water.

Just look at the numbers: The wholesale price of a gallon of gasoline should be only 55 cents, but is being raised by about 25 cents through the special refining steps and additives required by Clean Air legislation. Existing federal and state taxes amount to another 35 cents a gallon. Add a Btu tax of about eight cents a gallon and, figuring 10,000 miles a year with 20 miles to the gallon, the cost to the average driver will be approximately $40 a year. Compare this to insurance costs of $500 to S,$1,000, deprecation of $1,000 to $3,000, not to mention repairs and parking costs. The Btu tax is not likely to have much impact on driving habits.

Oil Imports may actually increase because of the perverse effects of the Btu tax. Much of the U.S. domestic production comes from small oil wells with operating costs among the highest in the world.

Nobody knows, of course, just how much the Btu tax will actually bring in to the U.S. Treasury once we subtract all the producer and user exemptions, plus the cost of LIHEAP (Low income home energy assistance program), earned income tax credit, and more food stamps. (The Treasury estimates these subsidies designed to offset some of the regressive effects of the tax at $11 billion per year, one-third of the revenues. The middle class get stuck with paying the full cost as usual.)

In addition, however, one has to reckon the losses inflicted on the nation's economy from the distortions and misallocations caused by the tax; according to DRI-McGraw Hill; a respected economic con suiting fir-m, a full i~implementation of the tax would lower the grow domestic product $34 billion annually by 1998 and slash 400,000 jobs.

If the White House is determined to raise revenues from energy fuels, there may be a better alternative to the Btu tax that avoids stupendous coats of lobbying and litigation, monitoring and record keeping, tax collection and enforcement, and an administrative structure rivaling that of the 1970s when oil pace controls and gasoline lines were in vogue.

We could simply increase the existing gasoline tax, where the collection machinery is already in place, and apply it to all motor fuels, including gasohol. (The Btu tax on oil products is in effect close to being a gasoline tax, since about 70 percent of refinery output now goes into gasoline.) But let's not raise home heating and electricity bills for households; and let's not increase costs of food and manufactured goods, costs that then have to be passed on to consumers.

So why not just boost the present 14-cent federal gasoline tax? Plain politics: it is too visible and unpopular. But that's a strong argument in its favor: Drivers will immediately learn how much they're being taxed. A Btu tax, on the other hand, is a sneaky tax; the consumer will never find out why prices for food, heat, transportation, and other necessities are going up. The consumer will blame the greedy oil companies, farmers, industry, or electric utilities, but never the government which can keep raising the Btu tax with little fear of being found out.

The Btu tax will be judged to be arbitrary in its application and unfair in its distribution of the burden. It is inflation- ary, damages the economy and international competitiveness, and destroys jobs. It is clearly an inefficient tax that wastes much of what it collect. It's a hidden tax that can only go one way in future: Upward!

Worst of all, it may just be the first step toward the infamous "carbon tax," alleged by environmental zealots, now ensconced in the White House, to be the answer to the threat of greenhouse warming. Once the initial Btu tax is in place, it will become the proverbial "camel's nose under the tent." It can be- and surely will be -transformed into a carbon tax by ratcheting up the tax on coal to ever higher values. Then, like kudzu in Georgia, these taxes will grow and strangle the economy.