Cusk realized he had also missed a minute or more of the training presentation, to which he now returned his attention with an almost physical force. The CTO was referring to control cards and batches of returns being sent someplace that Cusk deduced might well still be in the Service Center.
‘They’re numbered by batch, then sent for keypunching.’ She accentuated her stressed syllables with the pointer, which was approximately twice the length of a conductor’s baton.
‘Through both gang punching and specialized binary codes, GS-9 keypunch operators scan each return and generate a computer card with 512 key points of data on it, from the TP’s Social Security number—’
‘Which you might hear referred to as “tin.” For TIN, for Taxpayer ID Number—’ The man actually took time writing this on the whiteboard while the Compliance TO held up two computer cards that looked more or less identical from Cusk’s vantage.
‘Please note that both Service Centers and Martinsburg have gone to ninety-column cards,’ the lady said, ‘thereby increasing the computing power of the Service’s IDS, or Integrated Data System.’ The projector moved to an image of what looked more or less exactly like the cards the GS-11 was holding up, although the holes in the card of rectangle were round instead. The Fornix corporation logo on the side was almost as large as the image of the card. ‘This can, in some cases, affect the layout of the printout you’ll receive along with each return you’ll be examining for audit.’
‘For this is what you guys are doing,’ the Personnel aide said, ‘is examining returns for audit-potential.’
‘Which we’ll be getting to in exactly eight minutes,’ the CTO said, giving the Personnel aide something of a look.
Cusk was first aware of an unnaturally pleasant smell originating from somewhere behind him, more pleasant than the processed air of the room and considerably better than the faint sharp-cheddar smell he imagined came off his damp shirt.
‘If the Powers card specs affect your IDS-360 in a significant way, you’ll be given special supplementary training on this by your Group Manager.’
‘Your Group Manager is your Team Leader’s supervisor,’ said the Personnel aide.
‘Overall, the data include TIN, occupation code, dependents, classification of income and deductions, amounts on attached W-2s, 1099s, and similar information.’
‘This is pure transcription,’ the man said. ‘There’s no exams at this phase.’
‘These are transported to Martinsburg, where Card Readers transfer the information to the Central Computers, which check for arithmetic errors, crosscheck the W-2s and income statements—’
‘And very basic discrepancies, which are recorded on the internal printout for each return.’
‘The printouts are known as “Internal Memo 1040-M1s” or just “M1s.”’
‘Although appended to the 1 is the last two digits of the relevant year for the return; for instance, a 1040-M1-84 is a printout for a 1984 1040 Individual Tax Return.’
‘Although these numbers refer to the return’s classification in the Master Files, the printout itself has no real code designation.’
‘In the Master Files, a specific return’s location would be 1040-M1-79 plus the TP’s TIN, so it’s actually a seventeen-character designator.’
‘They’re not here for Systems orientation. The point is that all you’ll see is a printout with the return, because the M1 printout and the return comprise the case file, and what rote examiners do is examine case files for audit potential.’
Cusk was starting to pick up on the rhythms of the dual presentation and the interrelational cues that came from the Training Officer when the presentation had veered into a digression or was covering something comparatively less important. The main one was that she looked at her wristwatch, which made the shadow of the pointer in her hand stick out to the side on the lit screen and point directly at the Personnel aide’s shadow, even though the two were not equally close to the projector. Plus the relevant points were right there in the orientation packet. In the part of his mind that was aware of his own arousal-level, sweat-situation, the room’s temperature, the location of all the exits, the locations and sight lines of all people in the room who might be able to see it if he had an attack—all of which, when he was in any kind of enclosed public situation, took up some part of his awareness no matter how intently he concentrated on whatever was going on in terms of the room’s official business—Cusk was aware of the presence of someone behind and slightly above him, probably just inside the exit door, possibly standing there deciding where he or she would sit. And the possibility that it was a she—for the pleasant scent in the air was perfume, it was reasonable to assume, or else an unusually floral and effeminate kind of men’s cologne—caused another wave of warmth to pass through Cusk’s head and scalp, though not a really severe or attack-grade wave of heat.
‘In essence,’ the Compliance Training Officer said, ‘the master files allow us to verify the arithmetic and check for discrepancies that would take several man-hours to do by hand.’
‘Fact,’ the Personnel aide said. ‘Between six and eleven percent of average annual 1040s contain some basic arithmetical error.’
‘But the Master Files also permit cross-year and cross-return checks,’ the CTO said. ‘Examples: 1040 Line 11 and Line 29—Alimony received and paid.’
‘These are on your Rotes Protocol sheets,’ the Personnel aide said. ‘But they’re essentially done by the time you get the file. Martinsburg’s Master Files perform the crosschecks with the spouse’s return. If there’s a discrepancy, it’s noted on the M1…. Your job will be to determine whether the amounts involved constitute an auditable item.’
