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TOM MORGAN'S MONEY TALK
What a rotten deal. The Infernal Revenue Service sleuths have pulled another fast one on us. And our politicians have let them get away with it. The IRS has won permission to pull its giant fishbowl out of mothballs. From the fishbowl it will pluck the names of 50,000 unlucky taxpayers. It will submit those 50,000 to audits. This is what is called ''At Random''. That is an ancient Latin term meaning ''You Poor S.O.B.'' To attract an audit you do not need to be a suspect. You do not need to have listed 72 gerbils as your dependents. You do not need to have reported just 37 cents in income for the past three years of your law practice. You do not need to have scrawled ''Kiss My Trout'', in blood, across the bottom of your tax return. In other words, you do not need to have trod on any of the land mines the IRS has traditionally laid down for you. That is, it used to be that if you stepped on so-many of them, you triggered an audit. Next year, 50,000 taxpayers will be audited for the crime of having been born. For existing. For no other reason. Why is the IRS resorting to random audits? Two reasons. The IRS is up front about the first one: IRS auditors are blood-sucking vultures. The other reason is more covert. Lately, not enough crooked taxpayers have been stepping on the landmines. Too many of them have learned how to avoid audits. So the IRS needs to educate itself. It needs to learn what new tricks the old crooks are employing. By auditing 50,000 of us it hopes to discover the latest and most fashionable ploys and deceptions and lies, larcenies and dodges. Once it discovers them, it will codify them. It will arm its computers with them. They will become the new landmines, which will trigger audits in the glorious future. I suppose this is all right. If you are going to hire bloodhounds you have to let them sniff the jockey shorts the fugitive left behind. Still, I wretch at one item the IRS left out. Money. The money you may have to pay out if your name gets fished from the bowl. You see, many of these audits will not be your normal turn of the screw, no. They will be line-by-line audits. You will be grilled on every item you have entered on your tax return. You will be stretched on the rack for every receipt, for every deduction. Worse, you will be forced to keep the company of, m'god, a lawyer. Or an accountant. Or both. Worse yet, you will have to hire them. You will need to pay them to defend your tax return against the bloodhounds. Even though you have done nothing wrong. And even though the IRS has not a single reason to suspect you have done a thing wrong. That fishbowl could prove pretty costly to you. Costly in time. In consernation. In ulcer medication. In real money. Do you suppose the IRS will reimburse you for these costs? Do 72 gerbils count as deductions? Your best course of action might be to hire the gerbils and let them eat your tax return. Collect their droppings and package them up. Yes, UPS does deliver to Washington. From Tom...as in Morgan.
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