Confessions of a Tax Collector (33 page)

“We got this letter, about a week after you first came,” he said slowly. “Making all sorts of promises. I don’t know how they got our name or knew we owed taxes.”

“The tax lien,” I said. “It’s filed at the county courthouse. It’s public record.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, this letter made all these promises. Said it was going to ‘untax’ us, get rid of you—not you personally, but the IRS. I meant the IRS. And all we had to do was send them five hundred dollars.”

“So you gave them five hundred dollars.”

“You got to understand, we were desperate. And when you read their stuff, well, it kind of makes sense.”

“It didn’t make much sense to me,” she said.

“Well,” he said.

“What did you get for the five hundred dollars?”

“This packet full of letters to send, instructions how to send them, who to send them to. Mostly it was copies of these magazine articles.”

“From magazines I never heard of,” she said.

“And court cases. Court papers where the judge ruled against the IRS. God, there must have been four or five hundred pages of this stuff. It all made it sound simple, and—”

“Too good to be true,” she said.

“Do you still have this material?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it?”

“Don’t you… the IRS probably already knows all about these guys?”

“Did anyone contact you? Over the phone or in person?”

Again, they exchanged a look. She said, “Surely you understand, Mr. Yancey. This isn’t easy for us.”

“I do understand,” I said. “And if you had come to me with this stuff before we actually seized… the seizure changes everything. We can’t make it go away or pretend it never happened.“

“We don’t know these people,” the dentist said. “We don’t know what they’re capable of. They said once we posted that sign on our door, we could shoot you on the spot. We could blow your brains out and nothing would happen to us!”

She spoke his first name sharply. He dropped his head and resumed his weeping.

“We would like to see the material,” I said, speaking gently to him but looking at her. She was the level-headed one. She was the one to present the deal to. Whatever she decided, he would acquiesce to it. “We want the name of the organization that contacted you. We want the name or names of the people within this organization you may have spoken to.”

She nodded slowly. “And if we do that?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I will see what I can do. The final decision isn’t mine. But I will plead your case to my boss.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody,” he cried out. “I swear before God I never wanted to hurt anyone!”

“Oh, shut up,” she said to him.

“That doesn’t matter now,” I said.

An hour later I met with Gina behind closed doors.

“What’s this?” she asked when I handed her the form.

“Form 911.”

“Ahhh. The protestor seizure. Well, they should be able to turn this around quick.” She started to pick up the phone. She was going to call the Taxpayer Advocate’s Office. Once filed, an Application for Taxpayer Assistance Order (ATAO) was assigned to a caseworker, who was required to make a determination in twenty-four hours. In protestor cases, the decision was always in our favor. The Advocate’s Office understood these applications for what they were: a delaying tactic, an attempt to tie up the bureaucracy with frivolous requests.

She slowly lowered the receiver. Something about the form troubled her. “You know, it’s funny, Rick, but isn’t this your handwriting?”

“It is.”

“You helped them fill out the form?”

“I filled it out for them.”

She studied me for a long moment. “Why are you grinning like the cat who swallowed the canary?”

I explained my strategy. If we released the seizure, the branch chief— or even the division chief—might question our decision. But a decision from the Advocate’s Office was binding on Collection. If they determined the seizure created an undue hardship on the taxpayer, we would be compelled to release it.

“So? We can release, too.
We
can say it’s creating a hardship.”

“We don’t want to say that.”

“We don’t?” she asked.

“Because we’re not gonna go easy on protestors.”

“When you came in here you said they weren’t protestors. Now you’re saying they are. Which is it, Rick?”

“They’re not, but they must appear to be.”

“Come again?”

“It has to look like we didn’t have a choice. It has to look like they’ve won the battle.”

“Look like that to whom?”

“They’re prepared to give me names, Gina.”

“Ah.” She understood immediately.

“And they won’t give me names unless—”

“Unless they feel safe.” She began to scribble something on her notepad, thought better of it, tore off the sheet, and tossed it into her shred drawer. “You’ll have to be careful how you construct the history.”

“I’ll show you a draft before I put it in the file.”

“Okay. Okay.” She was smiling. She had not been smiling when I entered the room. “I’ll write a cover memo to ATAO to fax with the form. I’ll be properly stern but leave the door open. Is Beth here?”

“She’s waiting.”

“I’ll call them, too,” she said, meaning the Advocate’s Office. “Tell the taxpayers we’ll have the seizure released by the end of the day.”

“Good.” “Rick,” she called softly. I turned at the door. “Excellent work.”

