All columns © Laura Resnick

 Pirates, Rapists, and Thieves

No, the title doesn’t refer to publishers. It refers to an entity of pure and undiluted evil. A powerful, slavering giant that preys upon the strong as well as the weak, the bold as well as the meek. A complex organization of such devious amorality and vicious tenacity that Lucifer himself cringes when he gets mail from them...

I refer, of course, to the Internal Revenue Service.

I, for one, regularly receive threatening letters from the IRS promising to destroy my life, burn my Bible, and kill my dog because I have neglected to file a particular piece of paperwork or make a particular payment. These letters are always erroneous. In every single instance.

Over the years, this tedious pattern has had a disastrous effect on my mind, driving me to alarming levels of crazed frustration, not to mention instilling in me a very unbecoming thirst for revenge... a thirst which (as I shall now reveal) has recently driven me to new depths of pathos.

Having overpaid my federal taxes for a previous year, I instructed my accountant to tell the IRS to credit the money to the following year rather than to send me a refund. Well, comes the end of the following year, and my accountant notes that I’m overpaid again. So I instruct her to ask for my overpayment back this year rather than continue in this manner indefinitely. She does so. However, the IRS doesn’t issue me the refund. Instead, they mail me a one-sentence letter: “Our records indicated a credit you claimed has already been refunded.”

This is the IRS’s sole explanation—accompanied by a complete lack of evidence of any kind whatsoever—for not paying me my federal tax refund.

On those numerous occasions when the IRS accuses me of not having paid monies which I have, in fact, paid, they have never once—not once!—said, “But if you tell us you’ve already paid it, we’ll take your word for it and forget the whole thing.” Noooooo. I have to send multiple photocopies of the cancelled checks, accompanied by letters defending myself. During more than a decade of dunning me for payments already made and paperwork already filed, the IRS has never once suggested that I could resolve the difference of opinion by simply saying, “My records indicate that the payment you’re claiming has already been made.”

The IRS, however, clearly expects their word to be enough.

Consequently, I am determined to persist —which isn’t easy. The IRS’s terse letter denying me my refund is unsigned. Not even a relevant department is named or identified, never mind an actual human being whom I can query. The return address identifies the sender only as the Internal Revenue Service. (Isn’t it amusing how their letters never even have a street address? As if a really determined person with bladed weapons and a bullwhip couldn’t find them anyhow.)

Since I assume that any query sent to so general address as “The Internal Revenue Service, Cincinnati, Ohio” will immediately be eaten by a shredding machine, I phone the 1-800 number also listed in the letterhead. It is an automated response system which gives me a choice of five different problems which I can, by pressing the appropriate numbers on my touch-tone phone, hear addressed by additional automated recordings. None of the problems listed relates even superficially to mine.

Next, at a friend’s suggestion, I look up the IRS in the local phone book. I try several different numbers listed there until I finally reach a machine which promises that, if I wait long enough and am persistent enough and pray hard enough, an actual human being will eventually come on the line. And only twenty-five minutes later... it happens! (So who says the age of miracles is dead?)

The person with a pulse asks me to repeat the information that I have already typed into my phone’s touch-tone pad: social security number, tax year in question, whether or not I am a fugitive from the law, etc. Then she puts me on hold while she transfers me. Fifteen minutes later, a man answers the phone. He asks me for the information that I have already typed into my phone’s touch-tone pad and given to the woman who put me on hold. Then he puts me on hold—to access my records.

When he finally comes back on the line, with all the relevant information at his fingertips, he seems obsessed with one fact: I’m single. No matter what I try to tell him about the money the IRS has refused to refund me, he seems convinced that the really salient and relevant feature of my case is that I’m single with no exemptions besides myself. How this is relevant is never quite clear, but it definitely absorbs him much more than the fact that I’m demanding a refund which the IRS refuses to issue.

