I keep a four-panel cartoon pinned in my office with Snoopy sitting atop his doghouse at his typewriter telling the IRS that he’d like to cancel his subscription and to please remove his name from their mailing list.
While funny, merely asking to be removed from the IRS’s mailing list won’t work to get the IRS off your back. But, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration,1 77,868 living taxpayers found the ultimate loophole: They found their way onto the IRS’s list of dead people. Well, that’s one way to get the IRS off your back.
This year, I’m celebrating the 25th anniversary of my first tax season in this industry. After 25 years, if I manage to find my way onto the IRS’s dead people list, I might just quietly retire to a log cabin on a trout stream as far away from a cell tower as I can get. If that proves too cold for this Southern California native, then a deserted tropical island is my fallback plan.
I wonder if helping clients “accidentally” get on the IRS’s dead list could be a new revenue stream for my practice. It can’t be too much different than advising clients on how to become California nonresidents, right?