potatohead

Yeah, totally. Amber screens, and older keyboards. YES!!

Re: Writing at 40. You know I did a lot of that too.

For a while, my primary writing machine was an Atari 800xl. I ran it in 40, using some *writer program that I really liked. What I found notable between the two is one tends to change language based on where the line breaks are. This sentence might appear quite substantial on a 40 character screen, looking like a paragraph. On the 80, it's closer to what we have here, though still vertically larger.

I'm somewhat sensitive to the vertical area used, generally willing to author longer paragraphs at higher character densities, shorter ones and simpler words at lower character densities.

I think that one is classic. All the signs are there.

Well, no. Err... maybe. Most of that era was boring beige boxes. SGI made some killer workstations, based off the shared memory graphics technology in the O2 workstation. SGI 320 & 540 At the time, they were very impressive computers, highly distinctive at the time. I'm sure there were some other machines too. Those were ones I sold and serviced. Pro quality video in and out, real time texture mapping of large models, etc... They even used an ARC BIOS, like their IRIX machines did.

Taxes are a necessary thing.

Re: Survive. Yeah, I had to do that. Just got done catching up many years. Lucky for me, I had the records, though they were not in a quick 'n easy form. Had a total pig of a time getting it sorted.

So, here's what will happen when you deny the IRS. For a time, they will ignore you. What they do is wait for the dollar amount owed to become significant enough to assign an agent to. Most people get one of the agents you talk with at the 800 number. If you are self-employed or small business, they will assign a field agent. This agent will communicate with you nicely for a time, then they will send you a note saying they are going to start talking to other people, at which point you can expect a levy within a month or so. That levy will attach to whatever they can find, and it caps income at some small amount, no matter what one makes or does not make. Could be as low as $800 / month, could be higher. It's not a percentage either. Make 5K / month? Still get that $800.

If you ignore them past that, the levy works until you are paid up. You might not ever talk to anybody, and if you don't want to, and can live on that amount, great. Your problem will resolve for the most part, but it will be extremely painful. If a person structures things to avoid that and or continues to not file returns, etc... that's criminal, and they can come and just take stuff. Actually, even when it's not criminal, they can come and just take stuff. A marshall typically will just open your home, and the stuff goes to auction, cars, you name it. The IRS has the power to remedy this scenario.

The technicality mentioned in the video is RARE, and very high risk. The risk is financial and jail, potentially a lot of jail, and a lot of money.

On the other hand, if one has had to survive, guess what? The IRS actually understands that. How they respond really comes down to what individual people do. In my case, I ignored them until I got the serious letter, at which point I called the field agent. We spoke for about an hour. They had me for a quarter million dollars! Now, I owed no where near that amount, but I did owe something, and if they file the returns, that amount is a lot, plus interest, plus penalties, plus fees. If you file them, that amount is considerably less, and if you had hardship, the penalties and fees can be waived, leaving the principle and interest only.

What I did was just put it all out there and ask for help. I got it. Had to do some accounting, and deal with a number of years, ugly years. In the end, I owed about one percent what their records would indicate. Easy cheezy. From there, it was a voluntary payment plan, easy to do by just stuffing some amount into the withholding form, or uncollectable status, meaning future refunds could just pay off the old taxes, or serious payment cash or credit, or they sell your shit and throw you in the pokey for a while. It's all up to you.

We made a working plan to get the returns in, and I did it, checking in, or asking for time when things were ugly, and it all got sorted out. It just wasn't hard.

Taxes are necessary. Fact of life. The fact that we have shit wages more than we don't, race to the bottom style is a policy problem, and the political discussion to be avoided here. It's not a tax problem, which is the position the IRS takes, and rightfully so. Regardless of how the policy works for us or does not, the taxes power the machinery of the society we live in, sustaining the nation we live in. Love it or leave it, that's just reality. It's not immoral, not a crime, not anything but basic civics. Where things go bad, we've got civics to remedy, and we've got the courts. The IRS responds to both, only there to collect what the people have deemed a worthy collection. There is no horror back story, no nefarious plot, nothing.

The IRS actually operates under some nice disclosure provisions. They actually publish EVERYTHING and are duty bound to answer all questions and deal with people reasonably. There are special divisions designed to respond to crappy / criminal / dishonest service, and they are there to insure that the IRS only does what it is supposed to do.

90 percent of the garbage people read online about the horrors of the IRS is either complete garbage, or realistic for people intending to do, or who have done criminal things. For the rest of us, it's bunk. One can pick up the phone and deal with this stuff rationally with few worries.

In the mid '00's I got hit hard with health care things. Sucked me dry, no home, no nothing, and I had to just deal. Things are ok now, which is good, because I could actually deal with those bad years. The experience was as reasonable as I made it to be. And that's the core message. The IRS is just exactly as shitty as any of us chooses to be.

So I get surviving. Had to do it, and no worries. There are means, methods and processes in place to help people recover and get back on track. My advice is to USE THEM. Do what you need to, but plan on going back to address things, and take the time you have to get your records, calculate your deductions, get accounting help, whatever. In my case, the money was very well spent. Had I not done that, I could be on a very fixed income right now, paying for easily 10 years or more. Doing that netted me a basic amount, easy to pay, no worries at all.

Get the emotion out of this stuff, sort out what you did, and then deal reasonably, communicating why you had to do what you did, and when that is done, there are good answers in nearly every case. Don't read the crap you see out there. Get basic accounting and maybe basic legal, depending, and then just work through it. They are not chartered to leave you with nothing. That's against the law. Chances are, if you actually do have to survive, your status will reflect that, leaving you with a very managable tax assessment. If you are not? Well, then it's going to mean paying, but not so much that it would force you to have to survive, unless it's criminal, then all bets are off.

Some of the statements here border on criminal. Reconsider those, framing it in terms of basic hardship, etc... and things will go much better for you. Count on it.

It's getting there. If it's not retro now, just give it a few more years.

FWIW, I say no. My kids say yes though. Then again, they think Atari is ancient.