An Unexpectedly Taxing Part Of Tax Prep

I worked for a tax preparation office. [Owner] owned four offices. I was typically located in the smallest office, but occasionally, I was placed in a bigger office when they were short-handed.

One such short-handing was rather unusual in nature. [Manager] ran the largest of [Owner]’s offices.

One day, he requested me — or rather he requested “all of our first-years who look good in a suit”, and that included me. Why? To pretend to be lawyers.

One of his senior workers had made a very serious error in a tax return. Somehow, not only was the money directed to the wrong bank, but when the IRS sent the money, the wrong bank kept the money and put it into the account of an unrelated third party.

This created an enormous legal mess. The IRS is NOT supposed to put money in an account without your name on it. There’s a lot that went wrong here.

This turned into meetings of clusters of lawyers — lawyers for the client, for the bank that actually got the money, for the bank that was supposed to get the money, and for the US government.

[Manager] felt… underrepresented. So, he had all of the first-years who looked good in suits dress up like lawyers and hold empty briefcases. There were three of us that he selected: two men and one woman. We were told to stand next to him and keep our mouths shut.

In truth, we didn’t have to do anything. [Manager] had almost no part to play in the event, simply answering about five questions while everyone else argued.

But that was the time I had to be a fake lawyer for my employer.