Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Life Is Taxing


May 15, 2013

                                                                 Internal Revenue Service
                                                                 300 N. Los Angeles St
                                                                 Los Angeles, CA 90012


Mr. Bennett,

We are writing to address some problems with your 2012 Federal Tax Return.

You have listed your occupation as “heavy metal.” This is not a profession that we are aware of. For the last 15 years, you have listed your occupation as “journalist.” We realize that people can and do change professions from time to time, but again—“heavy metal” is not one that the IRS recognizes. As a side note, it is unclear to us how one transitions from “journalism” to “heavy metal,” but perhaps this is none of our business. In fact, please forget we brought it up. We fear that even mentioning this will prompt you to write another long and convoluted series of letters to this office. That is the last thing we want.

Once again, you have listed “Albert Mudrian” as a dependent on your tax return. As we have been pointing out since 2005, Mr. Mudrian is not a member of your household. Nor is he, as far as we can tell, a relative. In fact, it appears that Mr. Mudrian works for a company—Red Flag Media—that employs you on a 1099 basis. We understand that you may feel that Mr. Mudrian relies upon you in a professional capacity, but that does not qualify him as a dependent on your Federal Tax Return. We realize, of course, that your home state of California may have different rules about this. But we represent the Federal Government, Mr. Bennett. We have been over this before.

We have also noticed some items listed under miscellaneous expenses that will require further documentation. They are as follows:

  1. “The bar” / $1,037.00
  2. “The titty bar” / “$744 + tips so maybe more like 1.5K”
  3. “Phone calls to Fenriz” / “$51.32 - make Albert pay.”
  4. “iTunes ripped me off” “$9.89 / [expletive deleted]”
  5. “The Internet” / $609.00
  6. “Amoeba” / $3,076.45
  7. “F—king Slayer” / $66.66
  8. “Burgers or whatever” / $312.55
  9. “AT&T are a bunch of c—ts, I hate them” / $876.13
  10. “Still owe Scott Carlson 20 bucks for that Witchgrave LP” // $20.00
  11. “Russell Brand rear-ended me + emotional distress / $50,000
  12. “Ammo” // $155.00

As per the many volumes of previous correspondence you have sent us, we realize that you do not recognize the Internal Revenue Services as a legitimate government entity. However, your beliefs have no bearing on your responsibility, as a U.S. citizen, to pay your Federal income taxes and provide us with a detailed description of the expenses you wish to declare. You have 30 days from the date of this letter to provide us with the necessary and correct information before penalties will be incurred. Please do not send us any additional correspondence regarding this matter. Also, we will remind you that mailing pornography to government offices is a federal crime. You may not have included a return address, but we are positive that you sent us those back issues of Honcho. We recognized your handwriting on the expletive-laced note.

We implore you, Mr. Bennett: Please do not make this process any more difficult than it has to be. Frankly, we find corresponding with you to be exhausting.

Thank you,



Frank Parnell
Internal Revenue Service
Los Angeles Office




This bullshit originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of Decibel magazine.