irs
i think the irs has really succeeded in remaking itself as the kinder gentler irs. long ago i used to get letters from the irs like this: we caught you cheating on your taxes. you owe us $25. pay it. now. we have many ways to get our money. we'll take your stuff. we'll get it from your family. we'll take their stuff. we'll get it from your neighbors. we're not kidding. we are the irs. sheehs. we got a letter this year from the irs politely informing us they noticed a discrepancy between their records and our filing for 2004. the taxes on the discrepancy would be about a quarter million dollars(!). apparently, there's a rare edge case where your employer gives you a w-2 and your broker gives the irs a 1099-b. which gets the attention of the irs. cause they think we sold an enormous quantity of stock (which we did) for an enormous profit (which we didn't) and didn't pay any taxes on it (which we did).