Written by Scott Allen

Suggestions for Happy Living Despite Having an IRS Problem, Part 4

Tempe AZ IRS Tax Lien

  • I’ve learned that a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.—Andy Rooney
  • A smile increases your face value.—Anonymous
  • Some people smile very naturally.  Some may be happy but haven’t told their faces about it yet.—Dr. Joe J. Christensen
  • Find a volunteer agency, school, or church that could use your help and volunteer your services for a few hours a month.
Do you have a IRS tax lien in Tempe AZ upsetting your marriage?  Are you tired of the Tempe AZ IRS sending you “love letters”?  There are several options available to resolve your IRS tax debt.  Each settlement option has pros and cons.  However, one is always better that the rest and is usually quite obvious once the facts have been presented to you without prejudice towards any one solution.  That is why Scott Allen E.A. should be your choice when confronted with a serious IRS tax lien problem in Tempe AZ.  Call 480-926-9300 to schedule your free initial consultation.

Scott Allen E.A. has witnessed the success of his family’s IRS resolution practice first hand and is carrying on the tradition to the second generation.  Tax Debt Advisors, Inc. has been helping individuals like you with IRS tax problems since 1977.

 

Written by Scott Allen

Suggestions for Happy Living Despite Having an IRS Problem, Part 3

Chandler AZ IRS Tax Debt

  • Happiness is a state of the spirit and an attitude of the mind.—David O. McKay
  • A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.—Anonymous
  • As you are getting ready for the day, practice smiling in the mirror.
  • Set a goal of consciously smiling at people you don’t know during the day.
  • Write the name of someone who makes you happy on a piece of paper and put it in your pocket.  Refer to it during the day and always smile when you think of that person.
There are several options available to settle your Chandler AZ IRS tax debt.  Each IRS settlement options for Chandler AZ taxpayers has pros and cons—something good about it as wells as something not so good.  However, one is always better that the rest and is usually quite obvious once the facts have been presented to you without prejudice towards any one IRS debt solution.  That is why Tax Debt Advisors should be your choice when confronted with a serious Chandler AZ IRS problem.  We offer a free consultation.

Scott Allen E.A. has witnessed the success of his family’s IRS resolution practice near Chandler Arizona first hand and is carrying on the tradition to the second generation.  Tax Debt Advisors has been helping individuals like you with IRS tax problems since 1977.  Scott is licensed to represent you before the IRS in all 50 states.  He will only take your case if it is in your best interest.  That is why our family business is going on its 45th year.  Scott Allen E.A. promises straight answers and follow through service and guarantees the most aggressive Arizona tax preparation and IRS settlement allowed by law.

 

Written by Scott Allen

Suggestions for Happy Living Despite Having an IRS Problem, Part 1

Gilbert AZ IRS Tax Problem

  • Look for the good in people and in your surroundings.  Avoid being a fault-finder.
  • Don’t dwell on disappointments.
  • Take time to smell the flowers; don’t be in such a hurry to get somewhere: that you miss the moments of happiness along the way.
  • Consider the importance of being happy now.  Recognize each day as a new opportunity for happiness, regardless of what may have occurred the previous day.
  • Surround yourself with happy reminders of the good and beautiful; pictures of loved ones, uplifting music, books and paintings, and mementos of happy experiences.

There are several options available to settle your Gilbert Arizona IRS tax debt.  Each settlement options has pros and cons—something good about it as wells as something not so good.  However, one is always better that the rest and is usually quite obvious once the facts have been presented to you without prejudice towards any one IRS solution.  That is why Scott Allen E.A. should be your choice when confronted with a serious Gilbert AZ IRS problem or IRS audit.  Call 480-926-9300 to schedule your free initial consultation.

