On January 28, 1986, the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded midair shortly after lift off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The seven crew members aboard the Shuttle all died in the explosion including South Carolinian Ron McNair. The cause was determined to be o-rings. Photo courtesy Washington Times.
Thirty seven years ago, I was in a meeting with about a dozen of my clients, at a casino in Atlantic City. The IRS had targeted employees of the casino’s, arbitrarily determining they made $35 an hour and began taxing them accordingly. They were suffering bank account seizures, cars being towed to impound, wages seized, and liens against their real estate; all while threatening them with criminal charges.
Dumb old Dean Allen would take on cases the lawyers were afraid to touch (or simply thought there was no money in representing them). My growing reputation was that of a combat veteran unafraid of the IRS. More importantly, I won 100% of the cases I took on.
Employees from several casino’s had chipped in money to fly my wife and I to Atlantic City from our home in Houston. I would eventually force the IRS to agree $12 an hour was more reasonable and the casino employees considered me a hero.
I found a federal court decision, out of Las Vegas, where a judge had ruled tips to casino employees were gifts, rather than taxable income, because gaming laws prohibited paying employees from doing anything to alter the odds of winning any game of chance. Therefore tips were gifts, not compensation for services.
I urged the casino employees to sue in federal court, relying on that decision, and argue their tips were tax free so the IRS could take a hike. They eventually decided they were happy to pay taxes on $12 an hour and did not want to roll the dice with a federal lawsuit.
On the frosty morning of January 28, 1986 all that was still in the future. I was learning how a casino worked. At age 35 I had never been inside one. I was also educating these clients on IRS tactics and just how dangerous they were.
We were in a conference room around one of those long mahogany tables with me at the head, surrounded with paperwork from the IRS. I had left my wife in a casino restaurant where she was watching TV & drinking beer.
Contrary to my request, she barged into our meeting where I was working with clients. I could see my alcoholic wife was tipsy from the beer, but something had unnerved her and she was on the verge of tears.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked her.
“The space shuttle just blew up!”
I assumed she had already consumed too much beer by 9 AM and misunderstood something. I assured her space shuttles do not blow up and she had probably just misunderstood something.
Sadly I was wrong. Space shuttles do blow up, or at least this one had; killing seven astronauts. President Reagan would reassure a grieving nation, NASA would redesign the space shuttle. And I would keep winning cases against the IRS, as life goes on.
Some tragedies are so great you remember exactly where you were, and what you were doing, when you heard the news.
Dean Allen is a decorated Vietnam veteran, book author and former Secretary of the Anderson (SC) GOP. He is also President of Freedom Source University. His latest book is available at Amazon: RESTORE AMERICAN GREATNESS: A Patriot Activist Manual.
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