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

Lauren closed the audit with a finding in my favor. She gave me the name of a CPA in Wichita who specialized in farm taxes and veterans’ benefits. He filed my amended returns in June.

The refund check arrived in August, right in the middle of wheat harvest.

I used part of it to pay off the combine. The rest went into a retirement account I’d never had the courage to open.

Then I did something I’d been thinking about since March.

I called the IRS office in Wichita and asked if Examiner Mills was still assigned to my case.

“That case is closed, sir,” the woman said.

“Good,” I said. “That’s what I was hoping.”

I found Lauren’s number the old-fashioned way. I asked the CPA. He gave it to me with a grin.

She answered on the third ring.

“Mr. Morrow,” she said carefully. “Is there a problem with your refund?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I was calling to see if an IRS examiner is allowed to accept a cup of terrible coffee from a taxpayer whose case is closed.”

There was a long silence.

“Technically,” she said, “there’s no rule against it.”

She drove out on a Saturday at the end of harvest. I took her out to the last field in my pickup. We sat on the tailgate with a thermos of coffee, watching the combines finish the wheat while the sun went down red and gold over the whole flat world.

“This coffee really is terrible,” she said.

“I told you.”

She laughed. Then she leaned against my shoulder, and I put my arm around her, and we watched the last strip of wheat fall.

When I kissed her, she tasted like bad coffee and Kansas wind.

She still works for the IRS. She still won’t do my taxes. She says it’s a conflict of interest.

But she checks my CPA’s work every April.

Twice.

Would you have told him he was overpaying? Tell me in the comments.