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Hope the former administration likes wearing stripes
To the editor:
There are legions of small business owners serving prison time for exactly the "minor" error of using payroll deductions to pay other bills.
The IRS has zero sympathy, no matter that this crime happens as a business fails and the proprietor is destitute.
The book "What the IRS Doesn't Want You to Know" discusses this in detail. Every small businessman knows about this. One does not divert the payroll taxes.
The financial aftermath is a debt that cannot be discharged by bankruptcy, that can reach into pension, military and social security payments -- and is still there when you get out of prison.
Hope the former administration likes wearing stripes.
Meanwhile ... do you really expect the IRS to treat us seriously, when our "finance director" isn't qualified to be the department receptionist? Only now is she taking accounting classes? After criminal convictions -- all centered on money?
We need not have the IRS hold our hand. We need only PAY THE BILL. Maybe, if we can maintain serious payments (from the sales tax) for an entire year they might talk to us. Maybe.
Your paper, and the current mayor, needs to thank God that -- so far -- no one has asked the courts to appoint an administrator over us. When that happens, it's Reconstruction all over again. The appointee will be someone from far away, with no roots within 500 miles of us. The administrator will be the sort of man who carries a lemon, just in case he feels a smile coming on. The administrator will have the power to levy taxes and sell assets. Everyone in Blytheville can kiss their property tax "exemption" good-bye. ... That's what an administrator will mean for Blytheville.
You can bet there's an administrator sitting with a packed carpetbag by his desk, waiting for the call. Let Blytheville falter in the least, and the IRS will be in front of a tax court judge in a heartbeat. No warning, no notice -- we'll just wake up one day to a fleet of GSA license plates and federal SWAT teams. Sort of like the raid in "Casino," only bigger.
If nothing else, this note ought to persuade the current mayor on the absolute need to have a QUALIFIED person of provable INTEGRITY and independence in charge of the city's finances. I daresay it would even help if the mayor didn't like them much.