(UPDATE 2) Alleged Suicide Pilot Blames IRS in Manifesto

~ The manifesto has been pulled from embeddedart.com. You can see the note in its entirety at the Smoking Gun.

~ UPDATE, 5:11 pm: Statement from the IRS

By now you’ve probably heard about the plane crashing into a building in Austin, Texas that housed around 200 IRS employees. So far reports are that the IRS is still trying to account for all the employees (see statement below). We left a message with the IRS that hasn’t been returned yet.

Everything is “preliminary” of course but apparently the alleged pilot, Joseph Stack set his own house on fire, stole the plane and flew it into the building:

Stack was upset about the Tax Reform Act of 1986. So much so, he wrote a 3,200 word suicide note. that can be read in its entirety at embeddedart.com.

Here’s an excerpt:

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer… and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.

For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.

(a) IN GENERAL – Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

(d) EXCEPTION. – This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. – The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

Note:
• “another person” is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.

• “taxpayer” is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.

• “individual”, “employee”, or “worker” is you.

Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.

The note goes on to rail against CPAs:

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.

It appears that Stack was being audited by the IRS and that things had take a turn for the worse, “To make matters worse, [my accountant] 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).”

His ominous sign off leaves little doubt about his own demise, “Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

IRS Statement:

We can confirm that a small plane hit a building in Austin, Texas that includes IRS offices. This is the Echelon 1 Building, which houses about 190 IRS employees. We are still in the process of accounting for all of our employees. We will be providing updates as more information becomes available.