(MONEY Magazine) – As the race for the Presidency intensifies with as many as 14 primaries scheduled for Super Tuesday on March 10, MONEY offers the first of these monthly spotlights on the candidates' economic views. This month: where the presidential hopefuls stand on four major tax issues -- Individual Retirement Accounts, the capital-gains tax, income taxes and health insurance write-offs. The head-to-head comparison appears in the table below. Nailing down the candidates' specific positions wasn't easy. When asked about these crucial tax measures, their spokesmen repeatedly waffled until MONEY pressed them to clearly articulate their candidates' views. Still, details were sometimes unobtainable. Both Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and former Senator Paul Tsongas said they are in favor of raising the top income tax bracket, now 31%, but they declined to say how high. Although restoring the full IRA deduction has broad support (see the Americans and Their Money poll on page 72 and Editor's Notes on page 7), only Harkin, Republican commentator Patrick Buchanan and former Klansman David Duke favor it. President Bush is joined by all the candidates except Harkin and Kerrey in his call to lower the capital-gains rate, which can now reach 28% (Kerrey would index capital gains to inflation). Bush, Democratic Governor Bill Clinton and Tsongas would give the biggest capital-gains tax breaks to investors who hold stocks for more than a few years. Buchanan wants tax-free capital gains for people with incomes of less than $50,000. Former Democratic Governor Jerry Brown approves of the gains cut as part of his pie-in-the-sky plan to replace all federal taxes with a flat 13% income tax, allowing write- offs only for mortgage interest, rent and charitable contributions.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: How the candidates' tax positions compare