Scientology’s Guide to the IRSGot a problem...

Scientology’s Guide to the IRS

Got a problem with the Internal Revenue Service? The Church of Scientology wants to help.

With a near 20-year history of disputes with federal tax authorities to guide it, the Los Angeles-based church has put out its latest guide, called “How to Protect Your Rights as a Taxpayer.”

The 20-page booklet takes individuals through the basics, from getting help in preparing a return to taking the IRS to court. It is also filled with tips, such as suggestions that taxpayers tape record IRS interviews, request IRS files through the Freedom of Information Act and get any IRS tax advice in writing.

Still, the handbook is not exactly impartial, and that’s pretty clear from the outset. The introduction’s initial sentence reads: “The individual American taxpayer has for many years been under assault by an insensitive, over-zealous and out-of-control Internal Revenue Service.”

The Church of Scientology believes that with all its soul, too, particularly since the government revoked one of its churches’ tax-exempt status in 1964 and imposed a $1.3-million tax bill on it after audits of its 1970-72 returns.

Lafayette, We Are Here Again

In an effort to quench its thirst for attention, Mendocino Beverage Co. embarked on a self-proclaimed “mock mercy mission” in February, shipping gallons of its California mineral water to parched Paris. The firm’s message? If there’s no Perrier, let them drink Mendocino.

Perrier, the former king of the bottled-water shelf, was yanked from markets worldwide Feb. 14 when bottles of the French refresher were found to be contaminated with benzene.

“Expressing fears that the French populace may face widespread water shortages, Georg Moller-Racke, president of Mendocino Beverage Co., launched a mercy mission dubbed Thirst Aid to France,” gushed a release from the company.

Mendocino officials, who call their product California’s only naturally carbonated bottled mineral water, are negotiating to export the bubbly beverage to France. The results, so far, have not been good, but their enthusiasm is not dampened. After all, they’ve just begun to get their feet wet.

Red, Green, Made All Over

The H. J. Heinz Co. was thumping a “green” tub last week.

On Monday, the food processing giant unveiled a new plan to allow full recycling of its squeezable plastic ketchup bottles. In a fat packet mass-mailed to news outlets, Heinz enclosed a sample of one of the “57 varieties” of uses for the recycled material: an 8-by-6-inch swatch of carpet with a label proclaiming, “This pristine white carpet used to be a Heinz Ketchup bottle.”

Then on Thursday came Heinz’s dramatic pledge not to market any tuna caught in ways that are harmful to dolphins. The “dolphin-safe” announcement produced another flurry of paper: fact sheets, backgrounders, graphics, profiles of company executives--nearly all of it bearing the environmentally correct notation, “Printed on Recycled Paper.”