JUNE 12 - 18, 2009
PHILADELPHIA GAY NEWS
contended that Cesa was not claiming all of his income. On two separate occasions, Cesa allowed two friends to spend a few months living with him because of home renovations and other issues, and the two gave him a small amount of money each month for such expenses as television and Internet. Although there was no lease or any formal rent JOE CESA Photo: Jen Colletta a g r e e m e n t , the auditor said it qualiwearing ratty clothing and have no health insurance, but she’s fied as income on which he had to demanding that I have all this pay taxes. Cesa said it appeared to him that money somewhere,” he said. “And then if it was so important the auditor was determined to find to carry on about this, why would financial wrongdoing on his part. “If you were fishing at a spot she just walk away from this and on the river, and you’re there for forget about it?” Cesa said the auditor also tried five hours and you don’t pull up to demonstrate that he had more anything, you’re not even getting money than he was reporting a boot, something tells me that by inaccurately accusing him of most people would pick up and opening a second business. Cesa go look somewhere else,” he said. said the auditor was referring to a “This woman would sit there until small kiosk he was planning to open she dies.” Cesa said the auditor never in Greenable, an environmentally conscious building supply and projected any outright homophobia, design company on Market but he’d had numerous ACT UP posters hanging in his windows Street. “She said, ‘He’s opening a during her site visits. Cesa contacted U.S. Sen. Arlen restaurant. I know it, it’s on his Web site. He’s expanding.’ And Specter’s office last fall to request my accountant said, ‘He’s opening intervention, and a representative a kiosk. Do you know what a of the senator’s office filed a kiosk is?’ I was going to rent this complaint on his behalf with the tiny space from a business that’s Tax Advocacy Service, an internal already open, and she’s trying to IRS agency that provides support to individuals or businesses with call it a restaurant?” After having purchased all of grievances against the IRS. Cesa the equipment for the kiosk, he said a TAS agency contacted him later had to discontinue plans to in October, but did not return numerous calls Cesa placed to open because of the audit. The auditor additionally him between then and December.
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Cesa said the auditor eventually determined that he owed the IRS $2,000, which he agreed in midJanuary to pay. Stewart noted that taxpayers unsatisfied with the audit process or its results have the option to appeal the case in U.S. Tax Court or District Court, which Cesa said he ideally would have done — but a tax lawyer would have cost him an additional $4,000, which he did not have. Under the agreement, Cesa will now pay the IRS $75 a month until the balance is paid off. Cesa estimated the audit cost him more than $20,000 — in accountant fees, payment to employees who ran the store while he was working on the audit, and about $2,000 in lost income he previously received from cooking snacks for a kindergarten program, which he had to stop during the audit. Cesa also said the excessive hours he spent gathering materials for the audit — which he approximated at about 10 full work weeks out of the six-month period — also prevented him from updating Joe Coffee’s Web site or doing any advertising for the store, which he surmises also impacted his business. Joe Coffee shut down May 27, and Cesa said he now plans to sell his products at Pumpkin Market, 1610 South St., as well as at the weekly Headhouse Market this summer, but that he will also have to seek employment elsewhere to make ends meet. “I’m going to be paying them this pittance every month for a very long time. If I hit the lottery and got $4,000, I’d go to court tomorrow, because this just wasn’t right,” Cesa said. “If this is supposed to be normal and happening to everyone, then right now there’s a retired widow in her kitchen in Northeast Philly having someone screaming at her that she’s a deadbeat and a drain on society. Either I was singled out for something, or they just do this to people at random, but either way, it’s wrong.” ■ Jen Colletta can be reached at jen@epgn.com.
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