The IRS

Dad’s first bad encounter with the IRS was back in 50s.  After he got out of the Air Force, he went back to Memphis.  I don’t know the exact details, but for a year or two he paid the mortgage for their house.  He decided that since he paid the mortgage that he could deduct the mortgage interest from his own Federal income taxes.  The IRS disagreed and subsequently audited him for the next couple of years.  Then I guess he was square with them for the next couple of decades but he always resented those audits. 

Then comes the year 1978.  He was working as a house painter for new houses built by Perry Homes in Katy off of Mason Road.  He didn’t set aside money for taxes and the work that winter was light.  When the time came to file his taxes he didn’t have enough to pay the bill -- he didn’t file that year or 1979 or  1980. By 1981 he made an effort to get things straight, but with penalties and interest the IRS wanted something like $80,000 for those three years.  He was never going to have that kind of money and didn’t have the patience and negotiating skills to get a better deal.  He entered the underground economy and stayed there the rest of his life.

I don’t recommend this lifestyle to anyone.  In 1983 the IRS tracked him down and seized a checking account to the tune of a few hundred dollars.  I was still living with him. I was a college student at University of Houston and working for the Alief Kmart and dutifully filing my taxes every year.  We were living in a rent house in Alief when the IRS came to our door we packed up and moved out that week. We moved into the mobile home where he lived until he died. 

He filed for Social Security at the age of 65 and amazing enough they enrolled him. He got something like $550 a month. He sure was happy to get that money.  There were cost-of-living increases over the years, so he was getting $767 a month when he died.  He was able to supplement his income with handyman type jobs over the years, but the past couple of years had been pretty hard because of his age and failing health.

Sometime in the mid to late 80s he came up with a plan to buy a bar in Alief called The Gin Mill. It was his favorite hang out at the time and the owner had died or was in failing health.  As an unofficial member of the underground economy, there was no way he could buy a bar, but he had a plan.  He wanted to buy the bar in my name and have an accountant do the taxes along with my Kmart income.  All government paperwork including the Texas Liquor License would be in my name as well. 

I was freaking not happy about this plan for so many reasons. My dealings with the IRS were clean and I wanted to keep them that way.  The liabilities involved with owning a bar were pretty scary.  And the idea of a drunk running a bar was bad on so many levels.  I decided that if push came to shove, I would have to tell him “no.”  I wasn’t looking forward to telling him that I wouldn't help him with this crazy plan.  There are things you will do to help a family member, but this was too much for me. In the end he couldn’t come up with enough money to buy the bar and I was so glad to be off the hook.