SHANNON KELLY
Perspectives Editor
The Internal Revenue Service recently sent a letter to the Graphic. How nice of them to think of us. I saw the envelope on the news desk and read the notice: “YOUNG PEOPLE MUST REPORT TAX CHEATS TO THE I.R.S. IT IS YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY.” Serious business, I’d say. I read on, (back in lowercase font) “If a family member is living beyond their financial means, or even a neighbor who came into sudden wealth, or you notice a large sum of cash in you parents house.” The announcement ended with the all caps starting up again. More serious business. “YOU WILL REMAIN ANONYMOUS AND THERE COULD BE A REWARD.” A reward from the IRS? Very alluring.
I laughed and said to the person standing next to me, “Whoever did this is hysterical. What is it for?” He told me the letter was legitimate, official government business. In total disbelief I picked up the envelope to peak at the return address that read “IRS Office of Tax and Revenue Wash. D.C.” And they used a flag stamp, obviously.
Still confused, I thought I’d try again. So I reread the official government public service message keeping in mind that it was serious. This time I caught the sentence at the top of the page: “Plase post this public service message in your school paper (once again, all caps, very serious).” Plase? I thought maybe the people at the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice used words I never knew existed (words like plase) because they would never tell us to be perfect on our taxes and not be perfect with their spelling. But it turns out they would do that.
I’ve decided it’s best to avoid irritating the IRS, which could cause a shift in their interest from real tax frauds to the Kelly family. So I’m going to trust my Dad, who warned me against criticizing them, and save the wise cracks for another time.
If anyone from the IRS is reading this, the only thing my family is doing “beyond their financial means” is paying my Pepperdine tuition. I’m 95 percent sure my Dad is not stashing cash since it’s highly unlikely that he has extra cash to leave lying around in the sock drawer seeing that he gives half of his income to taxes and doesn’t “cheat.” My neighbors definitely haven’t come “in to sudden wealth,” because they still haven’t fixed their fence that someone rammed through last year (and despite popular belief, I had nothing to do with it).
I’ve shared the IRS’s public service message, helped the IRS with it’s spelling problems, saved my family from being spied on by the tax division of the Government, reminded my neighbors to fix their fence and found another opportunity to assert my innocence in the case of the fence damage.
After all of that, I still I feel like something’s missing from my first column of the semester. Advice for the reader maybe?
How about few words concerning “patriotic duty” since the IRS already brought it up in their notice. Feel free to take the IRS’s definition which, as far as I can infer from the notice, is to be suspicious of relatives and neighbors and to tattle to the government if Grandma has a few hundreds in a cigar box at home.
But I like to think that patriotism means defending and upholding constitutional ideals and appreciating the rights given to us by our founders; rights like privacy (to put some cash in the sock drawer) and freedom (to keep it to ourselves if the neighbors buy a Porsche).
01-19-2006