Scott Allen E.A. has witnessed the success of his family’s IRS resolution practice first hand and is carrying on the tradition to the second generation.  Tax Debt Advisors, Inc. has been helping individuals like you with IRS audit and debt problems since 1977.  You will only work with Scott Allen E.A. from start to finish.  Scott is licensed to represent you before the IRS in all 50 states.  He will only take your case if it is in your best interest.  That is why our family business is enjoying its 45th year.  Scott Allen E.A. promises straight answers and follow through service and guarantees the most aggressive Gilbert AZ tax preparation and IRS settlements allowed by law.  Call Scott to schedule your free initial consultation at 480-926-9300.  He will make today a great day for you!  For more information go to Stop IRS Action.com.

 

Written by Scott Allen

Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus and your Sedona AZ IRS Problem

Sedona AZ IRS Problem

Read our thoughts on this and how philosophy can help you through your Sedona Arizona IRS problem.  We all have “rocks” in our life whether its the IRS, a bad divorce, or eating too much candy.  Hopefully these thoughts we have written down here for you can be of some help or some inspiration.

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Finding Meaning in Life through Engagement not Reflection.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Sisyphus was a character in Greek Mythology.  He was condemned by the gods to a truly pointless task.  He had to roll a rock up a mountain and when he got it to the top it would roll down from its own weight, and Sisyphus would have to do it over again and again and again.  This condemnation of the gods was for all eternity.  Camus refers to this as “the absurd.”  The task assigned to Sisyphus has reference to what we do in our lives.  Don’t we all at some time look at our lives and ask, “What does this all add up to?”  In the case of Sisyphus, I cannot think of anything more absurd than a lifetime filled with futile labor.

The absurd to Camus is a confrontation between the rational human mind and the mind that deserves and demands justice and expects the universe to be comprehensible.  Camus says that the conflict comes when we realize that we live in “universe of benign indifference.”
We are all born with a sense of justice and fairness.  Even young children know how they want to be treated.  We project this longing for justice and fairness onto the universe, and we expect the universe to fulfill our demands.  We think, for example that evil should be punished and goodness rewarded.
Sisyphus is immortal.  What makes his life absurd is the fact that he is condemned to an eternity of futility.    To be condemned to a life with eternal futility is even more absurd than the life we live.  I remember learning about our city and state and country and being amazed by the size of the world.  Then I learned about our solar system and the Milky Way galaxy and that there are billons of stars larger than our earth in our galaxy.  And then I learned that there were billions and billions of galaxies.  I started to feel very insignificant especially when I realized that the universe was over 15 billion years old and that my life time was so infinitesimally short compared to the age of the universe.

I am always intrigued when my children would come to me with something they don’t understand and they ask, “Why?” And that is followed by another and another “Why?”  Eventually I have to say to the child that I don’t know.  Eventually we run out of answers for all of their whys and have to eventually accept that we just don’t know.  There is a limit to what our reason can justify in life.  Eventually we will always be back into the corner of the absurd.

One must eventually ask, “How does Sisyphus cope with the absurd?”  Camus makes it very clear, in telling this story that he refers to Sisyphus as “the absurd hero.”  While we might readily agree that the situation is absurd, but what makes him a hero?”

Camus says that “Sisyphus makes his rock, his thing.”  He puts his whole self into his labor, and one can imagine Sisyphus as he rolls the rock up the mountain coming to notice, appreciate, and even love the various contours and markings on the rock itself.  He comes to study and appreciate, and even become very fond of, the various bumps and levels that the rock has to proceed along.  There is a sense, in which, what he does, is throw himself into his labor.  The consequence of this, Camus tells us, is that Sisyphus must be considered happy.  He can be content and satisfied with his situation through engagement.

