No Money, If That's What You Mean

March 29, 2006

Several years ago, when I first started working freelance, I didn't know the first thing about Schedule C, or what I was allowed to deduct, or any of that, and decided it was best to pay an accountant to do my taxes. Brian was working for a neon company at the time — doing service calls, mostly — and he'd recently fixed a sign for a place called Tompkins Square Tax Saver. He warned me about the German guy who ran it, said he was a little strange, shady maybe, but that he knew a couple of people who'd had their taxes done there and they were happy with the service. He suggested I give them a try. Sure, why not?

Less than a year later, the place got busted by the IRS in what turned out to be a multi-million dollar fraud case. Everyone who had ever had their taxes done by Tompkins Square Tax Saver was audited, and that included me.

The audit took place at my apartment in West Chelsea, where I sat at a folding table in the middle of my living room with a rather frumpy, no-nonsense middle-aged woman who methodically went over every scrap of receipt I could scrounge. She asked questions, punched numbers into her calculator, and wrote in her ledger. She was halfway through my records when she suddenly stopped and cocked her head toward the kitchen. "What's that noise?" she asked.

"Mice," I told her.

I'd usually shoot at the mice with an air-powered pellet gun when they were bold enough to scurry through my kitchen in the daytime, but I didn't think it was a good idea to pull out a not-legal-to-own-in-NYC pistol and start playing cowboy in front of the IRS agent, so I shrugged and assured her they wouldn't bother us.

The mice rifled through my garbage, while the agent rifled through my receipts, and I made some comment about feeling picked apart from all directions. The agent seemed insulted by the comparison, and so I told her I meant no offense.

She asked a few more questions, did a few more calculations, then had me sign an affidavit, and told me to expect a call from the case’s chief investigator. She believed my participation in the whole mess was innocent and didn't think I'd face any fines, but there was a good chance I'd be called to testify when the case against the German went to trial. I would probably owe some taxes, too, and she'd let me know how much when she finished sorting everything out.

I wound up owing about two thousand dollars, which felt like a fortune, but thankfully didn't get called to testify. And, needless to say, I was a little skittish about finding a new accountant. But the guy I found next, I've been using ever since.

His office is in One Penn Plaza, so high up that my ears pop during the elevator ride. I convinced Deborah to use him, too, and we had back-to-back appointments yesterday. I went first, while she waited in the small reception area.

The accountant's desk faces floor-to-ceiling windows with a sprawling view of lower Manhattan, the Hudson River, and the eastern edge of New Jersey. The Statue of Liberty wades in the distance, looking like a souvenir shop replica of herself. The windows are covered in glare-reducing plastic shades that tinge the office green.

"Is that your lady with you?" he asked, as I took a seat.

"Yeah."

"Very pretty," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"You're a lucky guy."

I nodded.

"Young though."

"What's that?"

"A little young, don't you think?"

"She's 36," I said.

"You're shittin' me."

"No."

"What's she do to look so young?" he wondered.

"Clean livin',"

"Clean living? Pfft. She's living with you, isn't she?"

His office is cluttered with books and files. It sits on top of a collection of papers, each page curled at the corners. On his desk is a stapler from the seventies that looks big enough to staple a dictionary shut. He'd just finished eating lunch at his desk and was drying off a steel fork with a napkin as I pulled out my W-2s and 1099s. He cleared off some space on his desktop, and I laid it all out.

Last year, I got a big, fat tax return, and I was hoping for the same this year. But as he wrote down my answers with a mechanical pencil into a ledger of green pages, I could tell it didn't look good.

"Am I screwed?" I asked.

"Well," he said, looking at the numbers in his ledger, "You're not getting any money back, if that's what you mean."

"Yeah," I said. "That's what I meant.”