Revenge is a Dish Best Served By the IRS

When the weather outside is frightful and my job prospects are hardly delightful my fancy turns to the one thing that can cheer me up in these trying times: sweet, sweet revenge. I have been unemployed three out of the last four winters, so it is inevitable that I will eventually turn to doing, or at least attempting to do in those who have wronged me over the last year…specifically the last fiscal year. Vengeance is not something that I take lightly. I am not prone to the petty or pedestrian in any other facet of my life so the methods I chose to employ while seeking revenge are no different. I go for the throat, or perhaps more appropriately, the wallet. My coup de gras of choice this year? Reporting a former employer to the IRS for their on going tax fraud. Normally I would not care about tax fraud, but this tax fraud involves my money, and I certainly care a great deal about that.

Now I will not give the name of the employer in question mainly because I do not wish to be accused to slander. I am much more inventive than slander…not to mention that my accusations are actually true. I will say this about the employer in question though: it was, and is, a creep lab in a converted frat house in the middle of a residential area surrounded by dorms housing students at one of Boston’s performing arts colleges; or should I say conservatories. Imagine the dramatics if budding Broadway starlets knew that the house next door was receiving potentially cancerous bloodcicles 4 days a week! I may not be able to prevent the students of this fine institution from being in close proximity from blood borne pathogens, but I can prevent a massive outbreak of the vapors.

Unfortunately this is not about the vapors. This is about the impending April 15^th tax deadline or more importantly the February 15^th deadline that the IRS imposes on employers to present their employees with W-2 forms. As I have mentioned, I have spent thee out of the last four winters unemployed so going to the mail box in mid January to find my W-2 form is like experiencing Christmas all over again. This year there will be no Christmas however for I shall not be receiving the coveted W-2. Not only has my former employer fucked me over, but they also ruined Christmas, and that is just plain unforgivable.

When one thinks of a medical facility they picture (or at least I picture) crisp white walls, the smell of bleach in the air, and accountants, lots and lots of accountants. The lab I worked for had none of these things, except the aroma of bleach, but that was only in the summer when the actual lab portion of the building was infested with maggots. There was nary an accountant in sight, which was not really surprising given how I was often paid my bi-monthly pittance; with a personal, unaddressed check that was some \times made out only to my first name. That should have been a clue that I would be in for a ruined fiscal Christmas. To make matters even more bizarre, I was paid with a check drawn from an offshore account. Again, this is not something one might expect from a place that touts itself as a medical facility. I should also mention that I was paid under the table for nearly a year, which was not only great while it lasted, but even better as a tool for revenge.

Somewhere around April things changed at the creepy lab though. Apparently the elderly doctor’s who ran the joint had a moment of lucidity and realized that the might be spending their pickled years behind bars for not withholding employees taxes. This is a rose colored explanation of course, the real reason that so called taxes were now being taken from our checks was that they were having financial trouble and withholding funds was the perfect way to give us salary cuts without having us walk out the door with antique centrifuges and incubators. The doctors fancied themselves the most intelligent and witty pair of medical anomalies that ever walked the earth, and therefore didn’t suspect that we underlings would ever notice that they were taking taxes from us with out getting both or social security number or address, and as I mentioned above, occasionally our last names.

So vengeance is mine! At least I hope. Naturally this is less about actual vengeance (although I do indeed love revenge) and more about my getting the money that was pretty much stolen from me. Given that I hover right around the poverty line I could expect to get all my money back in the form of a much needed tax return. I have more or less already prepared myself to not get the money that is owned to me any time soon, so I will just have to settle for knowing that I have caused a greater amount of financial turmoil for the people who did this to me. If only I could pay my rent with smugness.