Plane Crashes into building in Austin, Texas

[Broomstick]

Well, this is sad.

Assuming he tried to be a family-eliminator, then all sympathy he might deserve evaporates. It's one thing if a man, no matter how misguided, decides that a certain person or persons have set out to get him and the only thing left for him is to take vengeance.

How so? Are you saying that while killing his family is inexcusable it's somehow OK to kill strangers? Or do you want to rephrase that before I tear you a new asshole?

I've had a few fucking frustrating years myself lately, but I'm not taking it out on anyone else.

It's entirely another thing to try and kill one's own loved ones before doing it. That said, the fact that the wife and child got away, the fact that the house was simply torched instead of, say, him shooting them first, or at least tying them up or bludgeoning them unconcious before torching it up, makes me speculate: could he have torched the house so the wife and kid would look like intended victims and get an insurance payout - trying the Ricky Lowman way of exiting, with an added heaping helping of fuck the man?

That's not what went down. According to reports, the wife said he went "ballistic" last night and she fled with her daughter to a hotel. So, presumably, Mr. Asshat was alone in the home when he posted his screed and torched the place. Mother and daughter are now homeless and penniless, but the woman saved herself and child when her husband went nuts.

Was the wife in on it? I haven't a clue. Apparently they hadn't been married long, he wasn't in the habit of discussing his problems with anyone, and he had a LONG history of tax problems. While it's possible the wife was in on it, it's also quite possible she's a victim who didn't know how whacked this guy was.

As for the possibility he loaded down with extra fuel... Well, ever since 9/11 the idea that airplane + a lotta gas + building = bye-bye has been written into the American psyche. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the American terrorism method of choice, in a tragically ironic twist.

I hope to god not - I would like to fly again one day, and if people start crashing airplanes into buildings on a regular basis the government will just outlaw general aviation.

If he, say, had an open ignition source in the cockipt - unlikely for the whole flight, but it wouldn't be that hard to light a zippo and ignite a second seat which he'd already doused with accelerant - before impact, the crash might well have spread other fuel into that ignition source, and then fwoomp. No stopping it from going up at that point.

You're making it much more complicated than it needs to be, but I'll be damned if I explain how to blow up an airplane from inside the cockpit on line. Not that I've ever given it much thought, as I have no desire to start that sort of happy horseshit. No, you don't need a lighter. That said, airplanes are not so flammable that an open flame in the cockpit is Instant Death, either - before the 1970's a lot of small airplanes came with built in ashtrays, just like the cars did. Draw your own conclusions. (Now, cupholders are an option)

It was suggested that his accountant (Bill Ross) didn't bother to report his wife's piano lessons to the IRS, and that the accountant left him swinging.

This is the section in particular.

I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone.

Sounds like he's alleging that the accountant knew about the unreported income and, for whatever reason, deliberately shivved his client in the back. It also sounds like he had no idea that his wife's piano lesson income was worth remotely that much, or that it was even taxable, owing to the small-dollar cash nature of the transactions, and he had no part of it.

COMPLETE AND UTTER HORSESHIT.

Go back and read what's been said about the cut-off dollar amount beyond which you HAVE TO report. It's under $1,000. You're talking about an amount twelve times that! Use your head - this is a man with a history of not paying taxes, not filing taxes, and having problems with the IRS. He claims he's been an IC since the 1980's - that's thirty fucking years! Do you seriously claim he can plead ignorance?

If this was the first year his wife was giving private lessons it is conceivable she didn't know - but Mr. Asshat certainly should have known. Me, I think he was hoping to hide the income and got audited. Shivved the client in the back? If I was an accountant and found out during an audit my client failed to mention thousands of dollars of income I'd be tempted to let him hang, too.

On top of that - when you have someone else prepare your taxes YOU are supposed to review the work. Because accountants are human and sometimes make mistakes. When you sign on the line for that tax return YOU are responsible for the accuracy of it. Mr Asshat should have fucking noticed that there was $12,000+ income missing from the total.

Part of what I did this week was confirm that my clients and I had complete and accurate records of everything and the 1099 forms were filled out properly. When my accountant finishes my taxes we'll have our annual half hour phone call to go over all the numbers and make sure everything is complete, accurate, and all parties understand what the hell is going on. This part of doing business. It's fucking basic. I figured this out when I was fucking 19 years old and a freshman in college - what the FUCK is this guy's excuse?

If true, that would explain the complete alienation. He felt like he was twisting in the wind with literally nowhere to turn, 100% at the mercy of a sadistic system that would come around every April until judgement day for another turn at a game of "fuck up Joeseph Stack and charge him more money he doesn't have."

Maybe the IRS wouldn't have been so fucking keen to fuck Joseph Stack up the ass if he had filed and paid his taxes! Seriously, I have NO sympathy for this asshat. None. No one likes to pay taxes but adults do it anyway, because it the law, it's what pays for government, and because if you don't the IRS will make you wish you had.

[FSTargetDrone]

Getting back to the crash scene itself, here are some pictures from The Washington Post:





You can just see the remains of the tail above, in the lower-right corner.



That appears to be the impact point, roughly in the center, above. I think I can just make out the tail here again.

















The last one is of the family home. Stack had a busy day, sadly...

Edit:

Just had a thought. It's a good thing his little house-torching didn't spread. Who knows, he might have even killed some of his neighbors.

Screw him.

[Broomstick]

Maximum gross weight is 3,000 pounds.
Empty weight 1600 (roughly - that does vary depending on options selected)
72 gallon fuel capacity (20 more than the Warrior)

Oh, a word about speed - max level speed is around 140 knots or so. However, it's a simple matter to vastly increase that in a dive. If it was at max throttle it could easily exceed 200 knots even in a short, shallow dive. That could significantly increase the force exerted on impact.

Sorry for not "translating" the figures into metric - Piper gives them in English units, and I'm getting tired so if I tried the conversions at this point I'd probably screw them up.

I gotcha:
Maximum gross weight: 1340 kg
Empty weight: 710 kg
Fuel capacity: 272 L
Max level speed: 260 km/h
Broomstick's estimate of the short, shallow dive speed: "could easily exceed 370 km/h"

Thanks.

I found the Vne or "never exceed" airspeed for the Dakota, beyond which there is the real possibility of structural damage. It's 197 knots or about your "370 kph". There's usually a margin of error built into that, such that you should be able to hit 150% of that Vne before the airplane starts to come apart (prior to that you can get deformation, but it shouldn't break before that point). There have been accidents where similar airplanes have reached airspeed sufficient to break up, so given enough altitude such speeds are certainly possible. My gut feeling, based on flying small airplanes and the altitude involved, is that there simply wasn't enough time/distance/power to go fast enough to break up, but as I said, a full power dive builds speed VERY rapidly. If he did do that maneuver then the airplane hit very hard. With such an impact the fuel system could rupture in multiple places, spraying fuel onto hot engine parts. That could certainly start a brisk fire.

[FSTargetDrone]

Looks like the largest pieces to survive are that bit of the tail and the engine which fell (or was pushed) out from the building.

I wonder if any security or other kind of video will pop up. It will be slightly surprising if none does. Perhaps there is some from a traffic camera from that highway which is nearby. Maybe someone on the road had time to grab some video on a cell phone.

[Broomstick]

Waste of a good airplane, if you ask me.

That's not even the entire engine. That's about 1/3 to 1/2 of it. It's missing pretty much all the normal accessories and it looks like the magnetos, hoses, air flow baffles, prop, and a bunch of other stuff is missing. It's also entirely missing the steel anchors that tie it to the firewall - this chunk broke free. There's a big honking pile of steel that normally holds onto this lump that's entirely missing . That's about a half dozen steel rods as thick as your thumb that snapped off the engine block. Bolts probably gave way.

Looks like a good portion of the exhaust system survived... but then, it is designed to withstand high temperatures.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Well, this is sad.

Assuming he tried to be a family-eliminator, then all sympathy he might deserve evaporates. It's one thing if a man, no matter how misguided, decides that a certain person or persons have set out to get him and the only thing left for him is to take vengeance.

How so? Are you saying that while killing his family is inexcusable it's somehow OK to kill strangers? Or do you want to rephrase that before I tear you a new asshole?

Go ahead, my words like it when you twist. Give 'em another, they really enjoy it.

If you'd read what I had wrote, I said it was understandable that he would decide to out and out attack a class of people he decided were responsible for his life swirling the shitter for twenty years before going under. I never it was okay, just understandable, and to some degree sympathetic. The IRS is a juggernaut that makes it's own rules, the common man has no hope when they decide to go and fuck him.

So, I can understand why he would do that, and sympathize with the desperation that led him to that point, and understand the consuming nature of the vengeance-lust that would drive him to kamikazie them instead of, say, eating his own gun or crashing his plane into a field. I never said it was justifiable - in fact I said it was indefensible, but I said I understand it.

On the other hand, if, instead of confining his self-destructive vengeance rage to those he (rightly or wrongly) perceived as being the ones who drove him to that extreme, he went and jeopardized or assaulted the lives of others in the process, that sympathy evaporates; he loses any nobility as being a man driven to one last act of attacking those who ruined him, and becomes your garden variety selfish destructive fuckwit.

Having seen pictures of his home and it being so close to other homes, I'm inclined now to lean towards the latter explaination. I'd been assuming he lived in a rancher somewhere where the worst the fire would have spread to was burning down his fence, but that close to other houses? Fuckwit time.

I've had a few fucking frustrating years myself lately, but I'm not taking it out on anyone else.

Have you been repeatedly and thoroughly soddomized by a government agency, and then soddomized by the one you hired to help you deal with them?

It's entirely another thing to try and kill one's own loved ones before doing it. That said, the fact that the wife and child got away, the fact that the house was simply torched instead of, say, him shooting them first, or at least tying them up or bludgeoning them unconcious before torching it up, makes me speculate: could he have torched the house so the wife and kid would look like intended victims and get an insurance payout - trying the Ricky Lowman way of exiting, with an added heaping helping of fuck the man?

