There’s a fantastic analysis at Salon about
Stack’s nemesis, Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which removed that protection from certain “technical personnel” — specifically singling out those who provided services as an “engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker.”
Henchman:
As part of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, that moratorium was abandoned for high-tech consultants, who then faced the same employee/independent contractor test as everyone else. High-tech consultants were targeted because there was strong evidence that they were abusing the moratorium as a tax shelter and because it fit a need to offset a separate unrelated tax change in the Act that would result in a revenue reduction.
Was Joe Stack abusing the moratorium as a tax shelter? Or was the amendment to the tax code just a naked government grab for cash from the hardworking pillars of the high-tech economy?
Yep. The Teabag Terror is here. Angry at everything and confused by the dissonance of their world-view. He was apparently an Ayn Rand-libertarian who tried to get away with a tax-dodge; when caught, he didn’t sell his airplane to pay off the IRS. Instead, he turned it into a weapon and aimed it at a public building out of spite in an attempt to kill total strangers.
It’s a story I could have written a year ago. I said this would happen.
Kinda makes me wanna shoot Glenn Beck in the head…with a hypo-grenade of Haloperidol.