There is a way of guaranteeing that you will hate any routine task at home or work.  By always looking at the clock and seeing how much more time you have to go—or looking at the task itself and saying, “I am only half way through,” as you reflect on what you are doing, you in fact undermine it.  Reflection poisons the experience.
Insofar as we get into what we do—make ourselves simply love every moment of it; we love the process, even though it might be painful or tedious at times—to the extent we live our lives to the fullest we are happy.  What is interesting here is that the role of reflection—reason—is a problem insofar that reflections has to do with asking ourselves the question, “What does this amount to?”  The answer is going to be deeply unsatisfying.  You read in Ecclesiastes in the Bible that our lives amount to essentially nothing.
One of the themes of Camus’s philosophy is rebellion.  Sisyphus rebels, but what is interesting is he does not do what we would expect him to do; to drop the rock and refuse to push it any further.  He continues to push the rock.  That is his fate.  As he does it, he rebels in the sense that he refuses to accept the absurdity that has been imposed upon him by the gods.  Nietzsche calls this “amor fati”—love of fate.
Sisyphus must say, “This is what I do, and I am not going to think about the fact that for eternity it will add up to nothing.”  To Dostoevsky consciousness is not a blessing.  Consciousness is not our aim.  Consciousness is the problem.  Camus says of Sisyphus: “If his story is tragic, it is tragic because the hero is conscious.”  Conscious means self-conscious or reflective.  The universe is absurd and does not satisfy our moral demands or our demands for understanding it as well.

To Camus, we either find the meaning of life, in our lives, or we are not going to find it at all.  The message of The Myth of Sisyphus is that insofar as you are wholly engaged in your life and you taste the experience that you have, that is what gives it  meaning.  Once you elevate yourself to a philosophical level and start reflecting, and start asking yourself the questions, “What does it all amount to?  What is its meaning?’—then suddenly you don’t have any answers.

What we get in Camus is a very interesting perspective on our lives in which the idea is not to look at our lives objectively from a distance.  When we do that –detach ourselves from our own experience and engagements—the result is something that is utterly unsatisfactory.  If you watch a couple kissing, there is a sense in which it looks ridiculous.  It is only when you are the one that is engaged in that activity that it becomes meaningful.  Camus wants to see that it is only when we are fully engaged in our lives that life makes sense.

So what is your rock in life?  Each of us has at least one rock and most of us have a  bagful.  The admonition of Jesus to “take up your cross, daily” is a directive to get engaged in positive activity and to do it to the point that we become unaware or even concerned what your activity adds up to.   Sisyphus’ rock is the equivalent to taking up our cross.

I have read stories of ordinary citizens in Germany, after their city was devastated by Allied bombers during World War II, would be stacking bricks, putting the rubble into piles, sweeping the sidewalks and streets and cleaning up the debris the very next morning.  Those who could play a musical instrument would accompany the work being done with Mozart and Beethoven.

The German people did this even though they knew their city would be bombed the very next day and the day after that.  Is it any wonder that Germany, despite the terrible devastation brought against them by the American and Russian armies was the first country to successfully restore its economy after the war?

Conclusion

I guess it is pretty easy to guess if you are reading this blog that your IRS problem in Sedona AZ is your rock.  The only difference is that it is a temporary event, not one for eternity.  However Albert Camus shares with us in his great story, The Myth of Sisyphus the importance of getting engaged in resolving your IRS matter and not just sitting around reflecting on it.  May I suggest that you contact Scott Allen E.A. and schedule a free consultation to determine the best way to take action to resolve your Sedona AZ IRS problem.  Scott can be reached at 480-926-9300.  It will be the best engagement action you can take and he will make sure that your “rock” (IRS) goes away.

 

Written by Scott Allen

Tax Debt Advisors—How do I qualify for Equitable Tax Relief in Glendale AZ?

Glendale AZ Equitable Tax Relief

Equitable tax relief may be available if you do not qualify Separation of Liability Relief.  If you filed correctly and owe IRS taxes on a jointly filed return but you feel that the tax is attributable to your spouse, you can petition the IRS for relief using IRS Form 8857.  To qualify for Glendale AZ equitable tax relief you must prove that considering the facts and circumstances, it would be unfair for the IRS to hold you responsible for the taxes owed.

Scott Allen E.A. of Tax Debt Advisors has the expertise to consult with you about your chances of getting relief of an IRS tax burden in Glendale AZ through the equitable tax relief program.  Tax Debt Advisors has been helping taxpayers since 1977.  Call for a free consultation at 480-926-9300.