That's not what went down. According to reports, the wife said he went "ballistic" last night and she fled with her daughter to a hotel. So, presumably, Mr. Asshat was alone in the home when he posted his screed and torched the place. Mother and daughter are now homeless and penniless, but the woman saved herself and child when her husband went nuts.

That's not how the earlier report on this thread had led me to believe. That report had insinuated that wife and daughter had been in the house when he torched it and fled the flames. It's a different kettle of fish - but at least, then, it also means that there's zero chance he actually tried to murder them. That'll get him an upgrade to criminally-negligent selfish fuckwit instead of omnicidally destructive selfish fuckwit in my book.

Was the wife in on it? I haven't a clue. Apparently they hadn't been married long, he wasn't in the habit of discussing his problems with anyone, and he had a LONG history of tax problems. While it's possible the wife was in on it, it's also quite possible she's a victim who didn't know how whacked this guy was.

This guy seems to have been of the "suck it up, boy," generation and mentality, owing to how his bandmates never apparently knew about this. This guy is causing a lot of fallout, either way. In that respect, he's acomplished his goals, as he's achieved mainstream recognition of (and debate of) his grievances with the IRS.

As for the possibility he loaded down with extra fuel... Well, ever since 9/11 the idea that airplane + a lotta gas + building = bye-bye has been written into the American psyche. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the American terrorism method of choice, in a tragically ironic twist.

I hope to god not - I would like to fly again one day, and if people start crashing airplanes into buildings on a regular basis the government will just outlaw general aviation.

I agree with you. If that were to happen than Al Queda would have won another victory against American civil liberties with zero additional effort on their part - and be a fucking tragedy. Sadly, it seems all too possible now.

If he, say, had an open ignition source in the cockipt - unlikely for the whole flight, but it wouldn't be that hard to light a zippo and ignite a second seat which he'd already doused with accelerant - before impact, the crash might well have spread other fuel into that ignition source, and then fwoomp. No stopping it from going up at that point.

You're making it much more complicated than it needs to be, but I'll be damned if I explain how to blow up an airplane from inside the cockpit on line. Not that I've ever given it much thought, as I have no desire to start that sort of happy horseshit. No, you don't need a lighter. That said, airplanes are not so flammable that an open flame in the cockpit is Instant Death, either - before the 1970's a lot of small airplanes came with built in ashtrays, just like the cars did. Draw your own conclusions. (Now, cupholders are an option)

Not being an aviator, I can only speculate. My main theory in postulating that was imagining a molotov cocktail writ large - burning seat as the flaming rag, fuel cans in the back of the plane (and fuel tanks) as the glass bottle. I wasn't insinuating that an aeroplane with an open flame aboard was instantly lethal, just that the impact of the crash shattering and smashing those gas cans and the fuel tanks, plus a fully-engulfed seat cover, would constitute an incindiary.

It was suggested that his accountant (Bill Ross) didn't bother to report his wife's piano lessons to the IRS, and that the accountant left him swinging.

This is the section in particular.

I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone.

Sounds like he's alleging that the accountant knew about the unreported income and, for whatever reason, deliberately shivved his client in the back. It also sounds like he had no idea that his wife's piano lesson income was worth remotely that much, or that it was even taxable, owing to the small-dollar cash nature of the transactions, and he had no part of it.

COMPLETE AND UTTER HORSESHIT.

Go back and read what's been said about the cut-off dollar amount beyond which you HAVE TO report. It's under $1,000. You're talking about an amount twelve times that! Use your head - this is a man with a history of not paying taxes, not filing taxes, and having problems with the IRS. He claims he's been an IC since the 1980's - that's thirty fucking years! Do you seriously claim he can plead ignorance?

Please note that I said that he said that his accountant didn't file the taxes on that - but that his accountant did know about it.

To wit, he's stating that he did tell his accountant about the income, and trusted his accountant to handle it appropriately; which he then states that not only did the accountant not do, but that the accountant pointed it out to the IRS and left him swinging in the wind. Frankly, I would like to hear Mr. Ross's side of that, since it is fishy, but as I said - if true, that would be a monumental betrayal of Mr. Stack by Mr. Ross, a professional he hired to ensure things went properly.

If this was the first year his wife was giving private lessons it is conceivable she didn't know - but Mr. Asshat certainly should have known. Me, I think he was hoping to hide the income and got audited. Shivved the client in the back? If I was an accountant and found out during an audit my client failed to mention thousands of dollars of income I'd be tempted to let him hang, too.

Mr. Asshat said that his wife didn't keep him abreast of it. And again, if you will comprehend what I am saying, I am saying that Mr. Stack alleges that his accountant was aware of it and maliciously betrayed him by leaving it out the pointing it out to the IRS.

On top of that - when you have someone else prepare your taxes YOU are supposed to review the work. Because accountants are human and sometimes make mistakes. When you sign on the line for that tax return YOU are responsible for the accuracy of it. Mr Asshat should have fucking noticed that there was $12,000+ income missing from the total.

I think you'll understand if Mr. Stack didn't trust his own tax sheet prowess owing to his 1980s misadventures with attempting to lawyer the tax codes for himself and being soddomized for it. Assuming he fully understood the ramifications, he most likely presumed that Mr. Ross had found some loophole under which he could exclude the income, and legal-jutsu the IRS with when and if they heard about it. He wasn't expecting it to be left dangling from his own balls like a ten-ton weight which Mr. Ross then drew the IRS' attention to.

Part of what I did this week was confirm that my clients and I had complete and accurate records of everything and the 1099 forms were filled out properly. When my accountant finishes my taxes we'll have our annual half hour phone call to go over all the numbers and make sure everything is complete, accurate, and all parties understand what the hell is going on. This part of doing business. It's fucking basic. I figured this out when I was fucking 19 years old and a freshman in college - what the FUCK is this guy's excuse?

We can't exactly ask him, but I would surmise that since he'd already been flamed worse than you're flaming me and him today, by the IRS in the '80s when he tried to be his own tax-code ninja and gotten fucked for his efforts, that he had zero confidence in his own ability. The fact that he didn't realize the IRA was tax-deferred instead of tax-exempt points this out - the guy was a monumental fuck-up when it came to tax matters. That's understandable, some people aren't good at some things. So he hired an accountant, and it got him royally screwed anyway.

If true, that would explain the complete alienation. He felt like he was twisting in the wind with literally nowhere to turn, 100% at the mercy of a sadistic system that would come around every April until judgement day for another turn at a game of "fuck up Joeseph Stack and charge him more money he doesn't have."

Maybe the IRS wouldn't have been so fucking keen to fuck Joseph Stack up the ass if he had filed and paid his taxes! Seriously, I have NO sympathy for this asshat. None. No one likes to pay taxes but adults do it anyway, because it the law, it's what pays for government, and because if you don't the IRS will make you wish you had.

You know, I never once got the impression, from reading his suicide note, that Mr. Stack objected to the concept of or the nessessity of paying taxes. Barring the discovery of future writings wherein he identifies with WACO and other secessionist nuts we'll never know for sure, but that was not what I read in his document.

Rather, what I read in his document was that, in the 80s, he strongly objected to the way certain organizations were escaping their taxes, and attempted to legal-fu his way into using those same methods of tax dodging for himself, in order to draw light to the subject. In light of that, the IRS reamed him and he paid his taxes promptly from then on until he ran into a year with no income, and drew upon the IRA. Through ignorance he failed to report that, and the IRS butt-fucked him again; and yeah, maybe that was a colossal fuck-up, but the IRS isn't interested in justice, it's a malicious entity which writes it's own rules and aggressively goes after anyone it doesn't like with a vigor and freedom that the fucking mafia would envy.

And subsequent to that debacle, he hired a fucking accountant to handle it since he apparently understood (after two royal soddomizations) that he was incompetant to handle his own taxes, but that (again, as he alleges,) his lawyer soddomized him again, and went double-anal on him with the IRS at his next audit.

[Broomstick]

If you'd read what I had wrote, I said it was understandable that he would decide to out and out attack a class of people he decided were responsible for his life swirling the shitter for twenty years before going under. I never it was okay, just understandable, and to some degree sympathetic. The IRS is a juggernaut that makes it's own rules, the common man has no hope when they decide to go and fuck him.

It would help the "common man's" cause if he fucking paid his taxes! I already related that at 19 I screwed up my tax reporting - which problem was settled without tears and without a two decade vendetta. Of course, it helped the matter that I had paid my taxes so obviously I wasn't trying to dodge, I just made a mistake. I have known numerous people who have been audited. It sucks, of course, but there was no multi-year vendetta started by either side. Yes, the IRS is a juggernaut, which is all the more reason NOT to provoke it.

On top of that, while I can, as you put it, understand but not sympathize with someone who brings a gun to an audit and tries to kill that particular representative of the IRS, this is a situation where someone attacked the institution without regard to innocent bystanders - and the majority of the people in that building were NOT IRS employees. He also stated in his screed that he hoped to spark other people to do the same thing - that's more than just a personal vendetta.

I never said it was justifiable - in fact I said it was indefensible, but I said I understand it.

On the other hand, if, instead of confining his self-destructive vengeance rage to those he (rightly or wrongly) perceived as being the ones who drove him to that extreme, he went and jeopardized or assaulted the lives of others in the process, that sympathy evaporates; he loses any nobility as being a man driven to one last act of attacking those who ruined him, and becomes your garden variety selfish destructive fuckwit.

There is no "if" here - he DID jeopardize others, many others, by his actions. By burning his house he jeopardized his neighbors. By setting an office building on fire he put hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more, people at risk of being maimed or killed. Did that fact escape you somehow? There is NOTHING "noble" here

I've had a few fucking frustrating years myself lately, but I'm not taking it out on anyone else.

