Already dreading having to send a check to Uncle Sam? BookPage has the perfect book to inspire you to get started on those tax returns. Explore the weird world of the IRS in Richard Yancey’s Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man’s Tour of Duty Inside the IRS and we promise you’ll never miss a tax deadline again.
Yancey, an English major who took seven years to graduate from college, tells the bizarre story of how he went from actor wannabe to Revenue Officer (don’t call them tax collectors) after answering a newspaper ad on a whim. A sarcastic, tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy, Yancey fit right in with his first boss (a suspected Wiccan priestess) and training officer (a certifiable body building fanatic).
Not surprisingly, the IRS has a rule for everything, but the most important are these: #1 document everything and #2 shred everything. What is surprising is how workers get sucked into the system, learning to speak the IRS language of acronyms and numbers while losing the ability to think independently. As Yancey writes, the “system was designed in such a way as to completely remove our judgment from the process.” Instead, Revenue Officers follow the four protocols: “Find where they are. Track what they do. Learn what they have. Execute what they fear.” The book is funny in a “thank God that’s not me!” way, while at the same time being down right frightening. In the first case Yancey handled, he was faced with seizing the home of a down-on-her-luck daycare owner, and the cases only get more bizarre and pitiful as he uncovers child abuse and the mob. These guys are bullies, and you’ll want to avoid a run-in with any of the slightly deranged, power-tripping tax hounds profiled here.
