Free Confessions of a Tax Collector by Richard Yancey

back and forth across the varnished table.
    “I don’t have an explanation,” he said slowly. He appealed to us trainees silently with his devastatingly blue eyes. “All I know is this is the tax on the return and this is the total of our deposits. We don’t owe anything for the fourth quarter. That’s all I know.”
    “But I know what you said.”
    “What I said?”
    “I know you said you paid bonuses in the fourth quarter, but on this return the liability is actually lower than the third quarter.”
    “Okay. I’ll grant you that.”
    “And so I have to know—why?”
    “Maybe we fired somebody. Maybe somebody got demoted. Like I said, I don’t handle personnel issues.”
    ‘But you are aware of the bonuses.“
    “Bonuses?”
    Melissa heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Did you get a bonus last year, Mr. Craig?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the other partners?”
    “Of course.”
    “You’re a lawyer, you’re pretty smart, you gotta understand what I’m getting at.”
    He nodded. I watched him nod and was glad he understood, because I had no idea what she was getting at.
    “And I take offense at the suggestion, Ms. Cavanaugh.”
    “I’m not trying to offend you. I’m trying to get an answer to a simple question: Why did the taxes go down and what part of those taxes reflect these huge bonuses?”
    “Now wait a minute. That’s two questions, and I never said the bonuses were huge.”
    “Well, I guess there’s only one way I’m gonna find out.”
    She reached into her briefcase and I watched as Bernie Craig’s tan bled from his face. He looked like he was going to be sick.
    “This is a summons to appear before me, in my office, and produce the complete bank records for the business for the last three months of 1990,” Melissa said as her hand flew across the form. “If you choose not to appear and do not file a motion to quash in federal court, we will enforce the summons before a magistrate, at which time if you still choose to deny us the records, we will throw you in jail for contempt.”
    “First my Rolex and now jail time? Jesus Christ, the return shows we don’t owe anything!”
    “Exactly,” Melissa said. “And the Service wants to know why.”
    I expected him to come over the table at her, but he rallied the charm instead. He acquiesced, promising to deliver the bank records precisely on his appearance date. Somehow, Melissa had beaten him down. He was ready to be led to the wall. He was ready for the blindfold.
    On the way back to the office, Rachel asked her, “So what did you do before you worked for the IRS?”
    Melissa shrugged. “Finished high school.”
     
     
     
     
CHAPTER 3
DANCE LESSONS
    We spent the majority of “pre-Phase” training in the conference room, plowing through the training booklet, or enduring incomprehensible lectures from Cindy and Melissa.
    Melissa : “Documentation is everything. Document, document, document. If it isn’t in your case history, it didn’t happen. If it didn’t happen, you didn’t do it. If you didn’t do it, you failed to do it.”
    Cindy: “We work with two basic kinds of assignments: TDAs and TDIs. TDA is Taxpayer Delinquency Accounts—the tax has been assessed and you must collect it. TDI is Taxpayer Delinquency Investigation—no returns have been filed and you must secure them or verify they don’t have to be filed. The easy way to remember it is TDA means money and TDI means returns.”
    Melissa : “Shred every day. Shred everything. And don’t let your shredding pile up in a drawer. Never leave anything on your desk with taxpayer information on it. That’s disclosure. Disclosure will get you into big trouble. And be careful around that shredder. It’s about four hundred fucking years old and it will suck your fingers in, rip them right off your hand. Kick better be real careful. A revenue agent leaned over to grab a stack of Paper by the shredder and it ate his tie. Almost pulled his head into the shredder.”
    Cindy: