Maine Revenue Services Can Kiss My Fat Hairy Ass

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Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
-- The Tax Man by The Beatles

I got a letter from Maine Revenue Services today. They were after me in Canada, but unable to touch me there. But today's letter explains they'll be able to get California to collect for them.

There's only one problem: I don't owe them a dime. Oh, there was a time that I did, but the last of it was paid off with the profit from the sale of our house in Owl's Head when we moved to Nova Scotia in the Fall of 2003.

They're claiming that I owe them forty grand for a year that I didn't live there; we didn't move to Maine until the following year. In 2000, we lived in California and Newfoundland. We didn't move to Maine until January 18th, 2001. And yes, that's the exact date.

I panicked at first; it was very difficult for me to sit through the team meeting at work this afternoon. But then I decided it was time to open a can of Whoop-Ass on them:

I faxed a letter to an attorney I know back in Rockland. I'll take it to the God Damn Supreme Court if I have to.

I've been working steadily to pay off all of my real tax debts. In December I paid off Canada Revenue for the year 2004. Now I have an installment agreement with California for 1999 and 2000. Everyone who I really do owe money to is going to get it.

I should point out that I've never been accused of tax evasion. A simple failure to pay what is owed is not a crime. Lying on a tax return would be, but I have - so far - stayed out of trouble by being scrupulously honest with all of my filings.

I'm not real clear how they got the idea that I lived in Maine in 2000. But there was a time I was getting registered letters from various tax authorities damn near every day. After a while it got to be more than I could handle, so for a while, after I signed for them, I'd just toss them in the trash without even opening them.

Maine Revenue seemed to take this as some kind of admission of guilt. They started telephoning me. I explained to them a whole bunch of times that I didn't live there that year, and that I didn't owe them - in my exact words - even the time of day because I didn't live there, and that if they hoped to collect, that they were going to have to prove I lived there.

Eventually my follow-me number got disconnected, and they weren't able to get my direct line. So there were no more phone calls. But letters! So many letters! I've been getting letters ominously marked FINAL NOTICE for a couple years now.

I don't know how the Hell they found me here in California. Their letter came to my PO box, which I have only had for a month. I have only given that address to my credit card company. No doubt this is the result of some kind of counter-terrorism data mining.

I knew that nothing I could say would stop them. But I also knew that if a party in a dispute is represented by an attorney, then the other party is allowed to talk only to my attorney, and not to me - I learned that from an attorney who represented me in a dispute with a consulting client once.

It was after hours in Maine by the time I decided to get a lawyer, but I knew who to get. There is a very good lawyer in Rockland that my wife and I consulted about bankrupcy back in 2003. He wasn't a bankrupcy attorney himself, so he referred us to someone else, but he was obviously a very caring, very intelligent and expert guy.

I was really impressed with him for pointing out that, despite all our debts, our first responsibility was to each other, and not our creditors.

I'll be traveling all day tomorrow - I'm going to visit Bonita in Halifax - so Thursday will be the earliest I can speak to him.

But I gave him the name and number of the lady at the Compliance Department who sent me the letter, as well as my Social Security Number so she can access my records when he contacts her.

Read this essay online or reprint it at:
http://www.vancouverdiaries.com/maine-revenue-services.html

This is a chapter from The Vancouver Diaries:
http://www.vancouverdiaries.com