* * *

I went outside and walked in the alley behind the federal building, my favorite place to think and smoke. Gina had never used those words before, at least not in reference to me.
Excellent work.
It really had been a brilliant, bloodless campaign that benefited all the combatants. The taxpayer would retain his practice. Gina would earn points with her boss and maybe even save her job. And I would emerge the clear front-runner for the next promotion. At each juncture of the battle, I had used leverage to its fullest advantage. The dentist’s letter had freed me to act with no compunction whatsoever, nothing like my interminable ethical wrestling match with the Laura Marsh case. There was no moral ambiguity to this kind of war, a war against protestors, whose sole purpose was to defeat our tax system, which would cripple our government and threaten the very existence of our nation. Long ago Culpepper had warned me that I must find a reason to like the job if I wanted to preserve my sanity. I had finally found the reason.

Since there was no one with me, I said to a nearby pigeon, “War is insane, but to keep my sanity, I must make war.” The pigeon, intent on his intricate dance to seduce a nearby female, ignored me. That was okay. He was a pigeon, that’s all he was and all he was ever going to be, and he was doing his thing.

For the first time since Jim Neyland shook my hand in Tampa, I did not feel like a stranger inside my own skin. I was there. I had reached the moment of enlightenment Gina had promised would come. I had spewed from the chrysalis in an explosive, ecstatic epiphany, my wings dazzling bright against the sky. He was finally awake, the person who had always dwelled within me; indeed, who dwells within everyone, furiously alive yet dead asleep, wrapped in layers of linen, waiting for someone—or something—to call him forth. The call had come and I had answered it. I was awake now.

Two months later, Gina and I were on a conference call with Bob Campbell, the branch chief.

“Bob,” Gina began, “Rick has an idea for a RCP.”
[38]

“I’m listening.”

“Protestor groups often advocate changing W-4s
[39]
to claim exemptions from their withholdings,” I said.

“True.”

“We’d like to target the major employers in the area, as well as those segments known for protestor ‘dumpings.’”

“Nothing worse than a clump of protestors,” Bob Campbell said.

“We would review the W-4s on file to identify possible protestors, then research IDRS to see if we have assessments or unfiled returns on the probables.”

“Then?”

“Then? Well, then we… enforce.”

“You know, the Service Centers have this program,” Bob Campbell intoned. Gina rolled her eyes. “Employers are required to send questionable W-4s to them for review.”

“Yes,” I said. “But only those W-4s that have ten or more exemptions. At least one protestor group is on to this and advises its members to list nine exemptions.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen some material and heard it from my informants.”

“Your what?”

“The dentist,” Gina reminded him.

“Oh, right. Okay, so what’s the idea here?”

Gina and I looked at each other.

“The idea, Bob,” Gina said, “is to conduct a compliance project to review W-4s in targeted industries in order to identify possible illegal protestor activity.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. And then what?”

“Bring ‘em back into the fold or give ’em a little jail time. Make an impact. You know, Bob, compliance stuff.”

“I see. Well, it sounds pretty good. Send up a memo and I’ll run it by Byron.”

“Bob,” Gina said, “as branch chief, you can approve an RCP.”

“Well, how many people you think you need for this project? Not the whole group, do you think?”

“I was thinking Rick and maybe two other Grade Nines.”

“Okay, put that in the memo, too.”

After some pleasantries (Bob’s golf game was off; Gina had dropped out of aerobics for the fifth time), the call ended. Gina muttered something under her breath that sounded like “asshole” and flashed a smile at me.

“You write the memo and I’ll send it up,” she said. “My only concern is overgraded cases in your inventory.” Under the contract, only a certain percentage of my inventory could exceed the Grade 9 level. “But I’ll keep an eye on it.”

I took a deep breath. I had waited for one of Gina’s good days to ask about the project. Her good days were becoming less and less frequent. She was M.I.A. for hours at a time. Some said she was at home brooding. Others said that she was papering the town with resumes. Byron White was nearing retirement and had made it clear he would not ride off into the sunset without Gina’s head in his saddlebag.

“There’s something else I wanted to ask you,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“I want every protestor case in the Queue
[40]
.”

“What, for the whole country?” She thought I was joking.

“I thought I’d start with just our territory.”

“Protestor cases do not produce high yields.”

“I’m not interested in harvesting.”

She laughed. “What are you interested in?”

“Slash-and-burn.”

“Stop, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m serious. How many are there in the Queue?”

“Rick, I’m not giving you an entire inventory of protestors.”

“That’s what I’m asking, Gina. How many can you give me?”

“Gee, aren’t you all gung ho.”

