# Tax, Man By [POAPs Gone Wild](https://paragraph.com/@poapsgonewild) · 2024-02-19 --- There was creampufs, there was reformed chopperazzi, there was lostertarians, there was Iggy Azalea wannabees, there was your standard moonlancers and hustlers, there was a guy who just was damsel-in-distressed, there was apes and punks of course and there was Proof of Attendance Protocols or a POAP as I came to learn. I was a photographer with eyes on starting my own magazine and I guess I was some combination of all the above except I would never get damsel-in-distressed because I hate going online which made me a total outsider in the NFT world. I went every week for a year and sold some photos and made some contacts but the magazine never got off the ground. It wasn’t cheap. The WeWork knockoff charged a 25 USD guest fee (or at least that was what the hosts claimed) and even though the cocktails was served out of a glorified ice cream cart, they still charged 15-20 and I wasn’t above buying some attention. They gave you free olives and almonds and yogurt pretzels and some weeks soft cheeses. Some weeks I got lucky with street parking but usually I paid 15 to park in a garage (Brickell). It added up. By the end of the year, once I threw in mileage, I wrote off 9,000+ USD in business expenses. Of course I was audited. You can avoid one tax authority but you can’t avoid them all. Once Jay the auditor got a hold of me once on the phone, the rest of our conversation was a plodding email chain (of course I was dragging my feet). Jay asked if I kept receipts, and I wrote, _well, it’s all on my credit cards, but you’d have to dig through them and I charge_ everything. And Jay replied, _I’m glad to hear you have an electronic paper trail. Please send me each statement with the relevant line items circled. Electronic PDF is preferred. If you only have print copies and don’t have a fax, it’s fine to take a photo with your phone and email them to me here. Or you can download our app and attach any collateral to your profile._ And I wrote, _Okay, it’s going to take some time as I have 5 credit cards_. And Jay wrote, _I understand. Let me know once you have a date in mind that you will finish your review. If you estimate it will take longer than two weeks, please reply and explain the reason._ And I wrote, _Two weeks seems fine._ And I took every last fourteenth day. The results weren’t great, I had to admit. The WeWork knockoff, in all its brilliance, had used the name “SQ\* NOT NETWORKING PARTY” for its entrance fee charge, and apparently it was a rotating series of guest bars at the ice cream cart so there was no uniformity in those charges which maybe would have helped put Jay more at ease. Jay was turning into a steady drizzle and I was an old slatted roof trying to patch each new leak his inquiries sprung. Probably I had charged closer to 6 or 5,000. It didn’t seem like Jay was going to suddenly declare, _well, we’re getting pretty close here, I think it’s time to move on_. His tone, if you can call an email with a government official as having a tone, appeared to be growing increasingly suspicious that I had even attended any sort of official events at all. Then the real stinger, he asked if I had been writing off only 50% of my meal and alcohol charges, _as the code section 162 dictates_. I hadn’t even known that was a law. There was the POAPs, I came to think. I figured it couldn’t hurt. _I believe it was 50%, I will double-check_, I wrote. _In regards to the attendance of the events themselves, I do have a Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) that I collected each week. I would not have been able to collect these if I was not physically present. As you can see, the art and description clearly indicate that this was a networking event at the location I have described to you._ I linked my collection at the bottom of the email. _You’re telling me that wallet belongs to you, that you’re jhowitzerphoto.eth?_ He wrote back almost immediately. _Yes, that’s me. I’m jhowitzerphoto.eth. Those POAPs are mine_. We weren’t emailing; we were chatting now. _luv me some POAPs, no better signal, case closed! btw do you read_ poaps gone wild? And I wrote, _hell yeah my brother, guilty as charged on both counts,_ and never heard back and was never quite sure if he’d already given as much camaraderie as he was capable – either in his role as an IRS agent or in life or both – or if Jay was just a busy fella and someone had walked in his office at just that moment and then it slipped his mind to ever reply. It’s why we hate going online. --- *Originally published on [POAPs Gone Wild](https://paragraph.com/@poapsgonewild/tax-man)*