This is a letter that I wrote to Susan Leon, Chief of the Examination Branch of the IRS in Fresno (courtesy-copying nineteen of her colleagues throughout the state).1 The letter is irreverent, but I also poke fun at myself. I guess one could say that it’s facetious and silly. (Or maybe it’s bizarre, wacko, “rooted in mental illness”) My writing the letter was fun and mostly a joke. But the attachments thereto are/were no laughing matter.2, 3 I have not attached the 912 pages comprising those thirty-four documents (turning the letter into a tome, probably the largest of my many mailings to the IRS [and FTB]). However, most of said documents can be found at their corresponding dates within the Timeline around which Berberian Mystery Theatre revolves.
1 What instigated my writing the letter is a notification that I received from the IRS-Fresno titled: “We changed your name.” It references correspondence that I allegedly sent to them, asking that they change my name. I haven’t a clue what correspondence they were referring to. In fact, “we changed your name” sounds so ludicrous that it precipitated my writing the attached letter. I am positive that I wouldn’t have asked the IRS to change my status from married to unmarried as the notification indicates (dropping my erstwhile wife’s name from their future legal/financial correspondence pertaining to me). How can I be so sure? Because I didn’t get divorced until two years later.-And “I didn’t see it coming,” as they say. Additionally, I wouldn’t have asked for such a change in anticipation of filing my returns individually and separate from my wife. How can I be so sure? Because I had neither filed any tax returns nor paid any income taxes since 1986 and I told them so over the previous nine to ten years. And I didn’t intend to file returns or pay taxes at any time in the foreseeable future. And I told them that as well. And this is what my IRS (and FTB) “mad” mailings were mostly about. Not that I had failed and refused to file returns and pay taxes, but why the IRS (and FTB) failed and refused to be anything but “paper tigers” in response thereto. Berberian Mystery Theatre as a whole knows the reason. But, for the most part, Richard Berberian does not. I mean, crazy people have to file income tax returns and pay income taxes too, don’t they? 2 The behavior of the Internal Revenue Service (and the Franchise Tax Board) with regard to me indicates that they know that I am a non-filer of tax returns and a non-payer of income taxes. That’s a given. It is also a no-brainer that their behavior indicates that they have never had any serious intentions of doing anything about it. The question remains as to why. 3 For the most part, this letter playfully references my November 8, 1994 visit to my local IRS-Modesto. (See the Timeline at that date) Here it is a year hence and that encounter is still front and center on my brain. As indicated in the present letter to the IRS, I am still flabbergasted and stupefied by what was said and what eventually happened as a result. Ergo, the present letter addressing that encounter with tongue firmly planted in cheek.