Authors Follow Up
In the last couple years in my attempts to rebuild my income earning abilities, new bureaucratic frustrations should be noted since this is a story that will never be over. Aside from those life realities, I have tried to reconnect myself to things that bring me personal happiness. I recently returned to California, to Santa Barbara. I am experiencing off grid living - no electricity, no running water, no TV - in a 150-square-foot cabin with a sleeping loft, a small lake and the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets not more than a quarter mile from a 3000-foot mountain Hang Glider launch. I started flying again with old and new friends. There was no Hang Gliding during the Federal lawsuits. I helped out at the training hill carrying gliders and watching people learn to fly. Seeing the good side of people doing their very best is an unexplainable pleasure and inspirational experience.. I am enjoying soaring new fly sites, sharing with new pilots, learning from the old ones and enjoying everyone in the sport. The flying is as good as it gets helping to center me, ground me and bring back a true feeling of self that all pilots feel when they fly.
I have tried to start new ventures on old and new ideas with new people. I have had time to work again on this story, and my next one, Grasshopper Praying Mantis. But what I thought was worthy of noting was that since my life exposure was so high, the IRS decided to audit me for 2 years in a row in what seemed to all involved as excessive, unreasonable, and an experience I refuse to write a manuscript on. Having had bank accounts from Pittsburg, New York, San Diego, Seattle, Hong Kong to China and having my passport stamped across the globe including Pakistan, to money being wired into Brazil monthly for two years for prototyping and opportunity-building, to crossing the US-Mexico Tijuana border - the busiest border crossing in the world - for several months several times a week as I built my house in Mexico, all cash and carry, pay-as-you-go, no debt no blueprints, no building department – just a line drawn on the ground and some workers, I think I hit every red flag in the new Homeland Security system, as all of it is linked together now in one giant computer program looking for profiles. Was that an audit or a new form of Homeland Security inquiry into what is this person doing? How much money did they spend on auditing me? Fifty thousand dollars? A hundred thousand dollars? More ? That stuff is expensive.
After a year long process my CPA, his accounting firm and I prevailed over the IRS in their demands from $60,000 down to $2300. The auditor refused to acknowledge tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills documented by checks and itemized bills from the law firms, including the settlement amount in this story, as legitimate deductions. The IRS appeals court disagreed with her baseless and arbitrary interpretation of the rules. But again, I had to pay to defend myself. You can imagine for yourself the cost, time, frustration and all that was involved. This is why I wrote this story. Believe it-Its believable. It would make more sense to Audit the Federal Reserve and then -- get rid of it -- and make them pay all the money back. http://www.auditthefed.com ------ HR 459. S202
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