You can pay your income taxes in cash at various retail stores around the country:
https://www.irs.gov/payments/pay-with-cash-at-a-retail-partner
I did not know that! (Obviously.) Sorry for the hijack, ya'll. Here's a true story for your trouble.
ETA: Did I tell this one before?? Long ago I meant not to tell it, to maintain anonymity. After writing this, it occurred to me that I've gotten slack lately and may have told it - probably in this very thread! But I can't find it. Anyway, enjoy this telling of the tale.
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Sometimes it doesn't take a lot of cash to say FU to an employer. Sometimes it just takes a conscience, or a couple months' pay in the bank. That was my situation when I took down a multimillion dollar securities fraud.
I didn't know at first that I was working for crooks. I was just an early 20something with no job who answered an ad for "unlimited pay, make your own hours", aka commission sales. The product in that pre-internet era was a buying club membership for home furnishings. They trained you to make this hour long scripted pitch from a flip book, face to face with a customer at their home, to explain how their $700 lifetime membership would save them thousands of dollars on all the furniture purchases they'd make for the rest of their lives. If they bit, they could visit the showroom forever, peruse paper catalogs, and order from All The Major Manufacturers at wholesale pricing, meaning 50% off retail catalog price (though they had to pay 10% service fee).
Not as crazy as it sounds now, depending on the customer's purchasing habits, because retail was stodgy then and plenty of people would get at least some savings from it over time. Still a tough sell, but I closed a few before giving up the ghost. By then the owners had recognized other talents in me, and I became the Accounts Payable Manager at the princely rate of $4.25/hour. Hey, it was 90 cents above minimum wage!
The original proposition was legit, I soon found, in that real customers who had bought memberships would come in and order stuff. They'd pick out $3200 of furniture and write a $1600 check, and their furniture would be shipped to the store, and they'd come pick it up. They were happy enough, the business did what it said, all good.
It took me a while to detect the flaw - because it wasn't in the core business. It was in the execution that the owners had slipped from legitimate creativity into dubious schemes and, eventually, trouble. At first they’d done great in volume of membership sales, raking in cash from memberships. In our rural area, it more than paid the cost of a nice showroom with a little warehouse in the back and couple of clerks. When sales slowed, they hired new people (like me) to beat the bushes, maybe sell a few friends. Then came the fatal brainstorm: financing.
$700 was a lot for a membership, so they arranged a credit line where the customer could just make monthly payments until the $700 was paid off. The owners got $700 up front in commissions and hired a "Finance Manager" to handle the paperwork. The lender got paid over time, everyone happy. Interest was an ungodly 24%, but once the dotted line was signed, who cared?
I think the trouble began when they realized how much money 24% was. Wanting a slice, they started putting out ads in local newspaper of our rural area offering high interest to individuals, so that they could use the borrowed money to finance the contracts. “High” for the individuals might be 10% - a lot better than a savings account, better than bonds even back then, but enough to leave the owners a fat 14% profit. Perhaps a legitimate deal there too. Creative, eh?
By the time I started, they’d fallen behind on paying suppliers, maybe by spending a little too much on motorcycles and flying lessons, which was why I was hired. “Managing” the accounts receivable turned out to mean persuading angry furniture makers to send us the customers’ furniture when we hadn’t paid for the last batch yet! Once I understood, I showed backbone by proposing a deal of my own. “I’ll get us off hold,” I told the owners, “but you have to give me the service fee to use against our back bills.” I didn’t mean me personally, I mean my department got the money to use for catching up. It took a month or two to get the hang of persuading the suppliers and getting actual shipments in, but it worked. Slowly but surely, I was working down the backlog, getting all the orders filled, reducing what we owed. Until I realized nobody was selling memberships any more.
I’d been one of the last people to sell any memberships. A few people tried after me, but failed as quickly as I had, and no else was starting. The owners weren’t selling any either. But in the newspaper, there were ads where they were borrowing money for new contracts. Where was the money going?
I started asking questions to the nice ol’ country lady at the front desk who’d been there for years. Yep, there were people coming in and depositing money for the financing. Little old ladies putting in tens of thousands of dollars sometimes. Were any memberships being sold? Haven’t seen any lately. Well if there’s no sales, how will they pay back the promissory notes to the little old ladies?
“I don’t know,” she replied. “What are you thinking?”
I gulped and finally said, Well, they’re not getting any money from my department because we’re just catching up. I guess someday the service fees would be something, but it doesn’t seem like enough to pay the whole business. Honestly, I think I need to write a letter to the state that they’re taking people’s money and probably can’t pay it back.
“Well, are you gonna write ‘em?”
If they’re able to pay it back, interrupting them would make the whole thing to fall apart, and actually cause them not to pay the little old ladies. Have they gone up and down in sales before, or just gradually sold less and less? Less and less, she said. Well, I probably better write the state. I’ve never done anything like this before, I guess it’ll take a few days.
“Keep me posted,” she said.
Shortly thereafter, the owners began a new sales campaign. Activity buzzed all around. I delayed my letter and told the lady. But then, after a few weeks, they ran out of energy. “I’m gonna have to write,” I finally said. “Keep me posted,” again.
Three days later, having written fifteen pages longhand at home in the evenings but not yet sent the letter, I looked up from my desk to see three huge dudes in blue uniforms at the showroom door. They were state police, and they wanted to see the Treasurer. Shortly thereafter, I arrived at work in the morning to find padlocks on the door. The owners were sentenced to sixteen months in state prison for securities fraud. As I understand it, the promissory notes they gave the individual lenders should have been registered as securities but weren't.
Eventually I realized how the cards collapsed. The clerk lady had told her buddy, the finance manager, that the jig was up. Figuring it was better to report than be one of the people charged, Finance Manager reported to the state. I don’t think the little old ladies were ever paid.