Free Agent

Former Internal Revenue Service agent Liz Pasko figures that her old employers get a bum rap, so she's shedding her wraps to make sure you get the message: An income-tax audit needn't be torture, and all auditors aren't ogres.

Pasko contacted Playboy through its Tax Department, naturally enough. It was the only time in history that our corporate accountants were happy to hear from an IRS agent, which is what Liz was for five and a half years. After a big jurisdictional battle, our tax guys passed her on to the Photo Department, where editors carefully reviewed her four-page typed application. It included the following tidbits: Liz's proposed title for this feature (Tits and Tips for Taxes), her turn-on (being "kissed all over my body while blindfolded") and her photo suggestions ("agent with calculator tape over shoulders, around her neck, draped over breasts and meeting between her legs"). The photo editors immediately realized that this was one civil servant our readers would like to get to know better.

Liz is a Skokie, Illinois, girl, raised and educated in the Chicago suburb. She moved on to Loyola University on the city's North Side, where she studied accounting. That's when the nation's tax-collection agency caught her attention. "A lot of people were scared of the IRS," she says. "I thought that if it had such impact on people, it would be a great place to work."

She first tackled corporate pension and profit-sharing plans, then moved on to audit individual and corporate taxpayers. Right from the start, Liz believed in bringing the personal touch to her work. "When I went out on audits," she says, "I knew that people were intimidated already, so I would try to make them feel as comfortable as I possibly could." Evidently, the approach was appreciated. Liz admits that one smitten auditee sent her two dozen roses and that attorneys with whom she worked often tried to fix her up with their sons.

Working for the IRS might sound like the kiss of death for a woman's social life, but Liz reports that "most men found it interesting. Some, though, would think, Now she knows me. I'm a target for an audit." Liz treated that problem by reveling in her power. "I'd say to a guy, 'What did you say your Social Security number was?' "

Like any IRS agent, Liz feels as though she has seen it all: from the golfing periodontist who deducted his country-club membership as a business expense to the elderly women who claimed cats as dependents. Liz has some advice for you: The riskier your deductions, the better your documentation had better be, especially in that cheater's haven---the travel and entertainment line items. Take that periodontist. Because most of his patients were referrals, and his club was over-run with dentists, and because he had documentation, Liz let him take the deduction. The lesson: If you can prove it and conform to regulations, you can take it.

If you want to avoid an audit in the first place, be careful to keep all your tax-form entries as unremarkable as possible. There is a computer in Kansas City that reads every form in the country, and whenever the numbers get out of whack for your region and income, it assigns points that can add up to "audit potential" for your return. Too many points and your personal voyage to tax hell has begun. Still, she says not to worry: "Everybody is a human being, even at the IRS."

Sadly, you won't have a shot at getting Liz Pasko as your agent. She quit the IRS a year and a half ago and is now operating as a private accountant. She has also done modeling work, but---ahem---she's still filing singly. In other words, she's not closing herself off to anything, professionally or personally. Whatever happens, we're sure she'll keep really good records, just in case.