‘And, if so, whether it’s a letter-audit through the REC’s AC Pod—Automated Correspondence—or whether it’s in the Service’s interest to direct the entire return to its home District for an office audit.’
‘In essence,’ the Personnel aide said, ‘this is your job. You are on the front lines of deciding which returns are audited and which are not. That’s boiled down to the nutshell. And the criteria for auditability have changed substantially in the past two years, so…’
‘One more example of how Martinsburg fits in the process,’ the CTO said. ‘Line 10.’
The Personnel aide slapped his forehead theatrically. ‘This is one that drove them crazy in the seventies.’
‘Line 10 in Income, on the 1040, requires you to declare state and local tax refunds if the refund is for a year in which you itemized deductions—’
‘—meaning Line 34A, meaning Schedule A.’
‘This was an open invitation to TPs to “misremember” whether they’d itemized the previous year. The incentive was to believe they had not itemized the previous year—’
‘—because then the refunds were not income.’
‘—and prior to the Master Files, it was reasonable of a clever TP to assume that this was not an item that would be checked in Exams. Because the previous year’s return was something you had to fill out a Form 3IR plus 12(A) on.’
‘Return Request Requisition,’ the Personnel aide inserted.
‘And the return had to be recovered from either the Service Center’s archives or the National Records Center, and it was a pain, and took a week, and it was expensive, mainly in man-hours and transport and administration costs, costs which tended to far exceed the fairly small amounts of a state or local refund.’
‘Line 10 was something we just could never afford to check,’ the Personnel aide said. ‘Not to mention the hassle of keeping a return in your Tingle’s in-box for a week while you waited for the 3R to come through.’
‘With the Master Files, the Line 34A option of the TP’s previous return could be automatically checked—you now get alerts on the printout itself whether line 10 is tax-treatable or not, based on the previous returns and the state RE reports.’
‘Although some states’ computer systems aren’t compatible with Martinsburg.’
/> The room’s temperature, as experienced by David Cusk, was now 84 degrees. He heard the distinctive sound of a seat being pulled down into position directly behind him and someone sitting and placing what sounded like two or more cases or personal items in the seat next to her and unzipping what sounded like a portfolio—for it was definitely a female, there was a smell not only of floral perfume but of makeup, which has a distinct complex of scents in a warm room, as well as some type of floral shampoo, and Cusk could actually feel the twin disks of her eyes’ pressure on the back of his head, since he could easily calculate that his head was at least partly within the girl’s sight line of the podium. By watching the presentation, she would also be looking at at least part of the rear of Cusk’s head, and also his neck’s rear, which his short haircut left bare, meaning any droplets that might emerge from the rear of his hair might be clearly visible.
‘That’s not the point. The point is efficiency and economy, and the reason why we’ll be going over the specs and layout of the Martinsburg M1 in detail in the next hour. We cannot overemphasize this. You are not inspectors—your job is not to catch every last little error and discrepancy and forward the 1040 for audit.’
‘That would overwhelm District offices, whose audit resources are severely limited.’
‘The truth—there is capacity in the present Audit Division to audit one-seventh of a percent of all 1040s and 1120s filed this year.’
‘—although this year you’ll be mostly occupied with 1984 returns, since there’s an average ten-month lag between filing and exams, although in the Midwest Region they’ve got this down to closer to nine.’
‘The point,’ the CTO said with a bit of an edge to her voice, ‘is that your job is to determine which returns give evidence of maximum auditability in terms of (a) profitability, and (b) expediency. Which are interlinked, since the more involved and time-consuming the audit, the more expensive it is for the Service, and the lower the net increase to the US Treasury at audit’s end. At the same time, it is true that egregiousness of misreporting is tied to profitability, since negligence penalties kick in at certain pre-set levels of misreporting—’
‘—as well as interest on all moneys due—’
‘—which adds, sometimes significantly, to the audit’s net proceeds.’
The worse it got, the colder the air from the overhead vent should have felt, by contrast. But perversely it didn’t—the hotter Cusk’s internal temperature got, the warmer the downdraft felt, until at a certain point it was like a scirocco or the air from an opened oven—positively hot. Cusk was not exactly having an attack, but he was in the fluttery initial stages of an attack, which in certain ways was worse because it could go either way. He had broken a light sweat, but this was not the problem—the nearby girl was behind him, and as long as the heat and sweat didn’t escalate into a full-fledged attack, his haircut’s rear would disguise any droplets of sweat. Only if it escalated into a real attack where the bits of sweat on his scalp beneath his hair grew and accreted into a density where they became actual droplets and followed gravity down over his exposed neck was there any real chance of the woman behind him noticing and seeing him as repulsive or weird. There was, by way of prophylaxis, the option of looking back and determining the age and attractiveness of the female examiner whose perfume and the faint leather scent of what was probably a purse enveloped Cusk. Since the room’s clock was on the room’s rear wall, there was an obvious excuse for turning quickly and looking backward.
