by Paul MavridesWhy did the BOE pick on me to experiment on? Remember the film "Brazil"? In the dystopian world of Terry Gilliam's movie, a fly fell into a police state office printer causing an arrest warrant to be issued for a Mr. Buttle, rather than Mr. Tuttle, well that's what happened to me except in 1991 the fly produced an error in the BOE's computer records which had them give me an extra $80,000 in comic royalties from them. They wanted to know why I wasn't paying sales tax on this nonexistent money.I though it was a simple mistake to straighten out, but of course in the process of this initial error, the BOE made a far greater one. Basically they looked me over and made a snap judgment that the creators of comics, cartoons and children's literature are not authors, but rather merely commercial contractors who produce objects not speech. They sent a bill for back taxes plus penalties and interest. I refused to pay it and we were off and running.
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