“How many?”

She flinched. “I will… I will look into it, Rick.”

* * *

With minor variations, a typical case radiated from the taxpayer outward. Upon receipt, I checked IDRS for additional assessments or missing returns still in notice status, then hit the street to contact the taxpayer, make my demand, secure the financial information, set my deadlines. Everything that followed depended upon the taxpayer; every action I took was merely a reaction to their response, whether that response was to ignore me, put me off, or struggle to comply with my demands. I quickly discovered that this method could not be applied to illegal tax protestors. Approaching them on the front end only tipped them off and gave them the opportunity to launch a counterattack. By definition, protestors had no regard for the law; the only thing they understood was brute force, the Service’s power to inflict harm upon them. Nothing so banal as physical harm, but financial, emotional, and psychological harm. The worst thing you can do to a protestor is make him feel powerless.

So I waged my war in these stages:
Intelligence, Reconnaissance,
and
Attack.

STAGE ONE: INTELLIGENCE

The couple owed about $20,000 on a return filed for them by the Internal Revenue Service
[41]
. They had not filed their personal income tax returns for three years. Yet IDRS showed that the husband had received over $50,000 for each of those years. He owned an insurance business; she appeared to be a homemaker. Two children, according to their last filed return. They lived in a rental house. He had some investments in the market, but nothing significant. His business was located in a strip mall on the east side of town.

DMV records showed two vehicles registered to the taxpayer: a white ‘89 Ford pickup truck and a red ’68 Chevrolet. The truck was fully encumbered by a note to Ford Motor Credit. The ‘68 Chevy had no lien against it. DMV records indicated the model of this car was a Chevette.

There was no record of real estate in either of their names at the county tax assessor’s office. Nor did I discover any record of transfers of property within the last five years. Often, protestors will try to protect their assets by transferring title to their children or other nonliable parties, such as dummy corporations or bogus trusts. The evidence they leave behind is always obvious, making it easy for us to “reach the asset,” the Service’s euphemism for seizure.

The bottom line was there was precious little I could do to collect the twenty grand. The only asset immediately available was the Chevette. I was not encouraged. If I was lucky, I might clear a couple hundred bucks at sale. But, as I tried to tell Gina, protestor cases were not about yield.

STAGE TWO: RECONNAISSANCE

I drove to the strip mall and slowly cruised the parking lot. There was no white Ford pickup and no Chevette. His office appeared to be open, and I wondered if he had disposed of the assets and was now leasing his vehicles. There were twenty or thirty cars in the lot, and I wrote down all the tag numbers. I would run them through DMV when I returned to the office and look for a link between the owners and the taxpayer. I pulled into a parking place and looked up the taxpayer’s address on my map. Perhaps the Chevette was parked in the driveway, in which case I would not need a writ-of-entry to seize it. I was leaving the lot when something red caught the corner of my eye, and my spirits soared.

STAGE THREE: ATTACK

I raced back to the federal building, whipped the car into the loading zone, jumped out, leapt four feet onto the platform, remembered I had left the car running, hopped down, turned off the car, jumped up again, flung open the side door, remembered I had forgotten to lock the car, decided I had left nothing in it worth burgling, yanked open the door to the suite of offices for the senior revenue officers, sprinted down the narrow hallway, ducked my head into each room, swung around at the end of the hall and ran back, hung a sharp right to the bullpen door, bruised my index finger punching in the security code, and fell into the room shouting, “Where the hell is everyone?”

I heard a small cry from the IDRS cubicle. Cindy Sandifer’s head appeared over the partition, eyes wide, mouth ajar.

“Rick! What happened?”

“It says Chevette, one 1968 red Chevrolet Chevette, but it’s wrong; DMV got it wrong or he pulled something or paid somebody off, but that doesn’t matter, it’s free and clear, we’re first, we’ve got it. What are you doing? Are you free?”

“Free for what?”

“Where’s Gina? Please, please God, tell me Gina’s here. Is she here? She hasn’t gone home to mow her lawn or anything, has she? I need a B and a 2434
[42]
. It’s right there, right there in the parking lot, Cindy, in fucking public access. The sonofabitch even has a for sale sign on it, can you believe that? And it’s perfect; it’s absolutely fucking
perfect.”
I was at my desk, flipping through my address book. “I’m calling Andy. You never answered me.”

“Which question? You asked about fifty.”

“Is Gina here?”

I found the number for Andy’s Towing and began to dial.