In any event, he soon resolves my dilemma to his satisfaction. The computer records, he advises me in the tone of voice which I imagine Yahweh used to give the Ten Commandments to Moses, indicate that the IRS previously issued me a refund. End of query. Problem solved. All plot threads neatly tied.

Except that I am the antagonist who will not die.

I now make the mistake of addressing this difference of opinion (in the absence of anything resembling, oh, a cancelled check) by quoting from my tax returns. This immediately leads us back again to the question of my being single.

“Yes! I’m single! Just as single as I was five minutes ago, and five minutes before that! I was every bit as single last year as I am this year! Completely! Consistently! And from the way I’m screeching like a tree hyrax right now, you’re probably not even surprised I’m single! So can we move on now?”

We move on. I quote again from my tax returns, too. My quotations are meant to draw his attention to the fact that I am overpaid for this year (see line 65) because I asked for my overpayment from last year (line 67) to be forwarded as a credit this year (line 58). Thus my request for a refund this year (line 66a).

This proves to be a useless effort, because the taxman now explains that he has no means of accessing my tax returns or of verifying my line-by-line quotations from same. All he can verify is that the IRS has already paid me the money I claim they owe me; he knows this much is true because their computer says so.

“I know your *%&^!#*@ computer says so!” I reply. “I’ve got your damn computer-generated letter saying so! But my records show that you owe me a refund, and you have failed to provide a cancelled check proving your claim that you’ve already refunded the money!”

He double-checks his facts. “No, the computer says that we’ve already paid you.”

I beg to speak to someone who can access my tax records and see that I’m telling the truth. No such person exists in the IRS. I beg to be allowed to mail in photocopies of my tax returns highlighting the relevant details and accompanied by an explanatory letter. I am told that there is no IRS employee qualified to receive this material from me.

As I persist in my questioning, the IRS agent  finally, reluctantly, sulkily admits that there is something in the IRS called the Refund Inquiry office, and their job is to look into such matters. I insist that my claim be investigated.

He puts me on hold. He returns, verifies that I’m still single (“YES, I’m still single! No one has married me while we’ve been on the phone!”), and then advises me that I will be notified some thirty days hence about the progress being made by the Refund Inquiry investigators.

I ask if I can speak with them. No, of course not. I might as well ask for a direct line to the Pope.

I ask if there’s a quality control or consumer affairs division in the IRS, someone to whom I can complain about all this. He laughs gaily at this naive suggestion and hangs up.

Thirty days go by. I hear nothing. Forty days go by. Still nothing. After more than six weeks have passed with no word about my refund inquiry, I gird my loins and phone the IRS again.

After twenty minutes on hold, I get a person with a pulse. After listening to me explain my problem, his first question (of course) is whether or not I’m married. (Still single.) He puts me on hold. When we finally speak again, I learn that he can find no record that I ever requested a refund, that the IRS refused to pay it, that I protested, or that my protest has been forwarded to Refund Inquiries.

MWHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

The taxman offers to transfer me to someone who can help, and he puts me back on hold. I am subjected to the IRS’s taste in music for the next half hour. (Did you ever watch Angel on TV? The music which the IRS plays to me over and over and over seems to be the same music that a sadistic pedophile vampire played over and over and over while brutally torturing Angel in one episode. Mere coincidence? Maybe.)

The next person who speaks with me is (eureka!) able to find evidence that the Refunds Inquiry department has actually heard of me and is searching for a cancelled check. They still haven’t found it after six weeks of searching, and they have no intention of setting a deadline or finite period for this ongoing search. I am now given another number to phone. This one is not toll free, and I find it intolerable that taxpayers must pay to track down their refunds.

I phone the number. I get (surprise, surprise) a recording. The recording advises me to call the number which advised me to call this number. I leave a message demanding assistance. No one ever phones me back.

Weeks go by. Months go by. Fueled by exasperated rage, I eventually phone what is described to me as a Problem Resolution number at the IRS. No one is there. The answering system explains that they’re all on federal holiday... even though it’s not a federal holiday (it is, in fact, three full days after a federal holiday).

