Customer Reviews

Confessions of a Tax Collector (P.S.)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Admit it. You think this book is probably pretty boring. Tax Collector? Well, I assure you, it is certainly not boring; rather, it is an oddly compelling read that I just couldn't put down. (And no one is more shocked about that than I am!) Richard Yancey worked for 12 years as a revenue officer for the IRS collecting (or at least attempting to collect) unpaid employment taxes from small businesses. It was an interesting, challenging and sometimes grueling job for Yancey. Yancey's story is an interesting read for many reasons. First, he is an excellent writer. Second, the story he has to tell is interesting. His co-workers were a collection of colorful souls, all flawed, none of them the straight-laced, buttoned up type. Yancey also structures the story well and doesn't bore us with any memoir-style introspection. The book is paced well. Enjoy this one, despite any reservations you may have.

What a great book. I couldn't put it down. I had read the reviews and thought it sounded interesting, but probably would not have picked it up, but for the fact that on a visit to my local independent bookstore the author was there and doing a signing. I figured it was worth the $ to bring my wife a surprise (as she's an MBA and loathes the IRS - am I going to get audited now?). Anyway, I quickly stole the book from my wife and read it practically straight through.

Not only is Yancey (if that's his name) a great and sardonic writer, but his story actually had me laughing out loud with some frequency. And though I certainly hate paying my taxes I was comforted by his continuous message - If the Revenue Officers have been sent after a tax payer it is because that person has repeatedly ignored the IRS.

Scary though it may be to say it, I found myself having empathy for the tax-man. Yancey does paint a picture of a dysfunctional office environment, but not one very different from those I've seen in government service or the private sector. By the end not only was I rooting for him, but I was hoping he'd put away more tax protestors. After all, why should they be able to get away without paying their share while the rest of us work 4 months a year in effect to pay the government?

I would quibble with the details of his personal life at the end. They seemed forced and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for him to write and uncomfortable for the reader to have to wade through.

Highly recommend it, for the type of laugh that sticks in your throat. I can't wait for the next installment.

The reviews of this book are outstanding. This author has taken the revelation of this feared agency's secrets and weaved in a beautiul coming of age tale and love story. The critics are loving it as I am sure most readers will. Mr. Yancey has been receiving national praise. As for the O'reilly show, Fox owns the publisher, Harper Collins, so do you really think Mr. Yancey was invited on the show to discuss policy, no, it was to spread the word about this amazing book. I found it to be the best book I've read in a very long time.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I began this book. Not being a business major, but a liberal arts student I didn't have an interest in the actual workings of the IRS, but I soon learned this book was much more. Yancey explained the "technical" part of the agency's workings in fascinating but everyday terms. I actually enjoyed the personal tale that involved Yancey's finding his way home to be the best part of the book. I think either reader, the one most interested in this agency or the one looking for a book to entertain will be pleased. I agree with reviewer Steve Weinberg, "Confessions of a Tax Collector is not just a superb memior about working for the IRS, it's a superb memoir, period. "

I got this book in hardcover last year after going through a real-life IRS audit of my own. I was hoping to gain some insight about the weirdo guy who did my audit and the odd, fortress-like feeling of the IRS building.

What I found in Richard Yancey's book was a big surprise: a brilliant character study of the protagonist, an IRS collection agent with a conscience, and his riveting observations of everything around him. He explains the no-mercy, warfare mindset that is drilled into the heads of collection agents. He has a great cast of characters, fascinating explorations of both the collectors and their prey. The most intriguing part of book is Yancey's personal transformation. This is well-written, compelling stuff, done in sort of a David Sedaris memoir style, funny but sometimes painful. Although it's non-fiction, there is a real story here, with a beginning, middle, and end. This is quite a trick to pull off in a non-fiction book. I'm sure it's "dramatized" a bit to make this work, but who cares? I loved it.

So now that you've turned in your 1040's, check this one out. I couldn't put it down.

