not a step

Mobsters miss the greatest crime of all

Tony Soprano has nothing on Charles Rossotti.

Though Rossotti's boys lack the muscle of Tony's "family," they have managed to carve out a nice little protection racket without running afoul of the law. Additionally, while your average Mob family might pull down millions, or at most tens of millions, Rossotti's gang took home $8.2 billion of the $1.8 trillion it shook down last year.

And, while Soprano has to run garbage collection routes to skim his little piece off the top, Rossotti does almost nothing for his. As my "silent" business partner last year, Rossotti took over one third of my total income, providing little of tangible value in return.

Known on the street as "The Commissioner," Rossotti uses slightly different methods than your traditional gangster to get his cut. Instead of threatening to break my legs or to send me to "sleep with the fishes," he uses official-looking letters that put the dire consequences facing me--should I choose not to pay--in stark black and white.

Also, rather than just shaking me down for cash, these shadowy figures have devised a torturous method full of incomprehensible paperwork to determine their cut. Should I resist these villainous demands, or even take a few extra days to pay up, Rossotti will send his goons to my door threatening horrible penalties ranging from imprisonment to something called a "lien."

This collection of low-rent thugs clad in ill-fitting $200 suits has been dubbed the "Internal Revenue Service" or "IRS" by the newspaper reporters brave enough to follow the case. Though they're not physically imposing-in fact, some would say their stature would not frighten a blind, two-legged kitten-they do have a strong presence.

My hopes of the cops stepping in and stopping this fairly organized "family" from doing it again this year were dashed when my accountant told me the whole scam was legal. Apparently this "Internal Revenue Service" isn't an offshoot of an olive oil importing business or a waste management company; it's actually a government agency sanctioned by the American people.

Since it seems highly unlikely that "we the people" would turn over such a huge sum of money to a regulatory body with zero accountability, I decided to see if I could dig up anything about this "IRS" using the Internet. Though it was difficult to locate any specific information, the 123,094 Web sites that came up on my Yahoo! Search did provide some details.

It seems that nearly everyone in the country, with the possible exception of large corporations and certain professional baseball players, pay money to the IRS. Once it arrives, this huge sum more or less disappears.

As far as I can tell, while these "tax" dollars do fund a number of reasonably decent programs, the vast majority of them end up not being spent for the benefit of the person sending them in. My contribution to Rossotti and the boys might buy a road in Omaha or subsidize a farmer in Kansas, but it won't be treating me to dinner anytime soon.

This seems grossly unfair and not particularly different from a mobster demanding a cut of a businessman's profits because he's operating on family turf. The main difference lies in the fact that one type of stealing remains legal, and one gets you sent to San Quentin.

Given the choice, I'd prefer the Mafia's method of extortion over the IRS'. At least with the Mob it's a bunch of tough guys taking your money, not a group of wannabe accountants who couldn't get real jobs.

It's the difference between getting beaten up by the school bully or the school librarian. The beating hurts either way, but it's a lot more dignified to get your butt whupped by a six-foot tough guy in a leather jacket than by a 63-year-old woman in a muumuu.

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