Many people said to me, “It’s just 15 percent” implying that I should continue to work and pay unfair taxes I was not responsible for incurring, and not responsible for paying, according to a US county court.
It’s true. Not much. The lazy state of ill (Illinois) can cream off fifteen percent of my gross (I made a little over eighteen grand last year) and it wouldn’t be that much. But eventually the feds will be in for 25 percent too.
And as a pay per visit nurse, making $40 for a follow-up visit, which is the bulk of what I do, I’m not being paid for drive time. If the visit takes two hours due to tedious multiple dressing changes or lots of phone time talking to doctors offices about their screwed up prescriptions, or new problems or whatever, that’s also diminishing the hourly rate. Add onto that charting time, and often I make around $10 and hour. I don’t make a lot. And the state’s picking away at me, because I’m an easy target.
The thought of schlepping out in the snow and wind, traversing the empty country miles under leaden skies, and doing it to help pay unjust taxation to the state – and eventually the IRS- was too much. In a way, it helped a lot that I wasn’t making that much money, and don’t especially love my job.
Yet, it was two entities that put the nails in the coffin of deciding to lay to rest for a while my nursing job – Julie Butterfly, she of living in a Redwood tree destined for the lumberjack’s saw for almost two years, and all those who call themselves War Tax Resistors.
More tomorrow on them.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Protesting unfair taxes - digression from it
I’ve had to take a leave of absence from my job as a nurse at a hospital. It was a hard decision. A protest. I'm not going to pay taxes I don't owe.
Yet, protesting involves sacrificing. I have kids. It’s not just me I have to think of. Not having medical insurance, income, etc. Scary stuff. Thankfully I live with someone who can support the bulk of basic living expenses. But he doesn’t have much. And that means no pocket money for me, no being able to go to Target and buy a cute shirt for my daughter or a cool notebook for my son. It’s basic land living, it’s not Disneyland, the place of mindless consumerism, that fake place which many in the country exist in the perpetual state – kind of like a being in a coma but able to shop. Yes, I’ve been in that state, in the store, eyes scanning the stuff, the prices, my perceived needs, my internal wants, and those wants produced by society/ads/others. Registering those people I’m with, usually my kids, but then they in that state, too. BUT I am aware of all that. Does that make a difference? Hah!
Well, anyway, now I can’t even go to that state of mind if I wanted to – where you have trinkets to show after going to Target lala-land. Although, and this is a major digression, I have been able to get into that state but without buying, by just looking in a store. It’s not all stores – just this one in particular. It’s a resale clothing store, and everything is pretty cheap. Adorable stuff for my little girl. So much. So many options. Tons of great options of clothing for me – if I had some kind of alternative glamorous life with cool artistic friends and we’d hang out at cafés in Paris, discussing art and history and our work, and then trekking to some remote place to interview meaningful people with fulfilling great missions to help others. So cool. Yet immature that dream life. So totally unlike my life now. Pretty sophomoric and juvenile. But hey, don’t they say hold onto your dreams b/c without them, the joyeaux la vie is gone. I’d have to go on Paxil or Prozac or Zoloft or any of the other SSRIs I see so many of my former patients taking to keep the truth at bay because they can’t use their imaginations to keep the spark of their individuality alive in their hearts. This gig is cheaper, and no side effects.
Basically, this resale shop enables me to go on a mental vacation. That’s what is is…. An escape from all the thinking of the financial mess and how to make ends meet, and how there will be no college funds for my kids, so what a terrible parent am I. The thinking and the resulting emotional payout – it sucks. When I go into the resale shop, which I must add is posh, warm, women who work there are friendly and talk about mom stuff in a cool way, they wear cool clothes – it’s all that outwardly acceptable societal samsara that feels so good to be a part of. When I leave, it’s how I used to feel after having a really good yoga class. Refreshed and relaxed and a-ok. It lasts a while with no hangover other than the time I spent in there. I rarely buy something that isn’t on the fifty percent off rack – which makes it $2-3 at the most. It’s weird, but it works for me. Something this gets me through the day. Scary, isn’t it.
But it's one way to get through, a five plus year drawn out mess with the feds and the state of ill.
