Taxation & Estate Planning

Nine Eleven Style Attack at IRS Building

By Darrin Mish

An irate man crashed his single engine Piper Cherokee airplane into the side of the 7 storey IRS building in Austin, Texas Thursday morning leaving at least 2 dead and some 13 people injured, 2 of who are in critical condition.  Joseph Andrew Stack a 53 year old software engineer, apparently furious with the IRS, posted a suicide note online that said, ?Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let?s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.?  After he wrote his suicide note, Stack set his own house on fire with his wife, Sheryl and stepdaughter sleeping inside before leaving for the airport.  The wife and stepdaughter managed to escape unhurt.

At the time of the attack, there were about 200 IRS workers inside the building.  Just before 10 a.m., Joseph Stack crashed his airplane into the building causing a thunderous explosion.  Flames engulfed the second floor of the building, support beams were bent, windows were smashed, ceilings caved in and a huge billow of black smoke rose to the sky as hundreds of terrified workers ran for their lives in a scene reminiscent of 9/11.

It took the firemen 90 minutes to bring the blaze under control.  The building was still smoldering six hours after the crash, with blinds dangling from damaged windows, its walls blackened with soot.  The second and third floors of the building were almost completely destroyed.

What caused Joseph Stack to commit such an act of atrocity?  In his suicide note, Stack wrote, ?If you?re reading this, you?re no doubt asking yourself, ?Why did this have to happen???.  Then he went on to describe his encounters with the IRS, once when he filed no return because he had no income and another time when he omitted to file his wife?s income.  He also recounted his financial problems, his difficulty finding work and his complaints against politicians, the Catholic church, the ?unthinkable atrocities? committed by big businesses and how the government bails them out.  His note concluded with this chilling remark, ?violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.?

Records show that Stack had not had the best of fortunes in doing business.  Twice he started software companies in California that both ended up being suspended by the Californian tax board in 2000 and 2004.  His wife at the time filed for bankruptcy in 1999 with tax debts totaling $126,000.

The fire at Stack?s house caused the roof to cave in and blew out the windows.  Red Cross officials confirmed that they had treated two people who lived in the house.

Nine Eleven Style Attack at IRS Building is a post from: IRS Tax Problem Solver Blog - IRS Help

Full post as published by IRS Problem Solver Blog on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).