Procrastinators Race to Beat Tax Filing Deadline : IRS: Some go to prison, others go to court, but most people, despite their complaints, dutifully pay up before time runs out.
Monday was the day federal taxes came due, and so what more appropriate place for Loretta Emmel to be than in federal court in downtown Los Angeles, fighting the tax man.
Emmel, a grandmotherly 69-year-old, dressed for her day in court in a pink ruffled blouse and plaid pantsuit, has been battling the Internal Revenue Service for nine years. She complains that the agency has seized her house, her stocks and bonds, even the life insurance her husband left when he died in October.
“I figure they took well over $300,000,” she said. “I paid my taxes. But they want more.”
The IRS, of course, has another version, but officials of the service said Monday they preferred not to comment on the still evolving case. As part of her long-running campaign to win back her property and her money, Emmel has filed a civil rights suit against the U.S. government, seeking $5.5 million in damages. On Monday, U.S. Magistrate John Kronenberg told her to return with an amended complaint in 30 days.
While Emmel waged her court battle, scores of procrastinators across the city scurried to mail off their 1040s and W-2s before a midnight filing deadline. Weary accountants listened to the rat-a-tat-tat of their adding machines for one more exhausting day. And post office workers, many on duty until midnight, braced for the last-minute flood of returns.
“It’s exciting,” said David Mazer, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service’s Los Angeles district. “It’s crowds and people and they’re rushing in and you go out into the lobby and people are filling out their forms.
“You’ve got people who just love to come down and see the hoopla.”
And then there are the people like Loretta Emmel . . . and Paul Bell.
“It’s a joke,” the noted tax protester said Monday. He was speaking by telephone. From Terminal Island.
“This is April Fool’s Day,” said Bell, who was convicted of failing to pay his taxes in a widely publicized case and is currently serving a 14-year federal sentence.
Bell still believes that paying taxes is a violation of the constitutional right to privacy.
“The big federal racket,” he declared. “That’s what it is.”
Outside prison Monday, others had taken up Bell’s cause. John Vernon of Van Nuys, who is running for a seat in the state Assembly on the Libertarian Party ticket, was preparing for a Monday night protest at a post office.
“I resent it,” he said of taxes. “I resent it because I see my money being . . . (thrown) down a rat hole. And I see the money either being wasted or being used for purposes with which I totally disagree.”
Although he and many in his political party argue that most--if not all--taxes should be abolished, Vernon said he faithfully pays his taxes. He and other local libertarians have learned well, they said, from the experience of their state field coordinator, Jim Lewis, who opposed paying taxes on constitutional grounds and spent nine months in prison for it.
“He’s sort of like a folk hero for us, for standing up for his principles,” said Ted Brown of Pasadena, the former state party chairman who is now running for insurance commissioner. “But most of us would not want to go through that. . . . I want to change the law, but I’m not brave enough to violate it in the meantime.”
For her part, Emmel denies violating the law, saying she is only trying to hold the IRS to it. She arrived in court Monday accompanied by Richard Forest, who heads an Orange County group called the American Information Network. The network, Forest said, spends its time investigating the IRS, which both he and Emmel said fails to follow its own regulations.
Emmel has no kind words for the agency: “They’re liars, they’re cheaters. They’re everything that God didn’t mean for people to be.”
IRS officials, meanwhile, would say that they use methods of “enforced collection”--such as seizing houses and bank accounts--only when taxpayers fail to respond to four written notices. As for Emmel’s remarks about agents, the IRS officials said they are used to being the object of the taxpayers’ ire.
“Let’s face it,” said agency spokesman Rob Giannangeli. “The tax man has not been popular since the days of Judas. You recognize that when you come to work for the Internal Revenue Service.”
