Copy
Karen Kline
Santa Fe, NM 87505
American Association of Suicidology
4201 Connecticut Are. NW Suite 310
Washington, D.C. 20008
Dear Members,
Having read "Suicide: the silent epidemic," USA Weekend, 6/28-30/96, I am writing to
you because I have a concern that the number of suicides in the United States may be
about to escalate dramatically if there is a connection between the record number of IRS
levies in 1994, 2.9 million, and the record number of bankruptcies and foreclosures this
year, NBC 6/18/96.
Just before the article came out, a friend and I were talking about a friend of hers whose
friend had said he will not pay his taxes anymore, and that if it came to it he would kill
himself.
Added to which, I think often of my office manager who killed himself only a couple of
years ago. Prior to his death, I was aware that he was constantly getting calls at work from
credit card companies, which I recognized as calls asking for money, since only a few
years earlier I had received the exact same kinds of calls.
I would be getting these kinds of calls now, except that my phone was disconnected.
Please look at my letters to Marcia Bullard, Editor, USA Weekend; Donald Skadden,
Executive Director, American Tax Policy Institute; the set of letters to which Merrill
McLoughlin, Editor, U.S. News & World Report, replied; my letter to Peter Sepp,
Director of Media Relations, National Taxpayers Union; and my long letters, with their
enclosures, to Margaret Milner Richardson, IRS Commissioner. (I will send each of these
people a copy of this letter.)
Perhaps, if you see the same potential increase in suicides that I see, you can get the media
to give the problem of IRS abuse of people, and people's human rights, some coverage.
I am certain, absolutely certain, that IRS has caused more deaths in the last two years than
has the Unibomber in the last eighteen years.
For myself when I realized that I was having near head-on collisions every time IRS called
me, I decided that I would kill myself, knowingly, rather than have an accident in which I
might also kill innocent bystanders. While I wrote this in many letters, I am not certain any
of them are included in the bound copy. My death, then, would be in protest of IRS
abuse, rather than an accident.
My intention is to kill myself when the IRS abuse that I am suffering comes to the point
where I no longer have either my home or the property that I was relying on taking care of
me in my old age or any money left with which to live.
This decision has rendered my life tolerable, even with the stress of IRS's abuse; and, it
has given me a focal point for my energy: I am able to tell people how I feel, from which
many people understand not just how I feel, but how everyone feels who is attacked by
IRS.
If you read the enclosed material I think you will see what I mean, even if now you are
skeptical.
Sincerely,
Karen Kline
Karen Kline
7/6/96