Yet, protesting involves sacrificing. I have kids. It’s not just me I have to think of. Not having medical insurance, income, etc. Scary stuff. Thankfully I live with someone who can support the bulk of basic living expenses. But he doesn’t have much. And that means no pocket money for me, no being able to go to Target and buy a cute shirt for my daughter or a cool notebook for my son. It’s basic land living, it’s not Disneyland, the place of mindless consumerism, that fake place which many in the country exist in the perpetual state – kind of like a being in a coma but able to shop. Yes, I’ve been in that state, in the store, eyes scanning the stuff, the prices, my perceived needs, my internal wants, and those wants produced by society/ads/others. Registering those people I’m with, usually my kids, but then they in that state, too. BUT I am aware of all that. Does that make a difference? Hah!
Well, anyway, now I can’t even go to that state of mind if I wanted to – where you have trinkets to show after going to Target lala-land. Although, and this is a major digression, I have been able to get into that state but without buying, by just looking in a store. It’s not all stores – just this one in particular. It’s a resale clothing store, and everything is pretty cheap. Adorable stuff for my little girl. So much. So many options. Tons of great options of clothing for me – if I had some kind of alternative glamorous life with cool artistic friends and we’d hang out at cafés in Paris, discussing art and history and our work, and then trekking to some remote place to interview meaningful people with fulfilling great missions to help others. So cool. Yet immature that dream life. So totally unlike my life now. Pretty sophomoric and juvenile. But hey, don’t they say hold onto your dreams b/c without them, the joyeaux la vie is gone. I’d have to go on Paxil or Prozac or Zoloft or any of the other SSRIs I see so many of my former patients taking to keep the truth at bay because they can’t use their imaginations to keep the spark of their individuality alive in their hearts. This gig is cheaper, and no side effects.
Basically, this resale shop enables me to go on a mental vacation. That’s what is is…. An escape from all the thinking of the financial mess and how to make ends meet, and how there will be no college funds for my kids, so what a terrible parent am I. The thinking and the resulting emotional payout – it sucks. When I go into the resale shop, which I must add is posh, warm, women who work there are friendly and talk about mom stuff in a cool way, they wear cool clothes – it’s all that outwardly acceptable societal samsara that feels so good to be a part of. When I leave, it’s how I used to feel after having a really good yoga class. Refreshed and relaxed and a-ok. It lasts a while with no hangover other than the time I spent in there. I rarely buy something that isn’t on the fifty percent off rack – which makes it $2-3 at the most. It’s weird, but it works for me. Something this gets me through the day. Scary, isn’t it.
But it's one way to get through, a five plus year drawn out mess with the feds and the state of ill.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Rarity of property seizures
Rarely does the IRS seize assets for failure to pay taxes owed. The War Tax Resistors site has a list of members who had property taken - not many through quite a few years. Apparently it costs the IRS too much money - it's too much work for them.
I was under the impression they'd take the vacation home. Somehow, somewhere in my mind, I had the idea that's how it played out. Movies, modern myths. I thought that's what they did if you didn't pay. It seems the "kinder, gentler" IRS just sits on its butt, and lets the interest and penalites accrue. "Working smarter, not harder" they are. I got to hand it to them.
Yesterday the judge ordered the second home reduced in price by $50,000. Now it's half a million. More later.....
I was under the impression they'd take the vacation home. Somehow, somewhere in my mind, I had the idea that's how it played out. Movies, modern myths. I thought that's what they did if you didn't pay. It seems the "kinder, gentler" IRS just sits on its butt, and lets the interest and penalites accrue. "Working smarter, not harder" they are. I got to hand it to them.
Yesterday the judge ordered the second home reduced in price by $50,000. Now it's half a million. More later.....
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Tax protest leave of absence
Back after a hiatus of working - of trying to have a normal life. Impossible.
I was a cardiac rehab home health nurse, working with patients post open-heart bypass surgery. Then, the hospital, my employer, sends me a letter - the state of Illinois is going to start levying 15percent of my gross.