I phone yet another IRS number I have acquired in my quest to resolve this matter. A rude, fast-talking, and hard-to-understand woman there says that all my paperwork has been lost, all this time has been wasted, and I must start all over again. The process, which I was assured months ago would only take 30 days, has evidently gotten more complex; I am now told it will take 6-8 more weeks, if everything goes well.

I ask to speak to a supervisor; I’m told that no such person exists. The rude woman explains that she’s sending me a form which will commence a trace to discover why my request was “kicked out of the system.” I don’t care why I’ve been “kicked out,” I just want my refund. She’s particularly hard to understand because she’s talking to someone else in her office at the same time that she’s talking to me, and I keep responding when she (it turns out) is not speaking to me; however, she’s not at all shy about telling me to shut up.

Her office, she also informs me, has no function other than to send me the form I must fill out. A local IRS office will be responsible for dealing with my problem. I ask if she knows their phone number, perchance? No. Can she get it for me? No. Does she know who might have it? No. Is there anyone I can speak to at the IRS who can actually help me? No.

Your tax dollars at work.

Six more weeks pass. I awake in a cold sweat one night, convinced that the IRS has again “lost” my paperwork, and that many more months will pass before anyone tells me this. So I write yet another strongly-worded letter to them. I also write to my Congressman and both of my US Senators. My Congressman, in turn, contacts something called the Taxpayers Advocate Office. I am, by now, so consumed with a blood-boiling wrath at the IRS that the man who calls me from the Taxpayers Advocate Office clearly thinks I’m crazy as a bedbug when we speak. (He’s right.) He promises to investigate the matter on my behalf. My Senators send me paperwork that I must sign if I want them to investigate for me, too.

Meanwhile, my father informs me that the IRS, for reasons best known to themselves, have unexpectedly refunded money to my parents which their accountant had specifically instructed the IRS not to refund, to instead apply to the following year’s tax burden.

A terrible thought suddenly occurs to me.

I brave the looming menace of my storage unit and plunder its murky depths in search of my financial records. I am dusty and teary-eyed by the time I find last year's bank records, which I packed away months earlier. I sit down with a pile of bank statements and deposit slips, and I begin reading.

I find it before long: Eighteen months earlier, I had, in fact, received and deposited the federal tax refund that I've now spent six months requesting from the IRS.

Upon receiving the unrequested refund, I evidently assumed that I remembered wrong and had not, after all, told my accountant to have it forwarded as a credit to the following year. She, however, had indeed done so, and—not knowing that they had ignored her instructions and sent me a check—she assumed the credit was applied to the following year. Which was how I, having no memory of a small deposit made a year earlier, came to believe I was indeed owed a refund, and that my tax returns made this irrefutable.

Yes, it is deeply embarrassing. Writing to my Congressman and my Senators isn’t so bad, but telling the Taxpayers Advocate Office to forget about my case is awkward, given how furious I was when we talked. As for the IRS... No, of course I don’t apologize to them. I send a letter withdrawing my claim, and I say that none of this would have happened had they (a) followed the instructions on my tax forms in the first place, or (b) provided a cancelled check at any time during the (yes!) six months I have been regularly requesting one, by phone and in writing.

So, sure, I’m an idiot. I don’t feel bad about not remembering receiving the check—I receive a lot of checks, after all, and I don’t remember most of them, which is why I keep written records. However, I certainly feel like a fool for not examining those records before spending so many long hours in conflict with the IRS. I regret that I let my overwhelming contempt for their long-established incompetence lead me into such a huge waste of time and energy; had I considered for even one moment that (for once) they might not be the ones in error, I might have thought to check my bank records months earlier—and I’d have saved myself a world of aggravation and wasted effort.

