By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try
Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly
inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is
done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of
what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three
or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and
wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and
doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich
buddies.
To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which
was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single
dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any
income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed.
But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I
attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to
due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping
of justice.
So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following
the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again.
But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to
mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to
handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to
get professional help; a very big mistake.
When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had
taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very
similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents
of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross
knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the
middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was
representing himself and not me.
This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that
have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions
were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife
had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.
I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and
how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when
they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come
in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem;
they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a
joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck
up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.