In my divorce almost a year ago,I worked out an agreement that held me not responsible for all taxes related to his business/our marriage. Doesn't matter to the state of Ill. They, like the feds, who soon will be levying 25percent of my gross, don't concern themselves with the small lives and small judges' decisions of county court. They will levy my wages because it is very easy to garnish wages from someone who works for a large company. My ex, meanwhile, has his own business. Too tough to go there.
So, to make a long story sum up: I took a three month leave of absence. First time, according to HR, to protest the state's levying of wages. And the governor of this state, as many others, complains about the shortage of nurses - hey, I'd be working if it weren't for the lame brains in Springfied, ill.
I was a cardiac rehab home health nurse, working with patients post open-heart bypass surgery. Then, the hospital, my employer, sends me a letter - the state of Illinois is going to start levying 15percent of my gross.
In my divorce almost a year ago,I worked out an agreement that held me not responsible for all taxes related to his business/our marriage. Doesn't matter to the state of Ill. They, like the feds, who soon will be levying 25percent of my gross, don't concern themselves with the small lives and small judges' decisions of county court. They will levy my wages because it is very easy to garnish wages from someone who works for a large company. My ex, meanwhile, has his own business. Too tough to go there.
So, to make a long story sum up: I took a three month leave of absence. First time, according to HR, to protest the state's levying of wages. And the governor of this state, as many others, complains about the shortage of nurses - hey, I'd be working if it weren't for the lame brains in Springfied, ill.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Vague but better than nothing....
To rest in the unknown - ah, there's the image for dealing with the IRS and remaining sane. Be prepared to lose it all, including your most deeply held childhood beliefs, and accept - nothingness.
But in the meantime, a few helpful insights from a IRS employee that actually knows something, and is willing to SHARE that info - that's right, Cheryl, of the tax advocacy office:
Going to appeals means another IRS person will get all my submitted stuff, and "one-on-one," I'll be able to "talk them through it." As opposed to what I imagine happened with the initial request based upon the agent's complete ignorance of my ex's deposition ("Oh, you mean the form he completed, yes, I reviewed that...." No, my dear, I mean the 67-page sworn deposition taken a year ago for our upcoming divorce trial.....). Clueless.
I can also request that this conference be face to face. Good chance I'd have to go to Covington Kentucky, but that would make for an interesting aspect of this story. And I think it would be very helpful too - remind this upcoming IRS person about to come into my life that there is real human being being the paperwork and the voice on the other end of the phone
But in the meantime, a few helpful insights from a IRS employee that actually knows something, and is willing to SHARE that info - that's right, Cheryl, of the tax advocacy office:
Going to appeals means another IRS person will get all my submitted stuff, and "one-on-one," I'll be able to "talk them through it." As opposed to what I imagine happened with the initial request based upon the agent's complete ignorance of my ex's deposition ("Oh, you mean the form he completed, yes, I reviewed that...." No, my dear, I mean the 67-page sworn deposition taken a year ago for our upcoming divorce trial.....). Clueless.
I can also request that this conference be face to face. Good chance I'd have to go to Covington Kentucky, but that would make for an interesting aspect of this story. And I think it would be very helpful too - remind this upcoming IRS person about to come into my life that there is real human being being the paperwork and the voice on the other end of the phone
Saturday, July 21, 2007
"eternal postponements" and little gold fishes
Last weekend I finished reading my first novel by Columbian author and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I know, should have read him earlier. So little time in this life for art, unfortunately. Maybe that's what retirement is for.
Anyway, there's a couple of lines and phrases in One Hundred Years of Solitude (I don't know how to underline yet in this blog), that reminded me so much of what this 5+ year IRS ultramarathon quest has been like.
This scene is about one of the main characters, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who has finished a long war:
"With them he waged the sad war of daily humiliation, of entreaties and petitions, of come-back tomorrow, of any-time-now, of we're-studying-your-case-with-the-proper-attention; the ware hopelessly lost against the many yours-most-trulys.... the other war, the bloody one of twenty years, did not cause them as much damage as the corrosive war of eternal postponements."
In time it took to get divorced and get through the IRS audit, tax collection and innocent spouse circus (which isn't even over yet), I trained for and finished three marathons, took prep courses and completed an ADN and get my RN license, trained as an ICU nurse, and - had a baby.