Have you been repeatedly and thoroughly soddomized by a government agency, and then soddomized by the one you hired to help you deal with them?

No - but then I actually obey the law and pay my fucking taxes. What do you THINK is the reaction of the IRS if they slap you down for fucking around then you turn around and do it again and again? He is, apparently, a repeat-offender tax cheat. He's had business licenses pulled multiple times for failing to fulfill his obligations to report to the IRS.

And, given that he's been trying to cheat the system, I'm inclined to doubt his woeful tale of being stabbed in the back by his accountant. After all, we have only his word - the word of someone who apparently thinks burning down houses and buildings with people in them is somehow OK, as is deliberately crashing airplanes. Is that a trustworthy source of information? An ethical accountant does not disclose the financial details of a client, so I don't expect to hear from Mr. Ross's side of the matter, unless perhaps he releases a statement by way of lawyer.

That's not how the earlier report on this thread had led me to believe.

Let that be a lesson to you to read early reports with some caution. The story invariably changes with more information.

That report had insinuated that wife and daughter had been in the house when he torched it and fled the flames.

Really? Which report? The ones I've actually read only said no one knew if the wife and child were at home. Add a little skepticism to your reading.

It's a different kettle of fish - but at least, then, it also means that there's zero chance he actually tried to murder them.

There's a NON-zero chance he actually tried to murder IRS employees - are they somehow expendable human beings? In fact, as two bodies have been pulled from the burned office buildings, it appears he succeeded and IS a murderer.

That'll get him an upgrade to criminally-negligent selfish fuckwit instead of homnicidally destructive selfish fuckwit in my book.

Where the FUCK do you get "negligent" from? Seriously, dude, where did that come from? He wasn't "negligent", it was not an accident, it was a delibrate! There is no negligence involved. That's why I'm fucking annoyed with you - you're minimizing what happened to the office building (not just the IRS office) IRS employees are human beings, many with family, and they aren't inhuman monsters that deserve to die.

Let me explain this to you:

Pilot forgets to do something important - maintenance, pre-flight, some operational thing while in flight, whatever - and without prior plan crashes into a building. That's an accident and involves negligence, that is, failure to do something .

Pilot aims the airplane at the building, accelerates into point of impact - that's criminal. There is no forgetting to do something, there is malice aforethought and intent to kill

Do you understand the difference?

This guy seems to have been of the "suck it up, boy," generation and mentality, owing to how his bandmates never apparently knew about this.

I've got a friend his age who's an independent contractor and has been for 30 years. He's been audited by the IRS at least three times that I know. No, he doesn't like that agency. Same generation, get it? He doesn't go around bitching about the matter, either, but - note this - he's not been subjected to a multi-year "vendetta" by the IRS, either. He gets audited, he resolves any disputes that come up, pays his taxes, and while he does bitch on occasion he moves on. By coincidence, he's a pilot, too, but he's not crashing into any buildings as a means of protest.

My point is this guy's situation isn't unique, but somehow other independent contractors/pilots who get audited manage to cope without killing other people.

Not being an aviator, I can only speculate. My main theory in postulating that was imagining a molotov cocktail writ large - burning seat as the flaming rag, fuel cans in the back of the plane (and fuel tanks) as the glass bottle. I wasn't insinuating that an aeroplane with an open flame aboard was instantly lethal, just that the impact of the crash shattering and smashing those gas cans and the fuel tanks, plus a fully-engulfed seat cover, would constitute an incindiary.

Tell me - do YOU think you could drive a car down a road with the seat next to you roaring in flames? Do you not see how ridiculous a notion that is?

I did not mention that doing that increases the likelihood of the plane blowing up in mid-air prior to reaching its destination because I know you don't know the construction details of a Piper that would lead you to that conclusion.

It was suggested that his accountant (Bill Ross) didn't bother to report his wife's piano lessons to the IRS, and that the accountant left him swinging.

[snip]

Sounds like he's alleging that the accountant knew about the unreported income and, for whatever reason, deliberately shivved his client in the back. It also sounds like he had no idea that his wife's piano lesson income was worth remotely that much, or that it was even taxable, owing to the small-dollar cash nature of the transactions, and he had no part of it.

COMPLETE AND UTTER HORSESHIT.

Go back and read what's been said about the cut-off dollar amount beyond which you HAVE TO report. It's under $1,000. You're talking about an amount twelve times that! Use your head - this is a man with a history of not paying taxes, not filing taxes, and having problems with the IRS. He claims he's been an IC since the 1980's - that's thirty fucking years! Do you seriously claim he can plead ignorance?

Please note that I said that he said that his accountant didn't file the taxes on that - but that his accountant did know about it.

To wit, he's stating that he did tell his accountant about the income, and trusted his accountant to handle it appropriately; which he then states that not only did the accountant not do, but that the accountant pointed it out to the IRS and left him swinging in the wind. Frankly, I would like to hear Mr. Ross's side of that, since it is fishy, but as I said - if true, that would be a monumental betrayal of Mr. Stack by Mr. Ross, a professional he hired to ensure things went properly.

And as I said - given Stack's track record, multiple instances of simply failing to file required paperwork or pay taxes, I'm not inclined to believe him. And it would be a breach of professional ethics for the accountant to comment.

If this was the first year his wife was giving private lessons it is conceivable she didn't know - but Mr. Asshat certainly should have known. Me, I think he was hoping to hide the income and got audited. Shivved the client in the back? If I was an accountant and found out during an audit my client failed to mention thousands of dollars of income I'd be tempted to let him hang, too.

Mr. Asshat said that his wife didn't keep him abreast of it. And again, if you will comprehend what I am saying, I am saying that Mr. Stack alleges that his accountant was aware of it and maliciously betrayed him by leaving it out the pointing it out to the IRS.

I comprehend what you're saying. Comprehension does not equal agreement. Your position has little merit. Look at what you wrote - you said the wife didn't keep Stack informed of the money, yet Stack claims he told the accountant about money he didn't know existed! Do you not see the inconsistency there? HOW could he have reported money he didn't know about to his accountant? It is such contradictions that make me think Stack is lying about the matter.

On top of that - when you have someone else prepare your taxes YOU are supposed to review the work. Because accountants are human and sometimes make mistakes. When you sign on the line for that tax return YOU are responsible for the accuracy of it. Mr Asshat should have fucking noticed that there was $12,000+ income missing from the total.

I think you'll understand if Mr. Stack didn't trust his own tax sheet prowess owing to his 1980s misadventures with attempting to lawyer the tax codes for himself and being soddomized for it. Assuming he fully understood the ramifications, he most likely presumed that Mr. Ross had found some loophole under which he could exclude the income, and legal-jutsu the IRS with when and if they heard about it. He wasn't expecting it to be left dangling from his own balls like a ten-ton weight which Mr. Ross then drew the IRS' attention to.

Again - not good enough. While the details of the tax code require a professional the basic concept of "report all income" is easy to comprehend. A tax preparer does bear some responsibility in reporting, but the bulk of it is on the taxpayer. If you don't understand something you need to ask for an explanation. This is as much a part of being an adult as putting your pants on before leaving the house. And Stack's problems weren't "misadventures", they were problems he brought on himself by his own actions and, after the first run-in with the IRS he should have learned something. What was that line about insanity being repeating an action and expecting different results? Didn't Stack quote that? In which case, under his own definition, he himself was insane cause he kept trying to jack around the IRS in the same manner over and over. Not to mention that whole suicide business, which usually indicates something is amiss in the mind.

Part of what I did this week was confirm that my clients and I had complete and accurate records of everything and the 1099 forms were filled out properly. When my accountant finishes my taxes we'll have our annual half hour phone call to go over all the numbers and make sure everything is complete, accurate, and all parties understand what the hell is going on. This part of doing business. It's fucking basic. I figured this out when I was fucking 19 years old and a freshman in college - what the FUCK is this guy's excuse?

We can't exactly ask him, but I would surmise that since he'd already been flamed worse than you're flaming me and him today, by the IRS in the '80s when he tried to be his own tax-code ninja and gotten fucked for his efforts, that he had zero confidence in his own ability. The fact that he didn't realize the IRA was tax-deferred instead of tax-exempt points this out - the guy was a monumental fuck-up when it came to tax matters. That's understandable, some people aren't good at some things. So he hired an accountant, and it got him royally screwed anyway.

The problem started not with making a mistake that brought the IRS down on him - which is what usually prompts an audit or brings you to their attention - but deliberating trying to game the system. Don't provoke a government enforcement agency, is that really so hard to understand?

How can you have an IRA and NOT know that's it's tax deferred? Have you ever had an IRA? Seen the paperwork? The statements? Withdrawn from one? At ever one of those points there are all sorts of dire warnings about TAX DEFERRED.

When are you going to get it that this guy wasn't a fuck up, he was a tax CHEAT. It wouldn't surprise me if it had gotten to the point he was facing jail time for tax evasion though of course we don't know about that, it just wouldn't be a surprise if it comes out. He's a criminal who chose suicide by airplane instead of suicide by cop.

Rather, what I read in his document was that, in the 80s, he strongly objected to the way certain organizations were escaping their taxes, and attempted to legal-fu his way into using those same methods of tax dodging for himself, in order to draw light to the subject.

I was an independent contractor during that time myself, as I stated. The change noted actually wound up making businesses pay MORE in taxes in many cases, not less. It also required IC's to adhere to a consistent list of requirements and to keep certain types of records. Boo-fucking-hoo. I was in my early twenties with no special training in these matters and I managed to pull it off, why couldn't he? Change happens. Adapt to it.

In light of that, the IRS reamed him and he paid his taxes promptly from then on until he ran into a year with no income, and drew upon the IRA.

The public record contradicts this. You would think, after his first run with the IRS that he would have learned the very simple concept that you FILE THE FUCKING PAPERWORK. We're not talking about an error or a misunderstanding, we're talking about mailing in the goddamned forms. Yet the California secretary of state reports that his business license was suspended in 2000 for failure to file a tax return in 1994 - meaning he had AMPLE time to correct any oversight. He lost another business license in 2004 for the same goddamned reason. This jackass couldn't be bothered to mail in the required pieces of paper.

