No one likes paying taxes and few people show compassion to the Internal Revenue Service. Yet few of us are bothered enough by the burden of taxation to fly a plane into an IRS office building as Joseph Stack did last week in Austin Texas.
Joseph Stack forged several battles with the IRS throughout his 53 years of life. He manifested his frustrations in a seven-page letter which was taken off his Web site by request of the FBI after the crash. Stack headed the letter with these 11 words: “Well Mr. Big Brother IRS man… take my pound of flesh and sleep well.” (Big Brother is a reference to George Orwell’s fictional novel about a sophisticated all-controlling government.)
Stack admitted in his letter that he studied tax codes queried tax attorneys and interpreted parts of the code that exempted the “vulgar corrupt Catholic Church” from paying taxes to the U.S. government. His quest resulted in fines of more than $40000 and 10 years in prison for tax evasion. Even until his death Stack still believed he had not been evading tax payment but using legal loopholes in the tax code that were rarely exploited by private citizens.
Last year’s bailout of companies such as General Motors drove Stack to a new level of frustration. Stack wrote that he was upset that his hard-earned money was going toward bailing out companies while Mr. Stack himself was experiencing such financial hardship.
At one point Stack recalled an elderly neighbor whose husband had lost his pension before his death. She told Stack he would be better off eating cat food for nutrition rather than the peanut butter and bread he was relying on for inexpensive sustenance.
Just before his death Stack wrote “By not adding my body to the count I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at ‘big brother’ while he strips my carcass … I have just had enough.” Shortly after writing his letter Stack allegedly set fire to his home stole a small airplane placed two barrels of fuel in the back and drove this plane into Echelon 1 building in Austin killing himself and one federal employee.
Throughout the self-proclaimed rant of a letter Stack unintentionally reminds the reader that his hardships were caused by calculated attempts to violate the tax code. Though likely not his intent one cannot help but wonder why Mr. Stack felt he was above the law while many others were worse-off than he had ever been. Again reference to his letter counters this quandary. He wrote “[I’ve read] that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different.” By this definition Mr. Stack is labeling himself insane. His self-waged life-long battles with the tax system had never had a positive outcome.
Stack used the example “no taxation without representation” to express some of his frustration. He felt he never received the representation he had been paying for his whole life. Stack wrote that he relentlessly tried to contact the politicians who were supposed to be representing his interests but he never received sufficient responses. Stack undoubtedly felt that his hard-earned cash ended up paying for a government that ignored him.
Though Stack’s words bring to mind some of the imperfections in our system of government most readers will remember that taxes are vital to a strong nation and paying them is a duty to our country. The representation we receive is not on a personal level but we do expect our political representatives to act for the greater good of those they represent. Elections which Stack called “a joke are our way of deciding who we think has our best interests in mind. While Stack seemed to think that the individual politicians were to blame, one must remember the diminutive percentage of Americans who turn out to cast their votes. If the rest of the country were as upset with the system as Stack had been, a solid turnout at the polls could make a real difference.
No government is perfect, including our own. Regardless of this fact, all Americans have to pay taxes no matter what their economic status. Stack fueled his own frustrations with the government as he repeatedly violated the tax laws and suffered the consequences. Unfortunately for Mr. Stack, adding his body to the count will change nothing other than ending his own internal suffering. As for the rest of us, our patience with the system and our voice at the polls will remain the most effective means of ensuring our tax money is used efficiently.