Above all, though, I feel more helpless than ever in the face of these pirates, rapists, and thieves. After more than six months of refusing to pay me the refund which my CPA-signed tax returns indicate that I am owed, the IRS has yet to produce a single piece of evidence proving they don’t owe it to me. They have never set a date by which they will stop searching for evidence which they can’t find for a payment which they evidently cannot prove they’ve made. They have never returned a single phone call or responded to a single letter from me about this matter. They have “lost” all my paperwork, and they have “accidentally” disconnected my phone calls more than once. I have been advised every step of the way that I have no recourse whatsoever if the IRS won’t issue a refund.

So lie back, close your eyes, and think of Uncle Sam.

Then grab a bullwhip and meet me out back. I’m developing a plan to track down the physical location of the IRS...

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Amazonia

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

A guy walks into a large retail bookstore, picks out a new release, and takes it to the check-out line. The store manager, however, takes him aside and says, “Hey, don’t buy that book here! I know a guy selling this title second-hand out in the alley, and he gives me a cut of every sale I send his way. So buy from him instead!”

This is exactly what’s been going on at Amazon since November 2000. That was when Amazon installed the infamous “blue boxes” on every individual book page; these are links that urge customers to “click here!” in order to buy the exact same title second-hand, or to offer their own used copy for sale.

Now, let’s get one thing straight from the start: I am not opposed to used bookstores.

A certain percentage of any book’s retail readers aren’t going to like it or want to keep their copy of it. Also, sometimes they’re moving to Nepal, or making new shelf space in a studio apartment, or getting rid of books some well-meaning relative erroneously believed they’d like, or inheriting a collection they don’t want. And so on and so forth.

There are any number of things such a person might do with an unwanted book. They could sell it in a garage sale or on eBay. They could give it away to a friend. They could sell it or trade it in at a used bookstore. They could donate it to the library (which, incidentally, holds its own used book sales when it doesn’t want books anymore). Any of these options are fine with me.

In each of these events, the book has already earned my royalty through its sale in the retail market; it’s never going to be returned to the publisher as a book that didn't sell. No matter how long the publisher holds back my royalties as reserves against returns, sooner or later, it does have to credit me for that sale. And that royalty earned, legally and contractually, is my sole financial right with regard to the sale of that individual copy of that book.

So do I want the unhappy retail purchaser to throw that unwanted book into a garbage can? No. Indeed, the thought appalls  me. Do I want a law passed to force him to keep the book even though he doesn’t want it? No. Since the physical copy of the book is legally his personal property, not my intellectual property, such legislation would change the legal conditions surrounding a great many other kinds of personal property besides books.

In case there’s any confusion about the legality of selling used books, lawyer and novelist Ronn Kaiser gave me this lucid explanation about it: “Copyright prevents anyone from reproducing and distributing a work without permission because that work is the intellectual property of the creator. A writer licenses a publisher to reproduce his/her intellectual property for manufacture, distribution, and sale in exchange for royalties... The physical book produced under license is a product. A product can be sold and resold. Under the contract with the publisher the author only gets a royalty on the original sale because that’s all the publisher gets paid for itself.”

Let’s review: The physical book produced under license is a product, and a product can be sold and resold.

Having explained the extant law, Ronn also added that he strongly believes it ought to be changed so that “resale by a commercial enterprise would be made illegal within two years of the original publication date, unless a royalty is paid.”

This proviso, of course, touches on the key issue that makes many authors object to the used book trade: Under current law, we don’t earn royalties from it. Whether or not you believe we should be entitled to royalties from used book sales, we aren’t so entitled under current law. Yet even under current law, I nonetheless favor seeing unwanted-by-owner copies of my books in the used marketplace as opposed to seeing them in the trash can (or collecting dust in some cellar) because of what we, as authors, do get out of the used marketplace: new readers.