Written by Scott Allen

Tax Debt Advisors help—What is an Offer in Compromise?

Tempe AZ IRS Offer in Compromise

An Offer in Compromise (OIC) is an offer to pay less than what you owe to the IRS and receive a complete settlement of all past tax debts, including interest and penalties.  The OIC program is only one of several ways to settle your Tempe AZ tax debt for less than what you owe.  IRS Form 656 and Form 433-A are the OIC accepted forms for individuals.  IRS Form 433-A Worksheet calculates the amount that needs to be offered.  The terms and conditions of the OIC include filing and paying on time your taxes for the next five years.  If you cannot file your individual tax return (1040) by April 15, you must request an automatic extension and file and full pay by the extension deadline.  The IRS approves only a small percentage of the offers submitted.  In 2004 only 16% of the OIC’s were accepted.  In 2010 the percentage was 24%.

It is a big mistake to file an OIC unless you are fairly certain you will have acceptance.  Interest and penalties continue to accrue as well as the statute of limitations.  If it takes the IRS 2 years to reject you OIC, you will come out of the process in much worse shape than when you submitted your OIC.

Tax Debt Advisors is next doors to Tempe AZ and has the experience to properly calculate and submit an OIC with a high degree of success.  Tax Debt Advisors has been assisting clients on Tempe AZ IRS problems for over 45 years.

 

Written by Scott Allen

We are Mesa Arizona’s Top IRS Problem Solvers for Offers in Compromise—General Information

IRS Offer in Compromise Mesa AZ

Here is some general information the IRS Offer in Compromise.  Beyond the basics you are best to consult with a local IRS resolution expert in Arizona.  If you truly cannot afford to pay back the taxes owed, including the interest and penalties, you may be a candidate to apply for an Offer in Compromise.  This IRS settlement option allows you to settle your entire debt for a lesser amount.  This can be done by making short monthly payments or one lump sum.

An Offer in compromise has an advantage over filing a bankruptcy because payroll taxes cannot be eliminated by filing a bankruptcy.  Once your offer has been accepted and you have paid in full the agreed amount, the IRS will remove all tax liens.  The amount that is considered acceptable by the IRS is based on your ability to pay.  Financial statements with proof of all of your personal and business expenses will have to be provided along with bank statements.

Many potential Mesa AZ Offer in Compromise clients qualify for an Offer but the amount considered acceptable to the IRS is more than the taxpayer can pay.  To determine if you are a viable Offer candidate, contact Scott Allen E.A. of Tax Debt Advisors, Inc.

 

Written by Scott Allen

We are Mesa Arizona’s Top IRS Problem Solvers for Payroll Tax Debt

Payroll taxes are not dischargeable in a bankruptcy and therefore need to be resolved with some other IRS settlement option.  A monthly payment plan will require you to pay the principle, interest and penalties in full or until the statute of limitations runs out which will be 10 years from the date of assessment of the IRS tax debt.  If your monthly payment is very small or the statute of limitations is about to expire or you qualify for a currently not collectible status you may want to selection one of these options versus an IRS Offer in Compromise.  The Offer program may be the best option if none of the above apply to you.

The Offer program is a lengthy process that will require you to stay in compliance during and after you have been approved and made the required payment.  Few taxpayers understand the process and how to keep their Offer from being disallowed.  Scott Allen E.A. in Mesa AZ provides a free initial consultation and can walk you through all the steps needed to select the right settlement option.  You can reach Scott Allen E.A. at 480-926-9300.

info@taxdebtadvisors.com

Written by Scott Allen

Voltaire and Your Arizona IRS Problem

There are many valid arguments in the philosophy of Voltaire.  The best source containing many of his ideas comes from his novel titled, Candide.  Knowing that having a serious IRS matter is not to be taken lightly, Scott Allen E.A know the reality of what you are facing.  Scott Allen has the expertise you are seeking and can provide you the best IRS settlement allowed by law.  Call Scott Allen E.A. at 480-926-9300 and schedule your free initial consultation.