I'm not a big fan of this type of book, but I finally relented to my wife's demands that I read it. I fully expected to be bored out of my mind --- a book about taxes! --- but this story totally took me by surprise. It was funny, entertaining and completely absorbing. Some of the reviews I've seen in the media miss the point, it seems to me. This isn't so much an expose of the IRS as a powerful exploration of the human condition, against the backdrop of the secretive IRS. Yancey came of age in this story, discovering strength in himself, including the strength to follow his heart to true love. When I put the book down I told my wife, "This is a love story, disguised as a book about the IRS." Yancey talks in the epilogue about the Service bringing him to the place where he could appreciate the things that truly matter in life. Thank God it did, so he could write this brilliant, wonderful book. Don't buy the reviews you read that insinuate the IRS nearly ruined this man's life. In my opinion, it saved his life.

I'm a firm believer that everyone has enough drama in his line of work and, if told with a compelling voice, anybody's story can be interesting. I'm also interested in the day-to-day of people's chosen lines of work. So that alone would make this book educational. But Yancey's wry sense of sarcasm and the obsession he develops with his job make this story fascinating. This is an autobiography, and although Yancey admits to exaggeration and embellishment, you sense nothing but stark honesty in his portrayal of himself and his trip to the dark side. He passes no judgment and makes no apologies. There are moments where I questioned whether or not I liked him as a person, wondered about his ethical compass, suspected him to be the perfect example of why people hate the IRS. But in the end, I couldn't help but like him as a narrator. While Yancey's description of life with the IRS is interesting, what's most fascinating is how quickly he becomes obsessed with the power the IRS bestows upon him. It literally becomes the one and only focus of his life. He shows no regret for this. Likewise, in his moments of moral heroism, he doesn't boast. He merely tells the story. And a good story it is.

If you like this book, you may want to check out THEM by Jon Ronson. It has the same wry sensibility and is pretty outlandish.

This is a compelling, novel-like story of the author's 12 years as a revenue officer in Collections for the Internal Revenue Service, from his initial recruitment by a classified ad that never mentioned who the employer was to being a hardened and efficient seizer of assets. Yancey tells a story of initiation into the IRS, office intrigues, taxpayer sob stories, and the shenanigans of tax protestors. Yancey took to his work, with which he had a love/hate relationship--mostly hate, at first, yet he kept with it and found motivation to stick with it and become the best revenue officer he could, for reasons he couldn't clearly identify. I found this book a surprisingly engaging read, difficult to put down.

I bought this book because it was on amazon.com's list of Top Ten Editor's Picks for 2004. Having read it, I can now easily understand how it made that list. This book is absolutely hilarious, from its opening pages describing Yancey's surrealistic job interview, to the end. Yancey is a gifted writer, with a talent for making characters larger-than-life. As just one example, William Culpepper, Yancey's mentor at the IRS, rivals Lt. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (the character of "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" fame) as a leader whose insanity starts to make a bizarre sort of sense in an insane situation. The passage describing the woman who was so desperate to hide their tax troubles from her husband that she called Yancey back pretending to be the husband was alone worth the cost of the book.

Here's how good this book is: It made me want to change careers and be a tax collector. And anybody who can engender sympathy for the IRS (the IRS!!!) is a darned good writer worth reading.

It took guts for Richard Yancey to write a book that tries to make you sympathetize with an IRS agent. But if anyone could possibly pull it off, Yancey is the one. With a degree in English and a background in theater, he knows how to write well and can spin a story. Sometimes he gets carried away with literary pretensions, but only rarely. For the most part, he tells a tight and tense story.

Yancey was a collections agent. He hunted down delinquent taxpayers and made them pay. If they refused or couldn't pay, he attached their bank accounts, repossessed their cars, and seized their homes and businesses. You can perform all sorts of mental contortions to deal with a job like that, but it will get to you one way or another. No one leaves unscathed.

I would not have believed Yancey's characterizations of his colleagues and bosses if I had not been in federal service myself for fifteen years (not with the IRS). The psychotic mind games, the petty one-upsmanship, the general attitude that your agency and profession is the hub of the universe; sadly, it all rings true. Even the cartoon-like uber-agent William Culpepper must have been real.

Yancey telegraphs a fair amount of the story. You know as soon as he mentions her "mousey-brown hair" that his fiancee will not be with him by the end of the story. You know with his first description of the woman he eventually ends up with with that she will be the one. I was not able to predict whether he would stay with the agency after the first year or if he would get out before he sustained permanent damage, only because I was hoping against hope that he would take the advice of every interviewer, every supervisor, every colleague, to get out, get out, get out!