This article explains how he truly fucked up and drew the ire of the IRS better than I can. In the interest of brevity I won't quote the whole thing here, just the gist of it:

However, tax experts say that if you want to really annoy the IRS, you could do one of three things: Fail to file a return completely; loudly maintain that the tax code doesn’t apply to you; or cheat on employment tax filings for your workers. Stack appears to have done all three. And if the tone of his letter is any indication, he not only hit all of these IRS hot buttons, he hit them with a belligerent attitude that could have further exacerbated his tax woes.

So, do forgive me if I just don't believe Mr. Stack was the innocent victim of a malicious government entity. He spent years poking the monster with a sharp pointy stick and then has the gall to act surprised when it bit his ass.

[Ghost Rider]

He wanted to make a statement and he did. He's fucked over anyone with aviation wants or desires because he poked the IRS.

Two things of real note.

1. IRS agents(and this from personal experience) can be testy beasties. They are underpaid, undertrained in many areas and at times have some large egos. Not all, I've met many an agent that is very helpful and kind but overall there is pall about them because of their job and connotations that come with. With the attitude he displayed he reminds me of a few cases wherein the fucker actually has sent a letter or something telling off the IRS. Believe me, that just incites them, even the nicer ones.

2. Don't try to hide any income. Even if you are getting zero on your return, report it. Before you go "But the code says!!!". I know what the code says, I read it every year. I will tell you the IRS does not give a fuck. They will nail you harder then a virgin at his first all you can fuck diner because they believe in the French code of justice (You are guilty until YOU prove you are innocent). They see the fact you didn't report income as proof that you are hiding something and will love to drive it home. And this year and last year they have gotten far more antsy about handing out audits over the slightest infractions and signs from both Congress and Obama is they plan to expand this.

[ShadowDragon8685]

It would help the "common man's" cause if he fucking paid his taxes! I already related that at 19 I screwed up my tax reporting - which problem was settled without tears and without a two decade vendetta. Of course, it helped the matter that I had paid my taxes so obviously I wasn't trying to dodge, I just made a mistake. I have known numerous people who have been audited. It sucks, of course, but there was no multi-year vendetta started by either side. Yes, the IRS is a juggernaut, which is all the more reason NOT to provoke it.

On top of that, while I can, as you put it, understand but not sympathize with someone who brings a gun to an audit and tries to kill that particular representative of the IRS, this is a situation where someone attacked the institution without regard to innocent bystanders - and the majority of the people in that building were NOT IRS employees. He also stated in his screed that he hoped to spark other people to do the same thing - that's more than just a personal vendetta.

Exactly my point - he attacked the institution. An institution may be represented by people, but ultimately it was not any particular employee he felt the need to attack, but the institution itself. He had clearly reached a breaking point where he became convinced that the IRS was an unstoppable, corrupt juggernaut which needed to be brought low, and struck the first blow himself.

Tragic, yes, defensible, no, but understandable and to a point sympathetic.

There is no "if" here - he DID jeopardize others, many others, by his actions. By burning his house he jeopardized his neighbors. By setting an office building on fire he put hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more, people at risk of being maimed or killed. Did that fact escape you somehow? There is NOTHING "noble" here.

Nobility is in the eye of the beholder. One could accuse the American revoloutionaries of exactly the same sorts of thing Joseph Stack did, attacking the legitimate establishment over a grievance, murdering the establishment's employees...

The 'nobility' here is in that he did at least have the decency to confine his direct acts of destruction to the agency he felt responsible for his grievances; instead of, say, climbing a water tower with a rifle or slaughtering his family before his dive.

As far as 'negligent,' I was calling that strictly on the house-torching. While destructive, and potentially devastating if the fire had spread elsewhere, it did not spread, and he didn't tie his wife and daughter up and leave them to burn.

No - but then I actually obey the law and pay my fucking taxes. What do you THINK is the reaction of the IRS if they slap you down for fucking around then you turn around and do it again and again? He is, apparently, a repeat-offender tax cheat. He's had business licenses pulled multiple times for failing to fulfill his obligations to report to the IRS.

Where'd you get this information, I haven't seen it. If true, it does change the color of his story from someone who tried to work within the system and was repeatedly violated for it.

And, given that he's been trying to cheat the system, I'm inclined to doubt his woeful tale of being stabbed in the back by his accountant. After all, we have only his word - the word of someone who apparently thinks burning down houses and buildings with people in them is somehow OK, as is deliberately crashing airplanes. Is that a trustworthy source of information? An ethical accountant does not disclose the financial details of a client, so I don't expect to hear from Mr. Ross's side of the matter, unless perhaps he releases a statement by way of lawyer.

So, it's not okay if John Q. Public cheats the system, but it's okay when the rich and powerful do it? That seems to have been what started his feud with the IRS, that he attempted to use the tax dodges employed by much larger organizations and they crushed him for it.

As far as your inclinations to doubt, making an ad hominem attack on the word of a dead man is pretty shallow. Just because he may have been embroiled with a feud with the IRS doesn't mean he actually was lying about his accountant stabbing him in the back. It doesn't make it true, but it doesn't make it automatically false, either. If true, it would explain very well why he went off the deep end - tired of his feud he hired an accountant to settle things for him, an accountant who stabs him in the back instead.

That's not how the earlier report on this thread had led me to believe.

Let that be a lesson to you to read early reports with some caution. The story invariably changes with more information.

Key words: in this thread. I can only make arguments based on what information I have available.

Really? Which report? The ones I've actually read only said no one knew if the wife and child were at home. Add a little skepticism to your reading.

The one in this thread where it was states that his wife and child had 'fled ahead of the flames' to a neighbor's home.

There's a NON-zero chance he actually tried to murder IRS employees - are they somehow expendable human beings? In fact, as two bodies have been pulled from the burned office buildings, it appears he succeeded and IS a murderer.

Yes, and there's no disputing or defending that. However, he did not attempt to murder his wife and child. He didn't climb a water tower with a rifle, he attacked the institution he blamed, rightly or wrongly, for ruining his life repeatedly. That doesn't make his actions defensible, or justifiable, but it does at least elevate him to a higher level of despicable sociopathy than those who go out to rain indiscriminate justice on everyone with the misfortune to get under his gun-sight.

Where the FUCK do you get "negligent" from? Seriously, dude, where did that come from? He wasn't "negligent", it was not an accident, it was a delibrate! There is no negligence involved. That's why I'm fucking annoyed with you - you're minimizing what happened to the office building (not just the IRS office) IRS employees are human beings, many with family, and they aren't inhuman monsters that deserve to die.

I was referring to the house torching when I called criminally negligent. As far as the building goes, it's property damage. To be honest, if it could be acomplished without loss of life, I doubt very many people in this country would be sad to see every single asset of the IRS burn to ashes. It would be a monumentally retarded thing, but few would mourn the great tax agency incineration..

As far as IRS agents, very few of them are really worthwhile human beings. Do they deserve to die, no, but philanthropists and people of the people they are not. The IRS is the agency which pursues literally mafia-esque levels of payment-hounding. Married to someone who had huge debts before you married them? They'll come after you. Divorce that person? They'll still come after you, and they'll tell you point-blank that they're doing it because if they harass you enough, you'll pay, or they'll perform the legal equavilent of breaking your knees - like seizing your home and vehicle. All because you had the terminity to say "I do" to someone who was in hot water with them. All for debts you had no part of accrueing and which were earned by someone you have no further association with. Because they can.

Let me explain this to you:

Pilot forgets to do something important - maintenance, pre-flight, some operational thing while in flight, whatever - and without prior plan crashes into a building. That's an accident and involves negligence, that is, failure to do something .

Pilot aims the airplane at the building, accelerates into point of impact - that's criminal. There is no forgetting to do something, there is malice aforethought and intent to kill

Do you understand the difference?

And do you understand that when I called 'negligent' I was referring to the house fire. It didn't appear to be set with murderous intent, merely with the intent to incinerate his home. The fact that it could have spread makes it horrifically negligent, but there appears to have been no intent to slaughter neighbors and family with the house fire.

I've got a friend his age who's an independent contractor and has been for 30 years. He's been audited by the IRS at least three times that I know. No, he doesn't like that agency. Same generation, get it? He doesn't go around bitching about the matter, either, but - note this - he's not been subjected to a multi-year "vendetta" by the IRS, either. He gets audited, he resolves any disputes that come up, pays his taxes, and while he does bitch on occasion he moves on. By coincidence, he's a pilot, too, but he's not crashing into any buildings as a means of protest.

My point is this guy's situation isn't unique, but somehow other independent contractors/pilots who get audited manage to cope without killing other people.

This guy wasn't, apparently, merely 'audited,' the IRS appeared to be pursuing a blood-money fued with him, and when a soulless leviathan of an agency decides to pick a feud with the little guy, the little guy tends not to have any options.

Tell me - do YOU think you could drive a car down a road with the seat next to you roaring in flames? Do you not see how ridiculous a notion that is?

No, but...

If a person has pre-soaked the passenger's seat of a car in accelerant and have lots of gas cans in the back and they're barreling down the road at 80 towards a flat, unmissable target like the front facia of a mammoth building, I think they'd be able to light the seat and have it fully engulfed about 10-20 seconds before impact, too soon for it to really break their concentration, and too late for it to matter even if it does.

Again, it was just speculation.

I did not mention that doing that increases the likelihood of the plane blowing up in mid-air prior to reaching its destination because I know you don't know the construction details of a Piper that would lead you to that conclusion.

And again, it was just speculation. There's got to have been a few dozen ways one could readily rig any vehicle to burst into vigorous flames during a high speed impact. An electrical ignition source would work well, too. Does it really matter how the asshole managed to borrow a play out of Al Queda's book?