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Candide—“Cultivating our Garden”

“Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.”—Voltaire
“Work saves us from three great evils; boredom, vice and need.”—Voltaire, Candide
Voltaire was a French philosopher, novelist, playwright who insisted that the task of the intellectual is to “Crush infamy!”  For Voltaire, infamy consisted of all forms of intolerance.  Despite imprisonment and exile, Voltaire spent much of his life resisting the tyranny of religious and political repression.
In this Chapter we will review his novel, Candide, published in 1759, to demonstrate his combination of wit, satire and narrative skills to expose the philosophy of optimism.  I am referring to the kind of optimism that prevents our awareness of evil, especially of kind of evil that is the product of human cruelty or complacency.
Voltaire grew up in a middle class home, received a Jesuit education and took up the practice of law.  He soon abandoned his career in law for literature.  His satiric writings soon put him on the wrong side of the law and he spent 11 months in the Bastille when he was in his early 20s.  His imprisonment did not deter him from continuing to write and publish works critical of social injustice and political inequity.  Although his business speculations made him a rich man by the time he was in his early 30s, his wealth did not protect him from further imprisonment.
In 1726, Voltaire left France and spent three years in exile, mostly in England.  His philosophical letters, originally called The English Letters, which were published in 1734, was a result of his time in England.  The letters are the work of an imaginary French visitor to England writing home, praising English tolerance and pragmatism.  Their publication, like so much of Voltaire’s work, upset the authorities and his printer was imprisoned and the letters were publicly burned.

After publishing these philosophical letters, Voltaire was condemned by the Parliament of Paris as offensive to politics and religion.  When he returned to France, Voltaire spent the next 15 years living on the estate of his wealthy patron and mistress, studying and writing extensively.  After her death in 1749, Voltaire lived at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia until 1752.   Only when he was in his late 50s did Voltaire finally purchase property of his own outside of Geneva, Switzerland.  Voltaire spent the last 20 years of his life in Geneva at his estate, where he wrote essays, participated in politics and corresponded with royalty, philosophers and actors.

In the last year of his life, 1778, Voltaire, now famous throughout Europe as a social critic and writer, returned to Paris in triumph, but died three months later.  He was denied burial in consecrated ground and his body was smuggled out of Paris.  In 1791 his remains were returned to Paris and in an elaborate funeral procession organized by French revolutionaries, he was buried at the Pantheon.  When the Bourbons returned to power, the remains of both Voltaire and Rousseau were removed from the Pantheon, carried in a sack to the outskirts of the city and dumped into a pit of quicklime.
Voltaire was one of the Enlightenment’s preeminent philosophers who believed in human perfectibility, religious tolerance and deism which is a belief based on nature and reason, and in the existence of a God or Supreme Being rather than the Christian God of revealed religion.

With their progressive views, especially the concept of religious tolerance and rational inquiry, these writers inevitably challenged the political, religious and philosophical establishments.  Voltaire’s work spans across the spectrum of literary genres and style, from drama to history and philosophy.  He believed that experience in the material world could be categorized and thus controlled through the intellect.

