Members of my tax class were required to go see Donald Korb, chief counsel for the IRS, speak at UCLA this week. It was pretty weak all around.

To begin, one of our business law professors spent a few minutes kissing Korb's ass. Then Korb got up and kissed his own ass for another 10 or so. It's clear you don't get to be chief counsel of the IRS unless you're a pretty accomplished & talented guy. But Korb went on and on about all the important tax laws he had been a part of in his early career, eg. "Can you believe I was helping design the capital basis recapture rules -- at age 28?" Gee, that's incredible.

It started to make more sense, if not become more tolerable, when it became evident that a major goal of Korb's visit was to recruit students to work for the IRS. He congratulated himself on coming up with their new recruiting slogan "it's a great place to start".

That shows creativity worthy of a federal government agency, I'll grant him that. But doesn't it imply that the IRS may be a great place to "start", but not a great place to "stay"? I think most people imagine if they're going to be mercilessly exploited for the first few years of their career, might as well do it for top dollar in private practice.

The rest of his talk was strangely devoid of any substantive commentary on the state of the tax code or tax policy. His big speculation was considering whether Form 1040 could be redesigned in landscape format, or on two sides of a postcard. He spent a long time on some anecdote about his wife bugging him to clean the garage. And then he left.

To be fair, the kind of people who enjoyed this talk are probably exactly the kind of people well-suited to work in federal govt. So as a recruiting tool, it may be ideal.

27 Oct 05