At the podium, the Personnel aide was recounting the massive decentralization of the Service following the King Commission findings of 1952, which placed far greater authority and autonomy in the hands of the fifty-eight District offices, and the current partial re-centralization of processing and automated audit functions through Martinsburg and the Regional Centers, referring both to the ‘era of Region’ and something called ‘the Initiative’ of which Cusk had never heard. Cusk had not attended either of the twelve-week introductory sessions at the IRS’s National Training Centers in Indianapolis and Rotting Flesh LA, both of which were filled through 1985. Instead, he had answered a recruiting advertisement in Today’s Accountant magazine, to which Elkhorn-Brodhead’s library had subscribed. Cusk had had a part-time stacking job in this library as part of his financial aid package.
‘There are two sets of Master Files, in essence one for business entities and one for individuals, in sets that are maintained for three-year periods—’
‘Three years corresponding to the audit window for a given return, meaning we have until April 15 of next year to audit and recover taxes due on returns filed for 1982 taxes, some of which may cross your desk as parts of coordinated exam programs generated either through Compliance or Martinsburg.’
Cusk was now fighting desperately to attend to every last syllable enunciated at the podium. It was his one chance not to begin dwelling on his core temperature and perspiration, which were now severe enough that he felt a sort of yarmulke of heat at his head’s crown, which was one of four main symptoms of a true attack. He knew his face was now starting to gleam with sweat, which was the main reason he had opted not to turn around and get a general attractiveness-level on the tardy female examiner behind him—which could either have possibly forestalled the attack or kick-started it into a full-out attack in which he would be unable to feel or pay attention to anything except his prodigious flow and feelings of uncontrollable heat and total panic at the idea of being seen sweating this way.
The Personnel aide was describing the 3,312 employees at IRS Post 047 in terms of both shift—58 percent worked the 7:10 A.M.–3:00 P.M. (I) shift, 40 percent 3:10–11:00, plus some janitorial + physical plant activity overnight—as well as percentage breakdown of Exams, Clerical, Data Processing, and Administration, most of which Cusk missed because he had entered the incipient stages of an actual attack where his attention telescoped and the state of his own body and its emission of perspiration occupied almost 90 percent of his conscious awareness. He could hear the female behind him clicking her ballpoint pen in a nervous and arrhythmic way, and once a sound that had to be her uncrossing and recrossing her legs in what sounded like sheer hose, a sound that sent a terrible wave of internal heat through Cusk, and caused the first felt drops to go running from armpits down his torso’s sides beneath the dress shirt. He automatically lowered his head during an attack, as well as slumping as far down in his plastic seat as would be inconspicuous, seeking to make himself as small as possible, visually, in terms of the woman behind him, whom he imagined by now to be a heart-stoppingly pretty girl of about Cusk’s own age, with extraordinary posture and composure and a round porcelain face with intimidating blue eyes and overall an almost European hauteur about her. In short, she was Cusk’s fantasy woman—which was as it were the price he paid for being too petrified with fear and self-consciousness to turn around and feign a look at the clock (which read 3:10 P.M.) in order to gauge the woman’s threat in reality. The Compliance Training Officer, he could hear, was alluding to a page in the Exam Orientation Booklet that the current slide on the screen was a representation of that turned out to be exact, item for item, as Cusk lowered his running head further and pretended to study the relevant page of the booklet, circumspectly wiping away each fallen drop of perspiration before it could pucker its dime-sized section of the page, in case anyone would ever need to borrow his booklet and wonder what kind of grotesque, creepy thing had happened to p. B-3’s diagram.
Cusk began gauging the exact distance to the exit in terms of both seconds and number of footsteps, another part of his brain calculating angles, sight lines, and intensities of light at various posts along the path of retreat—at as it were the periphery of his attention. Instinctively, he understood that not every item on the Rote Exams checklist was going to be equally important.
‘What we have here are phases or the elements of triage,’ the CTO said, then stopped briefly while the Personnel aide defined triage for those unfamiliar wi
th the medical term. Claude Sylvanshine, three rows up and four seats to the left of Cusk, was battling between trying to resummon the distinctions between §162 and §212(2) deductions related to rental properties and data incursions of the annual rainfall in Zambia for even-numbered years since 1974, the latter appearing as highlighted columns on the page of a WHO atlas whose editor in chief had some form of psychomotor debility.