Though Voltaire considered his best work to be his tragedies, he is remembered now mostly for his satirical works like Candide.  Candide was published anonymously in 1759 and distributed illegally.  It enjoyed instant success, even though those who were the objects of this satire naturally condemned it as scandalous and indecent.
The police were ordered to seize all copies of Candide that could be found, but the controversy only served to fuel the book’s popularity, and by the end of the year at least 17 editions of the work had been published.  Religious officials pronounced the book full of dangerous principles concerning religion and encouraging moral deprivation.
Candide voices outrage against the capacity of man to brutalize his fellowmen and spares no one in his attacks.  Voltaire attacks the aristocrats, military and religious power structures that work together to create a world of cruelty and inequality because it supports their own vices—greed, decadence, hypocrisy and egotism.  Voltaire’s ridiculously contrived plots, impossible coincidences and people resurrected from the dead, mocks the gullibility of readers of fiction who mistake the imaginary for actual events.
The dark comedy of the misadventures of Candide and his companions is a mockery of a belief in a rational and just plan for the universe without providing much comfort and optimism for the future.  Voltaire satirizes, in particular, the optimistic philosophy of Leibniz.  Voltaire reduces Leibniz’ philosophy to an unfairly simplistic formula: Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
According to Leibniz, God is omnipotent and, therefore, could have made any kind of world, but he is also benevolent, and so He would necessarily have made the best possible world so that what may strike us as problematic, or evil, or difficult in the creation is really there to provide some greater good which would have been lost had the apparent evil not been part of the plan.  To take a very simplistic example, if we fall off a ladder and break a leg, or an expensive vase falls and breaks into a hundred pieces, we might see gravity as a destructive part of the universe we live in.  Since God could have made any kind of world, He could have made one without gravity.  The logic of this argument would say, gravity keeps everything in its place and keeps us from flying off into space, and so the benefits of gravity outweigh its detriments.  The best of all possible worlds, therefore, will necessarily have gravity in it.

This argument applies to everything in our world.  It is true for earthquakes, floods, famines and disease.  All of which are necessary if we could simply see the larger picture to understand what greater good comes from these apparent evils.

This theory can be a comfort in times of disaster.  If something really terrible happens to us, we may be able to feel slightly better about it if we can understand that it is serving some larger good.  But it can also lead to apathy to make the world better, since if all pain and suffering in the world serve some larger purpose; there is no reason to try to minimize it because it is there to provide some greater good.
Voltaire himself was an optimist early in his life.  It was the trendy idea of the age, and it could be reconciled with Deism, which was the religion of the intelligentsia, which saw God as a cosmic watch maker who had created the universe, wound it up, and then left it to run by its own natural laws.  As Voltaire grew older, though, he found it harder to justify the sheer amount of misery and calamity in the world with confidence that it was leading to some greater good.  A turning point for him was the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755.  On the Catholic calendar, November 1st is All Saints’ Day, so many of the inhabitants of Lisbon were in church when the earthquake struck.  It leveled the city and it killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people.  In a letter that Voltaire wrote shortly after the Lisbon earthquake he said:
People will be hard put to explain how the laws of motion bring about such frightful disasters in the best of all possible worlds; a hundred thousand ants, our neighbors, wiped out at one stroke in this single ant-hill, and half of them perishing no doubt in indescribable agonies amid ruins from which they could not be dragged; families ruined at the ends of Europe, the fortunes of a hundred traders…buried in the ruins of Lisbon—what a terrible gamble is the game of human life!…If the Pope had been at Lisbon, would he have dared to say, All is well?…There is a terrible argument against optimism.
The full response of Voltaire to the Lisbon earthquake and to his abandoning the whole idea of Optimism came four years later in Candide, which is subtitled Optimism.  Everything that happens to the little group of protagonists Voltaire brings together in this book has happened to somebody in the course of history, and some of the events in the book are based on actual historical events.
Reading Candide is like watching a Roadrunner cartoon in which Wile E. Coyotes is killed about ten times in five minutes, and every time he bounces back to skim through his Acme catalogue to come up with his next plan for catching the Roadrunner.  Every episode or adventure leads to the next without there being necessarily a causal connection between them.  Candide is a satire on human efforts to comprehend life and the universe.
Candide is about the misadventures of Candide, Voltaire’s naïve hero, whose name suggests both his directness, his honest—he is candid—but also in its Latin form means “white.”   Candide adheres steadfastly to the tenets of optimism, as taught to him by his childhood mentor, Pangloss: “Pan,” which means “all,” and “gloss,” which means “language” or “talk.”  Pangloss preaches Leibniz’ philosophy, that all is good in the world, despite any evidence to the contrary.

