How to Survive a Tax Problem
Posted on | April 4, 2011 | No Comments
How Do I Survive a Tax Problem?
The way to survive a tax problem is to think with your head, not your heart. Do not believe what you want to believe, but rather what the available evidence suggests. Remove your ego and pay attention. If you are in tax trouble , you have forgotten some very serious rules of life and business. Or perhaps you never knew them. Check out the following article by Ben Stein. Yes, that is The Ben Stein. It was published too many years ago to matter and has been all but lost until you found it today.
LA County Jail–The N0-Frills Business School
Prison, as Richard Nixon has observed, has proven to be a fertile ground for writers and social observers in this century. Idealists and visionaries like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and lunatics like Adolph Hitler, spawned powerful books and articles about their movements from behind bars. Now, from that center of the new and the relevant, Los Angeles, come some poignant thoughts about management and organization in modern corporations, also germinated in jail.
The source of this data is a man I will call Donald. He was a student of mine some years ago at a flittering university overlooking the ocean in Malibu. Donald was an intelligent and articulate guy, but he was also an incorrigible (I thought) wise guy, troublemaker and arguer.
I had heard, off and on, that the same traits had dogged him when he had gone to work for a very major corporation here in Los Angeles. Promotion had been slow, and he had been in constant jeopardy of being dismissed–always because of his had attitude.
When he pulled up behind me at a gas station in Malibu a few days ago in a gleaming sports car, looking like a vastly more confident, far smoother, far easier to talk to–far, far better dressed–guy than I had known, I was surprised. He looked, as one might say, like a successful version of his old self.
He said that he had, in fact, been doing incomparably better at his work, had been promoted, was told what an asset he was, and was on the fast track to plutocracy. Over veggie burgers at an outdoor restaurant, he told me what had happened.
It all began, he said, when he had been sentenced to 60 days in LA County Jail for drunken driving while on probation. It was, he said, a kind of education he had never expected, but had badly needed.
From the first moment that he had been handcuffed to a hardened convict and attached by leg irons to five others–all of whom were terrifying–Donald had realized that he had better learn the rules of prison life fast, or he was going to wind up either dead of with some truly horrible stories to tell for the rest of his life. “Ther are rules of how to get by,” he said, “and if you follow them, you do.”
Rule One, he said, “…Is that no matter what kind of crap is being dished out by the cops and the guards, you absolutely have to put up with it. You can’t say one word back or you get hit so hard you can’t believe it, and you can’t do a thing about it. That’s rule one: Be humble and don’t talk back to those who have poser over you.
“Rule Two is that you can’t take any crap at all, not any, from anyone on your level. You can’t let yourself be pushed around at all, not even a little bit, by the other prisoners. If they ask you for a cigarette, you tell them to go —- themselves. If they ask you for money, you tell them you’d rather kill them than give them a cent. You can be friendly, but don’t ever back down from anything, and even if the guy is 10 times your size, you let him know you’ll put up a fight and he’ll at least have some scars on him. Respect is everything in jail, and if you don’t have the guts to fight, take it until you do (while I was in jail, I told people I was there for whacking my old lady, just so they wouldn’t think I was another drunk-driving wimp).
“Third, beware of anyone who seems to be doing you a favor that’s too good to be true. The first night I was there, a little guy offered me his bed–and there weren’t anywhere near enough beds to go around–for five bucks. I paid him, and 10 minutes later, this huge Chinese guy comes by and says it’s his bed and he’s going to kill me. We swore at each other for a while, so I at least looked tough, and then went and got my money back from the little guy. Guys who [make offers] too good to be true are nothing but trouble, at least in jail.
“Fourth, stay our of other people’s fights. You don’t need to speak up for someone who’s being hassled unless you’re part of his group. The guy who started teaching me about this told me at first I should just go off into a corner and not talk to anyone. He was totally right–totally. And it saved me a lot of trouble.
“Fifth, hook up with a larger group who can protect you. Don’t ever be alone in jail. In LA County [jail] there were mostly blacks and Hispanics, and since I’m not black and I speak Spanish, I got with the Mexicans. that way I wasn’t just one lone guy who they could kill in the shower for laughs.
“Sixth, have a goal, and pay attention to it. My goal was to get out of there alive, in one piece, in good health, and without any horror stories to tell my friends. I did it, but it meant giving up being a wise ass; no mare arguing for the fun of it, no more disrupting everybody else just to be the center of attention. Just staying alive. That was my goal.
“The point is that when I got out, one month early for good behavior, and went back to work–they thought I was in Germany on vacation–I just reflexively started to do the same things I had done in County.
“They worked even better there. Being humble to my bosses, not taking any guff at all from the people on my same level, not getting into other people’s fights, making myself part of a group that could protect me, staying away from people who offered me unreal favors, paying attention to my goal (which was to get promoted), not showing off–all that works incredibly well in a large white-collar organization.
“Prison is the most unforgiving, rigorous large competitive organization. It’s the essence of human relationships in groups without any of the politeness of the etiquette. It’s what business school should teach you about what competing is really like–boot camp, in a way, for other more compromising situations. It sure worked for me,” Donald said.
“Anyway, now that you know,” he added, “don’t feel you have to try it.”
(Thanks, I won’t.)
–By Benjamin J. Stein, “Manager’s Journal”
Tax Representation–Connecting the Dots
So what does this have to do with solving your tax problem? If you have to ask, you are in more need of reading this article than I thought. Here it is, just in case you can’t connect the dots:
- Be humble and don’t talk back to those who have power over you. When you have a tax problem, this means don’t stand up to the IRS and be overly argumentative.
- Don’t take crap from anyone on your level. When you have a tax problem, this means you can’t allow detractors or crazy-makers in your life to keep you from addressing your tax problem. The only way to clear it up is to face it.
- Beware of anyone who seems to be doing you a favor that’s too good to be true. When you call a tax representation firm to ask for help, don’t be fooled by too-good-to-be-true offers. There is no silver bullet to solving your tax issues. You will have to do it one return at a time, even with the most competent help.
- Stay out of other people’s fights. Don’t spend your time trying to figure out how to avoid paying what you owe the government or needlessly participating in the high-complaint atmosphere that surrounds the tax relief industry. If you are smart, you will never have a need to complain. Steer clear of the ignorant ones who have fallen victim to the IRS, then to tax relief companies.
- Hook up with a larger group who can protect you. In most cases, this is an IRS tax representation firm, a tax attorney (if you can afford one), or a CPA firm (if they will take you on as a client). Most often, the best service you can find for resolving your tax problem is to use an Enrolled Agent or to hire a tax representation firm. The point is, you need to ally yourself with someone who deals with the IRS regularly and take advantage of their protection.
- Have a goal, and pay attention to it. Your goal is to resolve your tax problem. Don’t lose focus on that. If anything detracts you from achieving that goal, put it behind you. Do not sink into negativity and doubt. Instead, will the process forward. If you are having difficulties with your tax representative, stick with it. If you do not understand something, ask them again, and again if need be.
These six lessons can get you out of tax trouble. They will not necessarily save you money. They will not save your marriage. They will not fix your finances. But if you follow them, they will help you get shut of your tax problem.
There is no silver bullet that you can buy to sleigh the IRS. Tax compliance and tax problem resolution are processes. You don’t pay money and walk away from this. You must either take all the necessary steps to resolve your own tax problem, or hire a tax representative to help you. Either way, you are an integral part of the process.
So now stop reading already and go call someone who can help you. You still have a tax problem. Go fix it.
Have a tax help question? Use the comments section of this article to ask it!
Tags: tax help > tax help questions > tax problem
Comments
Leave a Reply