“Yes, but she’s locked in her office with Bonny. She’s having one of
those
days, Rick. I wouldn’t bother her if I—”

“She’s still the goddamned manager, isn’t she? I’ll get her to sign the fucking B if I have to shove it under—Andy, Rick Yancey. How’s it going, man? I’m gonna need a driver to meet me in about a half hour… Cindy, here’s the TIN.
[43]
Pull the accruals on his account… Yeah, I’m still here, Andy.” I looked at Cindy. She was standing next to me. “Can you please print the accruals on his account so I can type the B?” I turned my back on her. “No, I was talking to Cindy. Listen, I need a truck. It’s right off 98, next to that drive-thru convenience store. Yeah, that’s the one. You got a flatbed available? I don’t want to hook this baby up and drag it down the road. I don’t want to risk a single fucking scratch. Well, I guess you’re gonna find out when I get there. I’ll call you back.” I hung up. Cindy had not moved.

“It’s a protestor, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes. Yes, it’s a protestor.” I stepped around her and went to the forms cabinet. “Are you free?”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“You’re going to go right now, at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday, to seize a protestor?”

“Jesus, it’s three already?”

I sat down at the typewriter. It groaned at me and I smacked it hard in the side.

“What about escort?”

“I’m not bringing escort.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing to indicate I need one.”

“What has the protestor said?”

I slammed my fist on the typing table. “Christ, Cindy, you aren’t my fucking OJI anymore! You don’t have to question every single goddamned bit of esoterica in my case file!”

“What’s esoterica?”

“I’m asking you if you’re free to assist me in this seizure. If you are free, pull those accruals, find your commission, and pack up your desk. If you aren’t free or you don’t want to help, then leave me alone! It’s three o’clock and if I don’t get back out there it might be gone!”

“What might be gone?”

“The car! The car! The car! Christ, what the hell have I been talking about since I walked into the room? DMV says it’s a 1968, red Chevy Chevette. Well, it’s a 1968 and it’s red all right, but it’s no Chevette. It’s a
Corvette,
it’s in mint condition, it’s parked in public access, the taxpayer has no clue I know about it, and it’s three o’clock on a fucking Friday afternoon! Is that enough for you?” I pulled the completed levy form from the typewriter and slid in the 2434-B. “Oh! And it’s a convertible. Did I mention it was a fucking convertible? Cherry red with black leather seats. It’s the most beautiful goddamned thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m going out there to get it, even if I have to take Henry with me. I’m going to get it.”

“Henry isn’t here.”

“Henry isn’t the point!” I shouted.

“Why are you shouting at the top of your lungs?” she shouted back.

I took a deep breath. We stared across the room at each other.

I said in a measured tone. “So, are you free?”

“Call in the locals,” Gina advised.

“The locals, right,” Cindy said. She had joined us in Gina’s office for the impromptu briefing.

“Gina, he’s an insurance salesman,” I said.

“John Wayne Gacy ran a successful construction company.”

“And he was a clown,” Cindy added.

Gina nodded gravely. “And he was a clown.”

“If things go sour, I’ll back off. Andy will be there.”

“Good, he can wrestle him to the ground, put him in a half-waddyacallit.”

“Nelson,” Cindy said.

“Nelson, right.”

“Andy’ll tear off his head and shit down his neck,” I said.

“Why Rick, how colorful.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s a little excited,” Cindy said.

“Yes, but could he tear off John Wayne Gacy’s head and shit down his neck?”

“Who?” Cindy asked. She was getting lost. “Rick or Andy?”

“Rick doesn’t look like he could tear off a chicken’s head.”

“How did we get from a protestor seizure to me tearing off a chicken’s head?” I asked.

“He could bite it off,” Cindy said. “I had an uncle in Shreveport who could do that.”

Gina laughed and signed the levy form. “Okay, it’s almost four. If you’re going, I guess you better go. Rick, you never fail to make my day. Have you by the way?”

“What?”

“Ever bitten off a chicken’s head?”

Andy met us at a gas station two blocks from the taxpayer’s parking lot. He had brought the massive flatbed tow truck. The engine was running and the air was thick with diesel fumes. A toothpick jutted from the side of his mouth and he twirled the gnawed piece of wood with his tongue.

“Cherry red ‘Vette, way to go, Ricky!”

“Don’t hook it up until I give you the signal,” I said.

“Oh, yes sir, like I haven’t done this a thousand times before. Hey, Cindy, how’s it going? Look at Rick, willya? Like a virgin in a whorehouse.”

Cindy sighed. “I love working with men.”

* * *

He followed us to the parking lot. I parked next to the Corvette and stepped out of the car with the case file and a roll of tape. Andy pulled the