And as I said - given Stack's track record, multiple instances of simply failing to file required paperwork or pay taxes, I'm not inclined to believe him. And it would be a breach of professional ethics for the accountant to comment.

What you're 'inclined' to believe is irrelevant. At this stage we have only allegations, which are not (and probably will not be) confirmed to be true or false. I was asserting only that if true, they would go a very long way towards erxplaining the feeling of utter helplessness and alienation that caused Mr. Stack to conclude that the only thing left for him to do was to go out in a blaze.

Mr. Asshat said that his wife didn't keep him abreast of it. And again, if you will comprehend what I am saying, I am saying that Mr. Stack alleges that his accountant was aware of it and maliciously betrayed him by leaving it out the pointing it out to the IRS.

I comprehend what you're saying. Comprehension does not equal agreement. Your position has little merit. Look at what you wrote - you said the wife didn't keep Stack informed of the money, yet Stack claims he told the accountant about money he didn't know existed! Do you not see the inconsistency there? HOW could he have reported money he didn't know about to his accountant? It is such contradictions that make me think Stack is lying about the matter.

Actually, if you read what Stack wrote, he said that the accountant knew of it, not nessessarily from him. He could have gotten that information from his wife.

Really, what reason has a dead man got to outright lie? More likely this was another Joe Stack Monumental Fuckup. I seriously doubt he'd have hidden something from his accountant deliberately.

Again - not good enough. While the details of the tax code require a professional the basic concept of "report all income" is easy to comprehend. A tax preparer does bear some responsibility in reporting, but the bulk of it is on the taxpayer. If you don't understand something you need to ask for an explanation. This is as much a part of being an adult as putting your pants on before leaving the house. And Stack's problems weren't "misadventures", they were problems he brought on himself by his own actions and, after the first run-in with the IRS he should have learned something. What was that line about insanity being repeating an action and expecting different results? Didn't Stack quote that? In which case, under his own definition, he himself was insane cause he kept trying to jack around the IRS in the same manner over and over. Not to mention that whole suicide business, which usually indicates something is amiss in the mind.

Attempting to use the laws as written in your own favor and being ruthlessly burned on it by a soulless agency that has the ability to fuck you because you don't have a defense budget of a million dollars is 'bringing it on yourself'? I'd call that a misadventure, attempting to legal-jutsu the system and being fucked despite having the laws as written on my side.

And, by technical definition, he apparently didn't attempt to jack the IRS over in the same way. That's not insanity, just monumentally fucked judgement. Frankly, if they jack you up once you're probably going to get pissed and try to see if there's a way to jack them over, if you're the sort of person to hold a grudge and get pissed about it instead of crawling home for a tube of Preparation H and a traumatized unwillingness to ever try to squeeze what you can out of the system again.

Not saying the jackhole didn't have tons of screws, nuts, and bolts loose, but trying to repeatedly jack the IRS over via different means isn't insanity. Fucking stupid, yes, but not insanity, assuming you've set a goal of 'jack over the IRS' and understand that they bring pnumatic rogering dildoes that can double as concrete smashers to the party.

The problem started not with making a mistake that brought the IRS down on him - which is what usually prompts an audit or brings you to their attention - but deliberating trying to game the system. Don't provoke a government enforcement agency, is that really so hard to understand?

The system was made to be gamed. That's the whole problem with our tax code, it's holier than Swiss Cheese on the Pope's sandwich - by design! Trying to sit down at the big boy's table and play isn't a crime if you've got the chops for it, but they took him out back and worked him over with a bat all the same.

How can you have an IRA and NOT know that's it's tax deferred? Have you ever had an IRA? Seen the paperwork? The statements? Withdrawn from one? At ever one of those points there are all sorts of dire warnings about TAX DEFERRED.

Uh, no. No I have not. I've never had anything really definable as employment (though that's changing now, yessss! ^_^) and hence, have never had to pay any real taxes - only a few dollops to the SSA from a pathetic paycheck I got for doing a barely-paid thing at a haunted hay-ride several years back on a lark.

I'll just have to take your word that the paperwork is full of dire warnings, however I would ask you this.

When was the last time you read the full text of an End User License Agreement? Most people, confronted with a massive wall of text, simply gloss over it. It's possible - improbable, but possible - it was simply a colossal fuck-up.

When are you going to get it that this guy wasn't a fuck up, he was a tax CHEAT. It wouldn't surprise me if it had gotten to the point he was facing jail time for tax evasion though of course we don't know about that, it just wouldn't be a surprise if it comes out. He's a criminal who chose suicide by airplane instead of suicide by cop.

Even if he was a tax cheat, which may be true, that doesn't excuse the horrible way the IRS tends to victimize people. And it doesn't negate the feeling of complete and utter alienation which drove him to pull this off, either.

I was an independent contractor during that time myself, as I stated. The change noted actually wound up making businesses pay MORE in taxes in many cases, not less. It also required IC's to adhere to a consistent list of requirements and to keep certain types of records. Boo-fucking-hoo. I was in my early twenties with no special training in these matters and I managed to pull it off, why couldn't he? Change happens. Adapt to it.

That doesn't seem to be what set him on the road to a fued with the IRS at all. As I said, he and a group of others apparently spent a lot of time pooring over the tax code to legal-jutsu their way into exactly the same sort of ridiculous tax dodges that the big boys use, and the IRS simply railroaded them. That's not criminal, it's not even wrong. If the rules are there, they can (and should) be used. It doesn't seem to be that he failed to keep records, quite the opposite instead, and he got ferociously soddomized for trying to use the tax law to the full advantage he could get.

The public record contradicts this. You would think, after his first run with the IRS that he would have learned the very simple concept that you FILE THE FUCKING PAPERWORK. We're not talking about an error or a misunderstanding, we're talking about mailing in the goddamned forms. Yet the California secretary of state reports that his business license was suspended in 2000 for failure to file a tax return in 1994 - meaning he had AMPLE time to correct any oversight. He lost another business license in 2004 for the same goddamned reason. This jackass couldn't be bothered to mail in the required pieces of paper.

This article explains how he truly fucked up and drew the ire of the IRS better than I can. In the interest of brevity I won't quote the whole thing here, just the gist of it:

However, tax experts say that if you want to really annoy the IRS, you could do one of three things: Fail to file a return completely; loudly maintain that the tax code doesn’t apply to you; or cheat on employment tax filings for your workers. Stack appears to have done all three. And if the tone of his letter is any indication, he not only hit all of these IRS hot buttons, he hit them with a belligerent attitude that could have further exacerbated his tax woes.

So, do forgive me if I just don't believe Mr. Stack was the innocent victim of a malicious government entity. He spent years poking the monster with a sharp pointy stick and then has the gall to act surprised when it bit his ass.

I never said he was innocent. However, I've often read on SDN that it's a fallacy to assume that blame is a finite measure and assigning any of it to party X means that portion can thenceforth never be assigned to any other parties.

I'm certainly not saying that Joseph Stack didn't pick his own fight, but in the opening salvo he was in the right - if, indeed, he's telling true, which he alleges - in that he only attempted to game the system the way it was meant to be gamed, and the IRS then fucked him over.

Subsequent to that, he may have gone crazy and started fucking the tax man, which will get you fucked back, yes. Certainly not innocent of that, but when Goliath breaks David's knees, I tend to presume that Goliath is unjustified in doing so. The IRS makes Goliath look like a fucking kitty-petting pacifist when it comes to the horrific ruthlessness with which they conduct their business.

Regardless, all we have are the allegations of Joseph Stack about the nature of the opening salvo and the final acts. If he was, in fact, in full compliance with the law (no matter how squrimy he had to be to get into that compliance) and the IRS fucked him anyway, then the IRS is at fault there. If, indeed, he tried to hire an accountant to smooth everything over, presumed the accountant would handle everything and then was stabbed in the back, then the accountant fucked him there, making him feel truely alone and without aid.

I'm not saying that justified anything he did, but I am saying it's understandable and even to a point sympathetic. Pissing the IRS off, on the other hand, seldom is smart, but nobody ever accused Joe Stack of possessing an excess of good judgement.

[FSTargetDrone]

Exactly my point - he attacked the institution. An institution may be represented by people, but ultimately it was not any particular employee he felt the need to attack, but the institution itself. He had clearly reached a breaking point where he became convinced that the IRS was an unstoppable, corrupt juggernaut which needed to be brought low, and struck the first blow himself.

Tragic, yes, defensible, no, but understandable and to a point sympathetic.

How about, "cowardly" and "barbaric"? Fuck this sympathetic bullshit. This miserable waste of flesh could never hope to bring down an institution. By his actions, he threatened the lives of his family, his neighbors and all those people who responded to the emergency, not to mention the innocents in the building. He doesn't get a pass because the fire didn't spread to nearby structures. You think he planned that?

Nobility is in the eye of the beholder. One could accuse the American revoloutionaries of exactly the same sorts of thing Joseph Stack did, attacking the legitimate establishment over a grievance, murdering the establishment's employees...

The 'nobility' here is in that he did at least have the decency to confine his direct acts of destruction to the agency he felt responsible for his grievances; instead of, say, climbing a water tower with a rifle or slaughtering his family before his dive.

He is scum and no better than the savages who struck the World Trade Center. He is just like them, albeit on a smaller scale.

If ever there was a good candidate for a "terrorist," he fits the bill very nicely. He was a small man who took out his frustrations on people who had nothing to do with his troubles.

[ThomasP]

On the other hand - yeah, what a generally shitty way to go about it. Of course I guess if you're that frustrated, and let's face it, batshit crazy, you may not see any other way. Or just don't care.

Look, regardless of the legitimacy of his grievances, if he killed even one person on his way out (which he apparently did), then it's difficult to reserve any sympathy for him. Many people have had worse fortune in life than Joe Stack, and rather than driving them to a violent end it ultimately improved their character.

