No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

GO TO THE SOURCE

Never underestimate the value of face-to-face contact. Here's a short story that perfectly illustrates this theme.

You know by experience that dealing with bureaucracies of all kinds can drive you nuts. Particularly when it comes to government at all levels. The petty tyrants we have to bow to, to realize their power. I've had various audits by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including by agents who couldn't really speak English. And the fake respect for the taxpayer is so transparent as to be ludicrous. One auditor questioned a check I had written for the Stanford Court, a hotel in San Francisco, where I had stayed on a business trip that I claimed as a tax deduction. She disallowed the expense because “Traffic tickets are not a deductible expense.” She thought the word court meant a court of law. I've learned that for audits, it's best not to represent yourself. Let your accountant do it. It takes emotion out of the equation. It will not help you if you lose it in front of the IRS.

In my apartment building there are several residents with disabilities. We really are not a politically connected building, and the city removed a handicap space we'd had for some time. I called several politicians to see about getting it restored, with absolutely no results. I was bounced around to a number of other people, and the bureaucratic game went on with no success. I've never had much juice on the political front. Mostly because, unlike most of my ...