As cheapstreet said in a message posting: "I think many people are so very afraid of doing anything wrong because they are so 'invested' in their lives. With the cars, the houses and their net worth tied up in 'currency of normalcy' that they do not even want to think of how close they are to it all falling apart. Don't want to think of how they too could be caught in the gears of the tabulating machine of the IRS..."
A currency of normalcy - my life has been anything but. My fiscal life is owned by others, or I should say in the care of others. How's that for losing your independence.
Or, as I think of it at other times, it's complete freedom.
Either way, I was one of those people afraid of doing anything wrong - so afraid I thought I'd be a tax cheat if I didn't say my ex was cheating and dragging me into it.
So, to remain and silent, and maybe complicit, or speak up and end up here. Either way, it's life I guess. How else can you put it. Trick is to not end up shut up in a little room making little gold fishes, bitter and stuck in solitude, for the rest of my life. That's what happened to Colonel Aureliano...in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Good book. I recommend it.
Anyway, there's a couple of lines and phrases in One Hundred Years of Solitude (I don't know how to underline yet in this blog), that reminded me so much of what this 5+ year IRS ultramarathon quest has been like.
This scene is about one of the main characters, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who has finished a long war:
"With them he waged the sad war of daily humiliation, of entreaties and petitions, of come-back tomorrow, of any-time-now, of we're-studying-your-case-with-the-proper-attention; the ware hopelessly lost against the many yours-most-trulys.... the other war, the bloody one of twenty years, did not cause them as much damage as the corrosive war of eternal postponements."
In time it took to get divorced and get through the IRS audit, tax collection and innocent spouse circus (which isn't even over yet), I trained for and finished three marathons, took prep courses and completed an ADN and get my RN license, trained as an ICU nurse, and - had a baby.
As cheapstreet said in a message posting: "I think many people are so very afraid of doing anything wrong because they are so 'invested' in their lives. With the cars, the houses and their net worth tied up in 'currency of normalcy' that they do not even want to think of how close they are to it all falling apart. Don't want to think of how they too could be caught in the gears of the tabulating machine of the IRS..."
A currency of normalcy - my life has been anything but. My fiscal life is owned by others, or I should say in the care of others. How's that for losing your independence.
Or, as I think of it at other times, it's complete freedom.
Either way, I was one of those people afraid of doing anything wrong - so afraid I thought I'd be a tax cheat if I didn't say my ex was cheating and dragging me into it.
So, to remain and silent, and maybe complicit, or speak up and end up here. Either way, it's life I guess. How else can you put it. Trick is to not end up shut up in a little room making little gold fishes, bitter and stuck in solitude, for the rest of my life. That's what happened to Colonel Aureliano...in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Good book. I recommend it.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
On to appeals!
I sent my "statement of disagreement" about the "preliminary" denial of innocent spouse relief today. Was going to send it certified mail, as I'd sent every bit of correspondence previously. But then thought, why. More money to spend of this sinkhole?
I'll send a copy to the tax advocate, and she can send a copy to the good ole folks in Covington, Kentucky if somehow, they don't receive it.
Through this all, since I got in contact with her about two years ago, my tax advocate has been invaluable. The only person connected with the IRS I have any esteem for. She is amazing. For she is an IRS employee, but she is:
(I know you will all think I've been drinking when i write these words, but I haven't....)
Honest. Efficient. Responsible. Knowledgable.
I know. Shocking.
I still can't believe it. Cheryl Hamman in Springfield. I would still probably be getting very rare fowarded letters about things done three months prior if it weren't for her.
Thank you Cheryl!
I'll send a copy to the tax advocate, and she can send a copy to the good ole folks in Covington, Kentucky if somehow, they don't receive it.
Through this all, since I got in contact with her about two years ago, my tax advocate has been invaluable. The only person connected with the IRS I have any esteem for. She is amazing. For she is an IRS employee, but she is:
(I know you will all think I've been drinking when i write these words, but I haven't....)
Honest. Efficient. Responsible. Knowledgable.
I know. Shocking.
I still can't believe it. Cheryl Hamman in Springfield. I would still probably be getting very rare fowarded letters about things done three months prior if it weren't for her.
Thank you Cheryl!
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