I'm sorry, are you under the impression that I condone what he did, despite saying it was a shitty way to handle things?

What he did was absolutely wrong and by targeting innocent people (and his own family), he's crossed the line into epic asshole territory.

It just happens that I can understand his motives; that doesn't excuse how he handled it. If you've been kicked enough times by institutionalized injustice, sooner or later some people are just going to snap. Frankly I'm surprised it doesn't happen more. How do you go about fighting something like that when you have a government that doesn't listen to its citizens?

That doesn't mean violent retaliation like this is okay.

[jcow79]

I'm sorry but this guy's manifesto smacks of someone who always blames everyone else for their misfortunes and refuses to take responsibility for his own actions. All of the points that he claims were his fault are all toned down to sound like innocent mistakes despite it being abundantly clear in his rantings that he doesn't believe in paying all his taxes. This murdering worthless piece of shit doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt to be taken at his word.

It's clear in the series of events he claims that his first run in with the IRS was deliberate. He (and others in his group) intentionally evaded paying taxes. Immediately this made me think of the "Taxes are voluntary so you don't have to pay them" fringe. This of course ran him afoul with the IRS and they nailed him to the wall for it. This kind of behavior is going to put you on the IRS's radar for a long long time. You'd better dot every i and cross every t from this point on or you're asking for more trouble which clearly this asshole got. His innocent mistakes just aren’t believable for someone who’s already gone through the meat grinder and should damn well know better.

I think Broomsticks assessment of him deliberately trying to hide his income in these other instances is the most likely scenario. It's just consistent with his whole philosophy. And of course even dead men have reason to lie. He's trying to be a martyr. No one is going to think him a hero of the cause if he admits to being a simple tax cheat. He has to appear to have been a helpless victim at the hands of a ruthless agency. But by his own admission this just isn't the case.

[ShadowDragon8685]

How about, "cowardly" and "barbaric"? Fuck this sympathetic bullshit. This miserable waste of flesh could never hope to bring down an institution. By his actions, he threatened the lives of his family, his neighbors and all those people who responded to the emergency, not to mention the innocents in the building. He doesn't get a pass because the fire didn't spread to nearby structures. You think he planned that?

The question I posed was there any proof he meant for it to spread? The fact that he didn't take out his wife and child whilst he had time and opportunity to do so speak that his rage was mostly directed inwards, at that which he considered his (possibly in an effort to prevent the IRS from exacting any assets from him posthumosly), and towards the IRS.

As for barbaric, without a doubt. Cowardly? Inasmuch as anyone who wishes to commit a hostile act to someone and escape reprisal is a coward, that's true. That said, people can run afoul of the IRS without any misdoings whatsoever, and the IRS is quite happy to squeeze stones until they bleed. The acts someone is driven to don't negate any possible sympathy they might have owing to the situation that drives them. It's no less a fucking tragedy if someone is repeatedly abused as a child, only to grow up to be an abuser. It certainly doesn't fucking excuse them, and I never said that it should - but that it's still a sad situation.

He is scum and no better than the savages who struck the World Trade Center. He is just like them, albeit on a smaller scale.

If ever there was a good candidate for a "terrorist," he fits the bill very nicely. He was a small man who took out his frustrations on people who had nothing to do with his troubles.

I certainly never said otherwise. He absolutely was a terrorist, but where most terrorists are driven by ideology, this sad sack was driven by despair. That someone could be driven to such despair that he lashes out in a destructive blaze doesn't remotely mitigate the sad fact that they were driven to it.

Saying otherwise is like saying "It's okay that <X> did <litany of horrible things> to <Y> because in the end <Y> did something much worse to <X> and thus <Y> only got theirs in advance."

That's bull. What someone has had done to them doesn't excuse or justify anything they do, whether before or after the fact.

[FSTargetDrone]

When you set a house fire, it really doesn't matter what you "meant" to happen, now does it? Fires can quickly get out of control. I bet he didn't mean for a firefighter responding to that to get hurt or killed either, but only inasmuch as he probably never gave it a moment's thought.

Perhaps his wife and child ran before he had a chance to harm them. Does it matter? The moment he touched a match to his home, he threatened the lives of everyone in the vicinity and everyone responding to the fire, despite what he may or may not have meant to do or intended to do.

[Jaevric]

The mere fact that he quoted the Catholic Church as one of the organizations he and his friends were emulating with the initial tax fiasco made me think something was probably screwy; aren't the tax codes significantly different for religious organizations and nonprofits than they are for individuals and private businesses, anyway? I'm pretty sure they have some significant exemptions that, rightly or wrongly, other organizations do not.

Besides, seriously, "We were trying to draw attention to the problem?" That's either dishonest or epically stupid as a defense against tax fraud, and the rest of his "manifesto" leads me to believe it's probably a combination of the two.

I'd also seriously question that his accountant would INTENTIONALLY set him up to be audited by the IRS - that's the kind of thing that, if it got out and there was ANY evidence, would pretty much kill that accountant's business even if he managed to avoid any legal issues somehow. And where's the motivation for the accountant to engage in a behavior like that?

[SirNitram]

Terrorist, driven my desperate need and a light sprinkle of idealogy. But people like to beleive people become terrorists out of a personal choice, not because it's that or eck out a brief existance with nothing at all. So people like ShadowDragon like to excuse those whose idealogy doesn't seem alien. It's always desperation and idealogy; whether that desperation is fear of a group you blatantly lied to at some point(Reporting income you didn't know you have, if he is telling the truth, is a GOOD POINT TO NOTICE), or poverty, it doesn't matter. Hell, some people are driven by fear of God's anger at other people.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Far right hails Joseph Stack as a hero

First page of three quoted only:

Joe Stack Hailed as Hero in American 'Patriot' Resurgence
Expert: Online Cheers for Joe Stack Reflect Growing Anti-Government Movement
By LEE FERRAN
Feb. 19, 2010
Most were shocked by the charred scene of Joe Stack's kamikaze attack on a Texas IRS office, but for an alarmingly growing number of Americans Stack is a hero.

The Web was studded with praise for Stack almost immediately after his plane slammed into the Austin office complex Thursday morning. The admiring salutes appearing on sites ranging from Facebook to the pages of extremist groups reflect what experts say is an "explosive growth" in the anti-government patriot movement.

"Extremist groups are already aligning behind [Joe Stack], beginning to talk about him as a hero," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center which studies American militia and hate groups. "The growth of those groups has been astounding."

Stack's suicide note, an angry rant against the IRS and the government which was posted online the morning of his death, got around 20 million hits before it was taken down at the request of the FBI, according to Alex Melen, president and founder of T35, the network service provider for the Web site where the note was posted.

Melen, 25, said within minutes of taking the note down, the company was "bombarded" with around 3,000 e-mails demanding Stack's words be reposted. Some of the e-mails contained personal threats against Melen.

"What's funny is most people were pretty much praising him," Melen told ABC News.


Bob Schulz, founder of the anti-government We the People Foundation, said that while he only advocates non-violent means of protest, he can understand Stack's motives and said it is a reflection of a movement unlike any he's ever seen.

"There's a huge patriot movement," Schulz said. "I've been doing this kind of work for 30 years. Never have I seen the likes of what's going on now. It's delightful."

The anti-government movement gathered strength during the early 1990s, resulting in several high profile stand-offs with the FBI. Anti-government militias trained in the woods and prepared for a confrontation with the U.S. The militia movement peaked in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

The anti-government movement became dormant until the mid-2000s. Potok said a militia and extreme anti-government movement, fueled initially by anti-immigration sentiment, is back in a big way, especially since President Obama took office.

According to an April 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security, the current anti-government climate "parallels" what federal officials saw in the 1990s.

"Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propoganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning," the report said.

For many, Obama's election was a near perfect storm of disappointments, Potok said.

"The longer term thing goes back seven or eight years due to immigration," Potok said citing the surge of border patrol militias like the Minutemen. "But Obama's election, which is in a way related to the non-white immigration issue, was representative proof that this country is irreversibly changing demographically. Then the economy has played a role and things have gotten worse and worse."

The result is what Potok referred to as a "broad-based, right-wing populist rebellion," generally short of violent extremism.

Basically he's alright instantly become a popular unifying symbol for a seemingly major revival of the far-right militia movement of the 1990s.

[Broomstick]

The 'nobility' here is in that he did at least have the decency to confine his direct acts of destruction to the agency he felt responsible for his grievances; instead of, say, climbing a water tower with a rifle or slaughtering his family before his dive.

No, motherfucker he did NOT "confine" his direct acts. What fuck is wrong with you? He torched a house in close proximity to other houses. He put firemen at risk. The building he hit was NOT exclusively an IRS building, it also had other businesses and other people who were put at direct risk to life and limb. Today, not only are the IRS employees out of work so is everyone else in that building. Do you not see that?

That is leaving aside the economic ramifications of his actions.

As far as 'negligent,' I was calling that strictly on the house-torching.

How about you SAY THAT next time? Clearly, you have failed to clearly communicate. Work on that.

While destructive, and potentially devastating if the fire had spread elsewhere, it did not spread, and he didn't tie his wife and daughter up and leave them to burn.

No - he left them homeless and penniless. Do you think that's not harmful in some way? There's a woman and 12 year old girl who have lost everything, who are now utterly dependent on the charity of strangers, who don't even have a place of their own to fucking sleep at night. No, they're not dead, they're not maimed, he deliberately put them in that position. Again, NOT negligence, NOT an accident!

No - but then I actually obey the law and pay my fucking taxes. What do you THINK is the reaction of the IRS if they slap you down for fucking around then you turn around and do it again and again? He is, apparently, a repeat-offender tax cheat. He's had business licenses pulled multiple times for failing to fulfill his obligations to report to the IRS.

Where'd you get this information, I haven't seen it. If true, it does change the color of his story from someone who tried to work within the system and was repeatedly violated for it.

