Tax collector recounts 13 years at the IRS

In November 1990, Richard Yancey, a 28-year-old writer struggling to hold down a steady job, found himself interviewing for what is likely one of the few government positions managers warn young, talented candidates against accepting.

"You will hate this job," the chief of the Internal Revenue Service's Tampa, Fla., branch warned Yancey during his final interview for a tax collector position. "You'll want to put your fist through a wall. You'll think you're having a nervous breakdown. Some people do have nervous breakdowns, by the way. I've been to many a hospital ward. Do you think I'm making this up?"

Despite this and other cautionary tales, Yancey took the position because the salary and benefits seemed attractive. The work also looked interesting. "I like that it's not your typical nine-to-five desk job," Yancey told the branch chief.

The job did not let him down. Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS, a recently published memoir of Yancey's career recovering money from delinquent taxpayers, reads more like a work of fiction than an analysis of the management and culture at what he terms "the most feared, hated and maligned agency in the federal government."

But in telling the stories of attending training courses with an eccentric womanizer, confronting a combative tax-evading dentist and seizing a Corvette from an insurance salesman, Yancey manages to work in interesting details about the IRS' inner workings. Though he altered the names and appearances of his colleagues at the Florida office, and reconstructed dialogue based on his memory of events, the scenes he depicts and characters he portrays in his memoir are real.

The work environment Yancey describes epitomizes the "results-oriented" culture the Bush administration now advocates. After successfully completing a year of training at the GS-7 level and rising to a GS-9 revenue officer position, Yancey entered an intense competition with three colleagues for one available promotion to the GS-11 level.

Based on regular and rigorous performance reviews, managers decided to grant Yancey the promotion because of his track record of closing cases and seizing property from delinquent taxpayers.

"Those who quickly rolled over their inventories [of delinquent accounts] were promoted over those who anguished over each closure, as if their decision meant life or death for the taxpayer," Yancey explains.

During a six-month performance evaluation, a manager lectured Yancey on the importance of closing cases quickly and seizing property at every opportunity. "You don't beat a dead horse," the manager counseled, holding up a case Yancey held onto too long. "You must close cases," the manager reminded Yancey. "That's what impresses management, or are you not interested in impressing management?"

The manager also lectured Yancey on the importance of seizures. "The second thing that impresses management is seizures. To rise in this organization you must conduct seizures . . . at some point, some near and immediate point in the future, you must conduct a seizure. It doesn't matter what size [of property] you seize."

Managers warned Yancey to lock his desk drawers to protect his papers from co-workers who might steal key files, hurting his chances for a promotion. While Yancey felt vulnerable, he notes that the IRS had a difficult time removing managers. Those who fell out of favor typically received demotions to work in the field, or transfers to alternative offices. Lawsuits alleging discrimination or retaliations posed the greatest threat to management, Yancey writes.

In describing his constant quest to produce results, or in his words "feed the beast," Yancey recounts a number of moral dilemmas he faced. His memoir highlights his struggle with the emotionally difficult aspect of his job: the realization that by seizing property, he could wipe out a family's life savings, or put a struggling entrepreneur out of business.

Yancey is quick to point out that his experiences at the IRS are not necessarily typical. "This is the story of one employee among the thousands who serve."

The memoir also describes a culture that changed during the 13 years Yancey spent with the IRS. In 1998, Congress passed the Revenue Restructuring Act, he explains. This law established strict rules on harassment and intimidation of taxpayers, he writes in an epilogue, rendering many of the scenes in the memoir "impossible to repeat."

Interestingly, at a time when the administration is encouraging federal agencies to focus on results, the Revenue Restructuring Act has forced the IRS to back off on pushing revenue officers to conduct seizures. "There won't be the unrelenting pressure to collect dollars, to conduct seizures and to close cases. There won't be the 'cowboy' attitude of the old days, so seductive because it was so effortless," Yancey writes.

The number of revenue officers also is declining, making the dreaded tax collector a "dying breed," Yancey explains. In the early 1990s, the IRS employed more than 9,000 revenue officers. Now there are fewer than 3,500. Lawmakers have proposed outsourcing some collections work, Yancey notes.

Despite the pressures of his job and the moral quandaries he faced, Yancey says he values his time at the IRS. "I style this [memoir] as a confession, but it is no apology," he writes. "I leave proud to have served . . . the [IRS] brought me to a place where I could see what truly matters in life. That is the ultimate irony of my experience."