I’m realistic enough to know that not every single reader who buys my book retail will always keep it. However, I’m also confident enough (some would say arrogant, and others have called me worse than that) to believe that if someone acquires my book used—whether in a used bookstore, or on eBay, or as an already-read gift, or at a garage sale—there’s a good chance they’ll like it so much they’ll want to read more of my books... and will even be moved to go buy my new release at retail prices rather than prowl the used market in the hope that they can eventually find it there. A copy of my book in the second-hand market is, in essence, a consumer sample which has already earned my royalty in its retail sale and which is now circulating in an attempt to attract another reader (perhaps one who doesn’t want to experiment with unfamiliar writers at retail prices) to my work on a long-term basis.

Now, of course, there’s a potential inversion formula here. If so many copies of my books were getting into the used market, and even re-circulating so often there, that they were genuinely having an adverse effect on my income, that would clearly be a big problem. However, I would have to regard my own writing, rather than the used book trade, as the first issue which I must examine in that crisis: Why do so many readers find my books expendable, and what must I do to make my books the kind that most readers keep?

However, I do agree that changing times and changing technology may well turn a system which, in my opinion, has worked all right for decades into a system which, as many writers believe, needs to be changed or modified by law. When several hundred or several thousand copies of a new book are offered second-hand via online sellers before a book has even reached my local retail stores... there's definitely a problem with the system. A problem that could destroy many writers financially, since we make our living on a small percentage of each new book sale and make no income from used book sales.

(To clarify, since most readers don't know how the system works: If you by a paperback novel for $7.99, the bulk of the money, approximately $7.35, goes to the publisher, the distributor, and the bookseller. Of the roughly 64 cents left over that's due to the author, her agency gets 15%. So the author's actual earnings on that book sale are about 54 cents (less income taxes, if course). Moreover, the author is the last person in the foodchain to receive her share of the money, and she waits at least 6-24 months to receive it, after you have purchased the book. This is due to the way accounting is structured in publishing. Mega-successful writers with seven-figure incomes are the ones whom the media cover; but, in fact, most novelists earn very modestly, and only a percentage of professional writers can rely on writing for their full-time income. And, as already explained, the author makes no money at all from the sale of a used or second-hand book.)

Anyhow, while I am not opposed to the used book trade in principle, I am hotly opposed to a retail bookseller like Amazon urging readers not to buy my books retail! I am so opposed to it that I wrote any number of nasty letters to Amazon about it and long ago removed all Amazon links from my website. I also urge my friends and readers to use other online book retailers, such as Books-A-Million, rather than Amazon.

And I am far from being the only writer to do these things. Indeed, a substantial portion of the publishing community has been up in arms about the practice of (my mind boggles every time I think of it) a major retail bookseller actively urging customers to buy books (including brand new releases!) second-hand rather than retail. Hundreds of writers have protested individually. The Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers wrote to Amazon in protest; the media attention surrounding this salvo was particularly satisfying, given that Amazon had previously claimed that much of the publishing community (wait for it!) approved and supported the blue-box policy. We all knew this was self-serving rubbish, but it was good to see the truth getting out after this early attempt by Amazon to confound the issue with slick propaganda.

Media attention around this destructive bookseller practice and the publishing community’s responses to it included not only major print journals, but also online reports and television coverage. A particularly interesting online article even challenged Amazon’s insistence that the blue boxes are a service to customers. The author of this business article postulated that Amazon was effectively destroying its own brand name identity by urging its customers to buy books from a bewildering variety of unregulated suppliers via the blue boxes.

However, despite the negative publicity surrounding the blue boxes, Amazon has continued using them. Numbers-crunching suggests that the practice creates a profitable income for the company (based on the fees Amazon charges for this service), with relatively little investment of time, effort, or staff. In addition, Amazon may actually believe the old saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Finally, internet culture is a strange and continually-evolving thing, and Amazon may well feel that the establishment of yet another hyperlink system to its overall entity is more important than the objections the system has raised.

As for me, I generally avoid Amazon. I find it too horrifying to open an Amazon page for my brand new release... only to find this retailer urging customers not to buy it retail.

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