From here:

According to California Secretary of State records, Stack had a troubled business history, twice starting software companies that ultimately were suspended by the state's Franchise Tax Board.

He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, Calif., but that business license was suspended in 2004 for nonpayment of back taxes totaling $1,153, KCRA-TV in Sacramento reported. Another company, Prowless Engineering Inc. was suspended in 2000 for failure to file a 1994 tax return, according to KCRA.

Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both companies.

Also USAToday, and as mentioned KCRA.

You ARE allowed to do research outside of a thread when discussing a topic.

And, given that he's been trying to cheat the system, I'm inclined to doubt his woeful tale of being stabbed in the back by his accountant. After all, we have only his word - the word of someone who apparently thinks burning down houses and buildings with people in them is somehow OK, as is deliberately crashing airplanes. Is that a trustworthy source of information? An ethical accountant does not disclose the financial details of a client, so I don't expect to hear from Mr. Ross's side of the matter, unless perhaps he releases a statement by way of lawyer.

So, it's not okay if John Q. Public cheats the system, but it's okay when the rich and powerful do it?

Right - he bitches about Arthur Anderson and Enron "getting away with stuff" - um, they don't exist anymore. The Catholic Church? Right or wrong they've been tax exempt since the country was founded, no cheating there. GM? The government owns their ass.

Is the system unfair? Yes. Somehow the rest of us cope without flipping over into homicidal. Vigilante killing is not how the system gets changed.

That seems to have been what started his feud with the IRS, that he attempted to use the tax dodges employed by much larger organizations and they crushed him for it.

No, he tried to get out of paying taxes entirely. Something even the big corporations can't do. If he wanted to get exempt he should have started a church rather than an engineering company.

That's not how the earlier report on this thread had led me to believe.

Let that be a lesson to you to read early reports with some caution. The story invariably changes with more information.

Key words: in this thread. I can only make arguments based on what information I have available.

Do you know what Google is? A search engine? Here's a tip: http://www.CNN.com Seriously do some fucking research on your own if you're going to come into a breaking news thread and start arguing.

Really? Which report? The ones I've actually read only said no one knew if the wife and child were at home. Add a little skepticism to your reading.

The one in this thread where it was states that his wife and child had 'fled ahead of the flames' to a neighbor's home.

Again - do some research on your own, and some thinking on your own.

However, he did not attempt to murder his wife and child.

No, he just scared them so bad his wife took her daughter and FLED from the house the night before. Isn't that a clue that maybe something was seriously, seriously amiss in that house? Do you think she did that for fun? On a whim?

He didn't climb a water tower with a rifle, he attacked the institution he blamed, rightly or wrongly, for ruining his life repeatedly. That doesn't make his actions defensible, or justifiable, but it does at least elevate him to a higher level of despicable sociopathy than those who go out to rain indiscriminate justice on everyone with the misfortune to get under his gun-sight.

No, he launched an airplane at a building that housed a LOT of people with no connection whatsoever to his grievances.

Apparently, there is now some evidence (according to this evening's NBC broadcast) he ripped out the back seats on his airplane and loaded a drum of fuel in the back for a little extra "oomph". This was NOT done on a whim! He planned to do this, and he planned to kill people.

I was referring to the house torching when I called criminally negligent. As far as the building goes, it's property damage. To be honest, if it could be acomplished without loss of life, I doubt very many people in this country would be sad to see every single asset of the IRS burn to ashes. It would be a monumentally retarded thing, but few would mourn the great tax agency incineration.

Except it couldn't be done without risking life - firemen are going to fight fire regardless of what's burning. IRS offices don't exist in isolation in most locations, they're attached to other buildings or next to other offices, burning them down would destroy the livlihood of other people who are not connected to the IRS. As I pointed out earlier, not only are the IRS employees out of work today so is everyone else in the Echelon building. Right, "just" property damage.

Married to someone who had huge debts before you married them? They'll come after you.

Then maybe you should know who're you're marrying before you get hitched, hmm?

All because you had the terminity to say "I do" to someone who was in hot water with them. All for debts you had no part of accrueing and which were earned by someone you have no further association with. Because they can.

I'm sorry - are you unclear what marriage is? You're forming a legal partnership with someone. There is risk as well as gain there. This is why people shouldn't get married without careful thought.

I feel sorry for someone who, after marriage, has a spouse that gets into hot water - THAT person is well and truly screwed - but know who you're marrying before you get hitched.

And do you understand that when I called 'negligent' I was referring to the house fire.

The fucking SAY THAT next time! I'm not a mind reader, and neither is anyone else here.

It didn't appear to be set with murderous intent, merely with the intent to incinerate his home. The fact that it could have spread makes it horrifically negligent, but there appears to have been no intent to slaughter neighbors and family with the house fire.

Whether there is intent to harm a human being or not, ANY arson - and make no mistake, this was arson - that results in the death of a human being is tried as murder. There is no "mere" here, not with other buildings in such close proximity. House fires can spread with great rapidity. Sorry, not good enough. WHY are you defending this jackass?

This guy wasn't, apparently, merely 'audited,' the IRS appeared to be pursuing a blood-money fued with him, and when a soulless leviathan of an agency decides to pick a feud with the little guy, the little guy tends not to have any options.

Maybe the little guy shouldn't have spent thirty years playing tax evasion, hmm? Like I said, if you keep pointing the vicious beast with a pointy stick don't whine when your ass gets bit.

And as I said - given Stack's track record, multiple instances of simply failing to file required paperwork or pay taxes, I'm not inclined to believe him. And it would be a breach of professional ethics for the accountant to comment.

What you're 'inclined' to believe is irrelevant. At this stage we have only allegations, which are not (and probably will not be) confirmed to be true or false.

Apparently the State of California seems pretty clear on his failure to file and pay taxes. Oh, but maybe they have a "vendetta", too.

I was asserting only that if true, they would go a very long way towards erxplaining the feeling of utter helplessness and alienation that caused Mr. Stack to conclude that the only thing left for him to do was to go out in a blaze.

Let's see... he spends decades playing games with his taxes, not filing, not reporting, not paying (the rest of us hate the IRS, too, but we pay our fucking taxes - why is HE privileged?) and finally it's time to pay the piper. Then it's somehow somebody else's fault he's fucked himself over?

Actually, if you read what Stack wrote, he said that the accountant knew of it, not nessessarily from him. He could have gotten that information from his wife.

Really, what reason has a dead man got to outright lie? More likely this was another Joe Stack Monumental Fuckup. I seriously doubt he'd have hidden something from his accountant deliberately.

Tell me - WHY would the accountant deliberately conceal income from both Joe Stack and the IRS? What's the motivation to do that?

Stack, on the other hand, had a history of concealing shit from the IRS.

So, which is more plausible - Mr. Game-the-System got caught AGAIN or a randomly selected accountant hired to prepare taxes is going to deliberately fuck them up? What would the accountant get out of this?

Attempting to use the laws as written in your own favor and being ruthlessly burned on it by a soulless agency that has the ability to fuck you because you don't have a defense budget of a million dollars is 'bringing it on yourself'? I'd call that a misadventure, attempting to legal-jutsu the system and being fucked despite having the laws as written on my side.

Maybe he should have consulted a professional tax lawyer prior to deciding that some of these laws applied to him.

And, by technical definition, he apparently didn't attempt to jack the IRS over in the same way. That's not insanity, just monumentally fucked judgement.

There is a penalty for stupidity in the real world. You do know that, right?

The problem started not with making a mistake that brought the IRS down on him - which is what usually prompts an audit or brings you to their attention - but deliberating trying to game the system. Don't provoke a government enforcement agency, is that really so hard to understand?

The system was made to be gamed. That's the whole problem with our tax code, it's holier than Swiss Cheese on the Pope's sandwich - by design! Trying to sit down at the big boy's table and play isn't a crime if you've got the chops for it, but they took him out back and worked him over with a bat all the same.

If you want to play at the big boy's table you have to be a big boy first. That's a brutal fact of life, regardless of whether you think it's wrong or right.

How can you have an IRA and NOT know that's it's tax deferred? Have you ever had an IRA? Seen the paperwork? The statements? Withdrawn from one? At ever one of those points there are all sorts of dire warnings about TAX DEFERRED.

Uh, no. No I have not. I've never had anything really definable as employment (though that's changing now, yessss! ^_^) and hence, have never had to pay any real taxes - only a few dollops to the SSA from a pathetic paycheck I got for doing a barely-paid thing at a haunted hay-ride several years back on a lark.

Oh, I see. You're still a larval human being. Well, kid, get back to me after you've had a real job in the real world for a couple years.

I'll just have to take your word that the paperwork is full of dire warnings, however I would ask you this.

When was the last time you read the full text of an End User License Agreement?

February 9, 2010

Most people, confronted with a massive wall of text, simply gloss over it. It's possible - improbable, but possible - it was simply a colossal fuck-up.

The "you must pay tax on IRA withdrawals" is not a "wall of text". It's one sentence. Some variation of "You are obligated to pay tax on a IRA withdrawal". Also a 401(k) withdrawal, and all the other variants of personal retirement accounts.

Get back to me when you have a real job with a real defined contribution plan.

When are you going to get it that this guy wasn't a fuck up, he was a tax CHEAT. It wouldn't surprise me if it had gotten to the point he was facing jail time for tax evasion though of course we don't know about that, it just wouldn't be a surprise if it comes out. He's a criminal who chose suicide by airplane instead of suicide by cop.

Even if he was a tax cheat, which may be true, that doesn't excuse the horrible way the IRS tends to victimize people. And it doesn't negate the feeling of complete and utter alienation which drove him to pull this off, either.

And neither of THOSE excuse or even mitigate premeditated murder.