Pangloss gives lessons on “metaphysico-theological-comolonigology,” whatever the heck that is.   He proved admirably that there cannot possibly be an effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron’s castle was the best of all castles, and his wife the best of all possible baronesses.
‘It is clear,” said he, ‘that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end.  Observe.  Noses were made to support spectacles.  Hence, we have spectacles.  Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be shaped and build castles with, thus my lord has a fine castle; for the greatest baron in the province should have the finest house.  And since pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round.  Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best.’
Pangloss is all talk and is incapable of judging reality, which is, on the evidence of what happens to him and Candide, pretty amazing.  Cunegonde is Candide’s love interest and his search for her is the plot of this novel.  Cunegonde is also a student of Pangloss, but life’s hardships lead her to become ambivalent about his optimistic teachings and thus suggest that women’s more pragmatic approach to reality might be, in the end, more productive than merely philosophizing about life.
Half way through Candide’s journeys, he meets Martin, who remains the hero’s travel companion throughout the rest of the story.  Martin is a pessimist, a self-described Manichean—that is, one who sees the universe as a battlefield between good and evil and who predictably sees the world contrary to Pangloss.
In the first half of the novel, Candide’s journey is determined by chance rather than by his own free will.  In the second half, Candide actively pursues his own choices, although it does not seem to offer him any advantage in dealing with the world.
In chapter 1, Candide is exiled from his native Wesphalia, an earthly paradise, when his protector discovers his daughter, the Baroness Cunegonde, kissing Candide.  Candide innocently believes that life at the Baron’s chateau is “the best of all possible worlds,” as Pangloss has taught him and thus he accepts being exiled from what he believes to be paradise.  Candide’s education about the real nature of the world begins as soon as he leaves Wesphalia and finds himself ultimately fleeing violence or persecution and being saved by the goodness of strangers.
In chapter 2, for example, he is duped into joining the Bulgarian army, but deserts his unit when he experiences the atrocities of war.  Atrocities committed first by one side and then in revenge by the other, but all in accordance with law. When he flees to Holland, he escapes these horrors and is reunited with Dr. Pangloss, who is at first unrecognizable because he is suffering the ravages of syphilis:
Despite his condition, Pangloss insists that syphilis is a necessary ingredient, and indispensable part of the best of all possible worlds, since his private misfortune generates the need for public welfare.  His condition gives others the opportunity to practice charity.
Pangloss and Candide then travel to Lisbon, just in time to be injured in the terrible earthquake that devastated the city in 1755.  Pangloss appears to die at the hands of the Inquisition, while Candide narrowly escapes death and is reunited with Cunegonde who miraculously recovers from the rape and disemboweling committed on her body by Bulgarian soldiers. By chance, Candide kills her lover, the Grand Inquisitor and then flees with her to the New World, where Candide once again loses Cunegonde to a lascivious colonial governor in Buenos Aires.  Candide once again escapes death by vengeful natives in Paraguay, and his companion, Cacambo concludes, “This hemisphere is no better than the other.”
Giving themselves over entirely to fate, Candide and Cacambo take a small boat down the river in Paraguay where they discover the mythical city of El Dorado, where the streets are paved in gold, people are good-natured, healthy and free of ambition and everyone is equal and equally enlightened.
Candide’s departure from El Dorado suggests that even if Pangloss were right, even if there were a place where all was for the best and the best of all possible worlds, it is in man’s nature to reject it and see a more varied happiness, one that is more desirable, precisely because it is more uncertain.

