A short series of daredevil tricks and stunts to fight the IRS; use at your own risk.
Emery (One Freeman’s War, 2015) explains his struggles with—and victories against—the Internal Revenue Service.
In this brief book, Emery’s subject is a perennially contentious one: taxes—specifically, how to avoid paying them. Emery wastes no time in his brief book blaming the IRS for about as much “chaos, pain, destruction, suffering and even death” as any other institution in the world. He even likens it to Satan; indeed, he says they’re inextricably linked. As such, Emery applies a veneer of religiosity, including Scripture, to his tips and tricks about dodging and countering the IRS. But what he’s mainly concerned with is teaching his readers to use the government’s own intricate rules and procedures against it. He advises sending a “filing statement” in lieu of a 1040 tax form, for instance, or establishing a paper trail of your “good faith” intention to obey the law, thereby depriving the government of the ability to prove your bad faith: “I exempted myself from being drawn into court and because I have never received any information to the contrary from the IRS about my averments…they stand as fact and I am free! What’s for lunch?” In quick, engaging chapters, he briefly sketches arcana such as the Code of Federal Regulations— “a virtual playground for truth seekers and trouble makers like me”—and the “acceptance of value” loopholes in connection with the Uniform Commercial Code. Throughout his book, he stresses the “fun” of the subject, but he also stresses that he himself is not an attorney and that nothing in his book should be construed as legal advice. Wise advice, because he’s absolutely correct about the IRS’ ability to ruin lives and its short temper when provoked. As he points out, jails are full of people who’ve advocated schemes like the ones he’s describing. As a hypothetical, though, his argument makes lively speculative reading.
A short series of daredevil tricks and stunts to fight the IRS; use at your own risk.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-44351-4
Page Count: 72
Publisher: PCF World Mission LLC
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of...
Known for his self-deprecating wit and the harmlessly eccentric antics of his family, Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000, etc.) can also pinch until it hurts in this collection of autobiographical vignettes.
Once again we are treated to the author’s gift for deadpan humor, especially when poking fun at his family and neighbors. He draws some of the material from his youth, like the portrait of the folks across the street who didn’t own a TV (“What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone?” he wonders) and went trick-or-treating on November first. Or the story of the time his mother, after a fifth snow day in a row, chucked all the Sedaris kids out the door and locked it. To get back in, the older kids devised a plan wherein the youngest, affection-hungry Tiffany, would be hit by a car: “Her eagerness to please is absolute and naked. When we ask her to lie in the middle of the street, her only question was ‘Where?’ ” Some of the tales cover more recent incidents, such as his sister’s retrieval of a turkey from a garbage can; when Sedaris beards her about it, she responds, “Listen to you. If it didn’t come from Balducci’s, if it wasn’t raised on polenta and wild baby acorns, it has to be dangerous.” But family members’ square-peggedness is more than a little pathetic, and the fact that they are fodder for his stories doesn’t sit easy with Sedaris. He’ll quip, “Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorrow—it’s not like you're going to do anything with it,” as guilt pokes its nose around the corner of the page. Then he’ll hitch himself up and lacerate them once again, but not without affection even when the sting is strongest. Besides, his favorite target is himself: his obsessive-compulsiveness and his own membership in this company of oddfellows.
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of both.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-14346-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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