That doesn't seem to be what set him on the road to a fued with the IRS at all. As I said, he and a group of others apparently spent a lot of time pooring over the tax code to legal-jutsu their way into exactly the same sort of ridiculous tax dodges that the big boys use, and the IRS simply railroaded them. That's not criminal, it's not even wrong. If the rules are there, they can (and should) be used. It doesn't seem to be that he failed to keep records, quite the opposite instead, and he got ferociously soddomized for trying to use the tax law to the full advantage he could get.

OK, you DO understand that different parts of the tax code apply to different entities, yes? That a 503(c) charity operates under different rules than a church which operates under different rules than a corporation which operates under different rules than a person? That's not "cheating". These guys were looking for a way to get out of paying taxes. They fucked up. They need to man up and accept the consequences of their mistakes.

I never said he was innocent.

You are, however, apparently defending him. Or at least attempting to mitigate his guilt and explain his actions.

However, I've often read on SDN that it's a fallacy to assume that blame is a finite measure and assigning any of it to party X means that portion can thenceforth never be assigned to any other parties.

On the other hand, it IS possible that "party X" might, in fact, be entirely to blame for something. Or even if parties W, Y, and Z share blame that this somehow excuses criminal action on the part of party X.

I'm certainly not saying that Joseph Stack didn't pick his own fight, but in the opening salvo he was in the right - if, indeed, he's telling true, which he alleges - in that he only attempted to game the system the way it was meant to be gamed, and the IRS then fucked him over.

Alright - you're claiming he's somehow in the right. Please produce something to support your claim. Reference the parts of the tax code that are there to be gamed, as you put it. Please, point this out. Or shut the fuck up about Stack being "right".

[FSTargetDrone]

"The longer term thing goes back seven or eight years due to immigration," Potok said citing the surge of border patrol militias like the Minutemen. "But Obama's election, which is in a way related to the non-white immigration issue, was representative proof that this country is irreversibly changing demographically. Then the economy has played a role and things have gotten worse and worse."

The result is what Potok referred to as a "broad-based, right-wing populist rebellion," generally short of violent extremism.

Hm. Rebellion was dealt with once before, and in the unlikely event that if it ever came to it again, I trust it would be dealt with just as decisively as before.

Anyway, his wife has apologized, which is a remarkably classy thing to do, given that she really has nothing to apologize for.

Wife of pilot Joe Stack, who crashed plane into Austin building in kamikaze attack, apologizes

BY Christina Boyle

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Originally Published:Friday, February 19th 2010, 5:13 PM

Updated: Friday, February 19th 2010, 5:42 PM

The wife of the Texas pilot who flew his plane into an IRS office said Friday that her world has been rocked by her husband's crazed suicide mission.

In a statement read by the family lawyer, Sheryl Stack expressed her condolences for everyone affected by Thursday's crash which turned Austin's black glass Echelon Building into a fireball, terrified staff and killed an IRS worker.

"Words cannot adequately express my sorrow or the sympathy I feel for everyone affected by this unimaginable tragedy," Rayford Walker said, reading the message on her behalf near the Stack family home.

"Due to the ongoing investigation related to this tragedy, I feel it best to make no comment beyond this statement, and to not respond to questions of any nature."

Andrew Joseph Stack, 53, was seemingly ravaged by anger at the tax department, Wall Street bailouts and the Catholic Church when he set his family home ablaze Thursday morning shortly before getting in his plane and flying it into the 200-strong IRS office.

He left behind a ranting web post where he said: "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer," signing it "Joe Stack" (1956 - 2010).

The crash turned the building into a fireball, caused windows to explode and sent horrified workers fleeing for their lives.

Vietnam veteran Vernon Hunter, 67, a manager in the collections department was killed and Shane Hill, 38, a five-year investigator with the Texas comptroller's criminal investigation division, was badly burned, officials said.

Hunter was described by friends and family as a devout Christian and father of six who loved his white cowboy hat and frequently gave to charities, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

His wife also worked in the building and was inside when the crash happened at about 10 a.m.

"He was a kind person," Hunter's neighbor Robert Foster told the Austin American Statesman. "He was easy to talk to. There was no maliciousness in him."

Friends said Stack was not a loner and gave no hint he was so troubled yet his father-in-law, Jack Cook, said he was aware the couple had been having difficulties, and Sheryl had checked into a hotel with her daughter Wednesday night, according to the New York Times.

She returned home Thursday to find her home up in flames and her husband gone.

This is Vernon Hunter, murdered by a fuckwit:

[[R_H]]

IRS: a frequent target of antigovernment violence

Thursday's attack, in which Joseph Stack flew his plane into IRS offices in Austin, Texas, is just the latest in a string of attacks against the Internal Revenue Service. There are an average of 918 threats against employees a year, says a government agency.

Thursday’s attack on an Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, is one incident in a string of violent threats and assaults directed toward the agency in recent years. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which oversees the IRS, handles an average of 918 threats made against IRS employees every year, according to the agency. Between 2001 and 2008, court cases resulting from those threats have resulted in 195 convictions, according to TIGTA.

“This is not something new,” says J. Russell George, director of TIGTA. “The use of the airplane was unanticipated, but this is not something new, not at all.”

Authorities say Joseph Stack, a software engineer, intentionally targeted IRS employees when he flew a small, single-engine plane into a seven-story building in Austin, Texas, containing IRS offices. Mr. Stack had a long-standing grudge against the IRS, which he outlined in a rambling online letter released before he crashed his plane.

The increased level of attacks likely come as a result of the depressed economy and the IRS’s stepped up enforcement efforts, says Mr. George.

“It’s a confluence of events,” he says. “You have difficult economic times, you have an IRS commissioner who rightfully is stepping up efforts to enforce the tax code, and you literally have an environment in which people have elected to display their unhappiness in ways that are counterproductive.”

The agency increased its tax collection enforcement efforts in 2008, when Commissioner Douglas Shulman took over, further riling antitax groups.

Stepped-up enforcement or not, the IRS is often the target for frustrated taxpayers, says Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 85,000 IRS workers across the US.

"Sadly, certain groups of federal employees, such as IRS employees and federal law-enforcement officers, are more likely to become targets of irate citizens,” said Ms. Kelley in a statement. “It can be dangerous for federal workers to try to carry out their missions."

Last March, a Florida man was sentenced to 30 years in prison after hiring a hit man to kill an IRS worker who was auditing his tax return, and to burn down IRS offices in Lakeland, Fla. The hit man turned out to be an undercover FBI agent who helped arrest Randy Nowak.

In 2008, Earnest Milton Barnett was sentenced to 20 years in prison after ramming his Jeep Cherokee into the IRS’s Birmingham, Ala., offices.

In 1997, two men set fire to IRS offices in Colorado Springs, destroying the building and taxpayer files. In 2003, the men – Jack Dowell of Pensacola, Fla., and James Floyd Cleaver of Colorado Springs – were sentenced to at least 30 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.2 million in fines.

The latest attack may be the first instance of a plane used as a weapon, leading some to question whether the incident was an act of terrorism.

“This incident is of deep concern to me,” said Mr. Shulman, the IRS commissioner, in a statement. “We are working with law-enforcement agencies to fully investigate the events that led up to this plane crash.”

George says TIGTA is also responding to the string of attacks. “This is something I’m extremely concerned about … especially in the wake of what happened in Austin.”

Both agencies said it cannot discuss Thursday's attack, as it is under investigation, but may increase the use of armed escorts on tax-collection visits.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) of New York introduced legislation renewing a provision that allowed the IRS to provide armed escorts to employees visiting taxpayers designated as potentially dangerous. The legislation recently passed, and the IRS is taking full advantage of it, says George.

“We’ve had dozens of armed escorts in the last few months,” he says.

As for other precautionary measures, George says, “We’ll have to try to stay one step of ahead of these people in the future.”

[Count Chocula]

As both a pilot and someone who has had "contact" (read, paid a shitload of $$$) with the IRS, and been screwed by his accountant, and had marital tiffs and income declines, I fit the profile. AND I own pistols and rifles OH NOES!1!1! Yet, somehow, I've managed to not fly into a murderous rage. Go figure.

ArmorPierce wrote:

Lost Soal wrote:
There are two arguments which will drown out everything else about this event.
1. Was it "Right Wing Terrorism"; Anti Tax, government, or "Left Wing Terrorism"; Anti Religion, Corporations, Bush
2. How much blame does Obama get.

mmm... hard for me to tell. The fact that he seems to be anti rich and acknowledge that the government and the laws favors the rich plus he's pro universal healthcare makes you think he's left wing.

Oh god I really hope not.

Why yes, yes he is:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each
according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each
according to his greed.

Plus the obligatory Bush-bash, natch, on top of all the other groups/people he hated. Of course, that didn't stop Time Magazine, Michelle Malkin, The Daily Kos, or the Wahington Post from claiming he was a Tea Party/Tea Bagger/Republican. Oooopppsss. I eagerly await their retractions.

Turns out crazies can be of any political stripe. THAT's a revelation, *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

[FSTargetDrone]

Plus the obligatory Bush-bash, natch, on top of all the other groups/people he hated. Of course, that didn't stop Time Magazine, Michelle Malkin, The Daily Kos, or the Wahington Post from claiming he was a Tea Party/Tea Bagger/Republican. Oooopppsss. I eagerly await their retractions.

Uh, in that list of yours, one of these things is NOT like the others. I believe in Malkin's latest spew, she is being somewhat sarcastic, to say the least.

[Count Chocula]

I concede on Malkin. Credit (reluctant, but due) to her, and to you.

[FSTargetDrone]

I concede on Malkin. Credit (reluctant, but due) to her, and to you.

Nothing to concede. It just seemed an odd grouping. Figured it was simply a mistake.

[ThomasP]

I'm curious now - any of you non-American members, do you see similar trends with your respective tax-collecting agencies?

The IRS has that reputation for being a hard-assed agency that you don't mess with, and for having some dubious practices on occasion. I'm wondering if kind of perception exists in Europe or elsewhere, or if this is just a product of the US system and/or citizenry.