The IRS Sent an Auditor to My Kansas Wheat Farm. She Found a Mistake, But Not the One She Was Looking For

For three days, she sat at my kitchen table with my shoeboxes of receipts, my bank statements and my father’s old ledgers.

She was precise, careful and completely impossible to read. She asked a thousand questions. What was this payment? What was that equipment? Why had I depreciated the combine the way I had?

“Because the software told me to,” I said.

She wrote that down.

On the second day, she asked about my military service. She’d seen the VA disability payments on my statements.

“Seven years with the Rangers,” I said. “Two tours.”

She stopped typing.

“My brother was a Ranger,” she said quietly. “Third Battalion.”

“I was Third Battalion.”

She looked up at me. Something changed in her face. Then she looked back down at her laptop and kept working, and didn’t say anything else about it.

On the third day, she closed her laptop and folded her hands on my kitchen table.

“Mr. Morrow,” she said. “I’ve finished my examination. I found significant errors in all three years of your returns.”

My stomach dropped.

“How much do I owe?”

She took a breath.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “You don’t.”