"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
...

Andrew Joseph Stack III, 53 was definitely one sick puppy crashing his
plane into an IRS office in Austin, TX.

Wasn't it Ben Franklin that once said something about death and taxes?

Mr Stack didn't feel he was obligated to pay his taxes.

Hell of a way to take out his frustrations.

Lew

Apparently the lunatic worked in a field that has a legitimate beef with the
tax code. Many years ago I worked for a guy who took a very loose attitude
towards his business taxes, workers comp payments etc., they slapped him
down repeatedly and finally took control of his payroll to make sure all
payments were made properly. Fortunately he didn't have a pilot's license.

http://www.salon.com/news/joe_stack/..._tax_problem_2

Joe Stack wasn't wrong about the tax code
Even the sponsor of the 1986 amendment that punished thousands of software
programmers realized it was a mistake

That 1986 change in the tax code that Joe Stack, the suicidal pilot who
crashed his plane into an IRS building on Thursday, cited as a primal
grievance in his online manifesto? According to David Cay Johnston, writing
in the New York Times, Stack's beef was legit: the law "made it extremely
difficult for information technology professionals to work as self-employed
individuals, forcing most to become company employees."

And the original reason for the law, well, one can understand why some
people would find it a little crazy-making.

The law was sponsored by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New
York, as a favor to I.B.M., which wanted a $60 million tax break on its
overseas business.

Under budget rules in effect at the time, any tax breaks had to be paid for
with new revenues. By requiring software engineers to be employees, a
Congressional report estimated, income and payroll taxes would rise by $60
million a year because employees had few opportunities to cheat on their
taxes.

Within a year, however, Moynihan changed his mind, and unsuccessfully sought
for the law's repeal.

The Times inexplicably does not link back to Johnston's much longer article
exposing the law in 1998. In that piece, Johnston extensively documented
the devastating effect the law had on software programmers who wanted to set
up their own shop.

As for the accusation, cited yesterday in my post, that the law was
originally designed to crack down on illegal tax shelters? Harvey Shulman, a
Washington lawyer who Johnston describes as specializing in representing
"companies that supported the desires of software engineers to be
independent contractors," sent an e-mail to Salon contesting the rationale.

To the contrary, there was no such evidence (and there are Department of
Treasury documents, obtained in 1987-88 under FOIA, which show the true
genesis of this law); indeed a Congressionally-mandated study of Section
1706 resulted in an unbiased government report of about 100 pages (1988)
which, along with other studies, found that tax compliance by these
self-employed workers was actually higher than most other types of
workers -- and that the enactment of Section 1706 probably did not generate
any additional tax revenue and may, in fact, have led to revenue losses (due
to the favorable tax treatment accorded many employee benefits which was not
accorded to self-employed workers).

It doesn't need belaboring that 99 percent of the software engineers
negatively affected by Moynihan's amendment to the tax code did not end up
as tax protesting kamikaze pilots. But the final kicker to Johnston's update
of the story nevertheless provokes a chill.

On Wednesday, the day before Andrew Joseph Stack III left his suicide note
and crashed the plane into the building in Austin, the Obama administration
proposed a widespread crackdown on all types of independent contractors in
an effort to raise $7 billion in tax revenue over 10 years.