*Note: This was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Do you have a personal finance story that you’d like to share? Sign up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network to start publishing your own finance articles.
As an adult I’ve never had much dealing with the IRS, Oregon Department of Revenue, or even the Alaska Permanent Fund Office. I file my taxes in February each year, and receive a check, now direct deposit, a few weeks later. However, as a child, I remember the time my parents were audited.
The audit summons came in the mail, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. My father is a Minister, so the most common salutation is Reverend, or in less formal company, Pastor. As a Minister, my dad was, and is, technically “self” employed according to the IRS. This was a number of years ago, before TurboTax, before H&R Block was a household name. I don’t know which forms he filed, but he filed them all on time, with a month to spare. I do know that he itemized his deductions at that time, listing our residence as the “manse.”
A week or so after sweating, searching for receipts, pay records, Church financial records going back seven years, and general panic from my parents (as well as me and my siblings …. how does one explain the word “Audit” to a four year old?), my dad loaded a small dumpster’s worth of paper and ink into his car and drove to the closest branch office of the IRS, to be audited. A few hours later, the phone rang. This was before cellular was a word to describe technology, of course. My mom answered, playing with the coil wire. Then, she did something that shocked us kids: She started laughing.
The story? My dad had done all of our taxes correctly, and was even owed a refund, exactly what he said we’d be getting from the get go. The trigger of the audit? The manse. The IRS employee, bless her heart, was Catholic, and wasn’t familiar with the term, and such audited my parents solely because of the title given to the Church owned house, available for the Pastor’s use. My dad has joked many times since then that perhaps this year he should write “Rectory” instead of “Manse”.
However, since Priests aren’t allowed to marry, this would probably trigger yet another confusion based audit.