A psalm for Sunday vespers :
(a wild and ecstatic prayer of David)
God! God! I'm running to you for dear life;
the chase is wild.
If they catch me, I'm finished :
ripped to shreds by foes fierce as lions,
dragged into the forest and left
unlooked for, unremembered.
God, if I've done what they say--
betrayed my friends,
ripped off my enemies--
If my hands are really that dirty,
let them get me, walk all over me,
leave me flat on my face in the dirt.
Stand up, God, pit your holy fury
against the fury of my enemies
Wake up, God. My accusers have packed
the courtroom; it's judgment time.
Take your place on the bench, reach for your gavel,
throw out the false charges against me.
I'm ready, confident in your verdict :
"Innocent."
Nobody gets by with anything,
God is already in action--
Sword honed on his whetstone,
bow strung, arrow on the string,
Lethal weapons in hand
each arrow a flaming missile.
See that man shoveling dirt day after day,
digging, then concealing, his man-trap
down that lonely stretch of road?
Go back and look again--you'll see him in it
headfirst,
legs waving in the breeze.
That's what happens :
mischief backfires;
violence boomerangs.
I'm thanking God, who makes things right.
I'm singing the fame of heaven-high God.
(Psalm 7)
IRS files tax lien on lawyer's property
BY RAY GRONBERG, The Herald-Sun
November 20, 2006 12:23 am
DURHAM -- Regulators from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service have filed an $809,110 tax lien against the property of a Durham lawyer who's been active on the local political scene.
The Oct. 25 filing targeted Jerry Clayton, lead partner of Clayton, Myrick, McClanahan & Coulter, a Parrish Street law firm. It sought payment on the unpaid balance of personal income taxes assessed in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Attempts to reach Clayton for comment Thursday, Friday and Sunday were unsuccessful. But a Duke Law School tax expert, Lawrence Zelenak, said the filing means that IRS officials believe there's no real dispute about whether the taxes are owed.
"The lien means the liability for the tax has already been established, and it's purely a collection matter," Zelenak said. "If the liability was ever in question, the litigation has already been concluded, or maybe he never contested the liability."
Another Duke Law School tax expert, Alan Weinberg, said the IRS files liens after sending a target four or five warning letters over a period of about four months.
The escalating series of warning letters is supposed to give the taxpayer advance notice that the federal agency intends to file the lien and "start looking for assets to seize."
"The right to levy on property is an extremely powerful instrument," said Weinberg, the director of Duke's Low Income Taxpayer Clinic and a former IRS district counsel who from 1981 to 1995 was in charge of all the agency's legal matters in North Carolina.
The IRS filing provided few details about Clayton's liability. It specified that he owed $273,567 for 2002, $245,006 for 2003 and $290,537 for 2004. But it wasn't clear whether those amounts represented unpaid taxes only or also included penalties and interest.
The form did specify that the assessments for the three tax years date respectively from November 2003, May 2006 and November 2005.
Zelenak and Weinberg both said the filing of a lien indicates that IRS officials don't intend to pursue criminal charges against the targeted taxpayer.
"Once they go to collection, they've pretty well made a decision they're not going to do anything criminally," Weinberg said.
A lien is a serious step all by itself.
"You have to either raise the money, or anticipate you'll be losing the property they put the lien on," Zelenak said.
IRS officials filed the lien in the clerk of court's office in Durham County. Records there indicate that Clayton is having trouble with state tax collectors.
The state Department of Revenue filed two "certificates of tax liability" against him on Oct. 4 that seek to collect on a $1,735 balance from 2003 and a $66,097 balance from 2004. The state papers – the legal equivalent of civil judgments – specify that the totals include unpaid income taxes, plus penalties and interest.
Clayton isn't the only member of the Durham bar who's had tax trouble in recent years.
Lawyers Ann and Thomas Loflin pleaded guilty last year to six counts each of willful failure to file state income-tax returns. The charges alleged that they didn't file their returns for the years 1998 to 2003. They received two years' probation. The N.C. Bar Association later suspended their law licenses, but they received conditional stays of those sanctions.
Clayton is a player in the politics of the local bar, mostly as an opponent of Durham's incumbent district attorneys. He and his law partners helped bankroll challenges to former DA Jim Hardin in 1994 and incumbent Mike Nifong this year.
Clayton attended a mid-September political dinner in Raleigh orchestrated by former state attorney general and secretary of state Rufus Edmisten, with several other Nifong opponents who wanted to persuade write-in candidate Steve Monks to drop out of the DA's race so another challenger would have a better chance to win.
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