It’s not often you get a story about taxes that is actually fun. Thankfully, one man’s thorough documentation of his living and spending habits has provided us with just such a story. The man in question opened up an architecture firm in New York in 2012, but he lived in Philadelphia. His time was almost perfectly split between the two cities after he opened the firm, and therein laid the problem. The man was worried that he would have to pay income taxes in New York because he rented an apartment in New York, even though he truly lived in Philadelphia.
So what did the man do? He started taking selfies. Not the selfies that most people in younger generations take. No, this man instead used an actual camera with an auto-timer and started taking pictures of himself in front of his home while holding up the day’s newspaper.
He collected tons of these photos, in addition to a bevy of receipts, tickets and travel records just in case the Internal Revenue Service ever came calling. The man’s daughter, though, caught wind of his tactics and published them on Instagram. They were instantly a hit, “going viral” as they say. You can see a bunch of the photos in our source article, and the man says that despite the popularity of the Instagram account, the IRS still hasn’t audited him. He is wary that he may be tempting fate.
The story is also a nice reminder about IRS audits and complicated tax situations — such as working in one state while living in another. Sometimes these scenarios create complex tax circumstances that need to be figured out with the help of an experienced tax attorney.
Source: TIME, “This Man Is Using Selfies as A Weapon To Fight Off The IRS,” Laura Stampler, March 19, 2014