In the second half of the narrative, Candide decides his own fate by choosing an itinerary with the goal of finding Cunegonde.  Returning to the real world from El Dorado is thwarted and prolonged by villains.
Cunegonde, our hero’s only hope of happiness, remains elusive until late in the novel, when Candide and his associates rescue her.   But this only brings disillusionment as she is not longer as Candide remembers her.
The tender lover Candide, sees his lovely Cunegonde with her skin weathered, her eyes bloodshot, her breast fallen, her cheeks seamed, her arms red and scaly, recoiled three steps in horror, and then advance, only out of politeness.
In the last chapter, Candide, Cunegonde, Cacambo, Martin, Old Woman and Pangloss settle together on a small plot of land in Turkey.  When not arguing with each other, they inevitably encounter the last of human vices, boredom.
‘I should like to know,’ says the Old Woman, “Which is worse, being raped 100 times by Negro pirates, having a buttock cut off, running the gauntlet in the Bulgur army, being flogged and hanged, being dissected, and rowing in the galley, experiencing, in a word, all the miseries though which we have passed, or else just setting here, doing nothing?’
They attempt to rejoin humanity but consult some locals first.  One tells them not to concern themselves with God’s intentions; an old farmer tells them not to concern themselves with public affairs and just work their land, which will spare them from the three evils: boredom, vice, and need.  The whole group take this advice and cultivate their garden and find a certain degree of peace and happiness—though it is an imperfect happiness.
Dr. Pangloss’ philosophizing provides no solution to the problem of evil in the world.  Pangloss’ optimism is worse than the mere absence of the solution because it justifies passivity and indifference to the cruelties in this world.  Thus, like other defenses against evil, such as the Christian belief in the value of suffering and a heavenly reward, or the romanticized violence of medieval conquests, Pangloss’ optimism does nothing to resist evil or change the world for the better.
Voltaire wishes to challenge the philosophy of optimism in order to argue for the presence of free will in man.  According to Voltaire, Leibniz asserts that God made only one world, “the best of all possible worlds,” which necessarily includes original sin.  Leibniz thus sustains a central claim of the religious establishment, that man is born evil and must depend on the Church for spiritual reform.
Voltaire argues that man is born free to choose between good and evil.  The many instances of vice and corruption encountered in Candide are not part of God’s master plan; rather, these evils are the product of man’s failure to choose good and resist evil.
In El Dorado, a world that exists outside of both the New and Old World—in other words, a utopian space.  Candide suggests tentatively:
This is probably the country where everything is for the best, for it’s absolutely necessary that such a country should exist somewhere; and whatever master Pangloss said of the matter, I have often had occasion to notice that things went very badly in Westphalia.
One of the most disturbing episodes in this story happens when Candide tries to hire a passage on a boat from Surinam to Italy, along with a couple of rare sheep he still has left over from El Dorado.  The Dutch merchant with whom he is trying to book a passage sets a fee; Candide agrees to pay it.  But the ease with which Candide has decided that he will pay that fee suggests to the merchant that he is dealing with a rich man, so he goes away and comes back a little later.  He says, “I’m going to have to double that fee.”  Candide say, “Okay.”  So the merchant leaves again and comes back a little bit later and he raises the fee again.  Candide says, “Alright, I’ll pay that.”  Then the merchant takes the sheep and all of Candide’s luggage aboard and then sets sail without Candide.  Candide immediately rushes to the house of a Dutch magistrate and there he knocks very loudly on the door.  He is, after all upset after having lost a great fortune to the merchant.
In telling his story, he perhaps speaks a little louder than he usually does and the magistrate fines him a large amount for disturbing the peace.  After paying the fine the magistrate says, “Okay, now, if you talk quietly, I’ll listen to the rest of your story.”  Candide tells him the whole story of what the merchant did to him.  The magistrate charges him another exorbitant fee for listening to the story, promises to look into it, and then that is the end of the matter.  Nothing ever comes of it.  Candide, in reflecting back on this, says that, while he has endured a lot more painful experiences, this one really affected him the most.  He says that the sheer treachery of the merchant and the mechanical, complacent, coldness of the magistrate make him dwell on what he calls the “malice of men in all its ugliness” and this puts him into a very deep melancholy.
And so it goes throughout the course of this book.  Just outside Surinam, Candide and his traveling companion come up upon a black man who is missing a right hand and a left leg.  He tells them that he works in a sugar mill as a slave.  Once he caught his finger in the machinery and the punishment for catching your finger in the machinery is to have your hand cut off.  Once he tried to run away and the punishment for trying to run away is to have your leg cut off.  Candide tells his companion he thinks he is going to have to give up on the theory of Optimism.  When his companion says, “What is Optimism?”  Candide says, “It’s a mania for saying that all is well when one is in Hell.”  Despite his pity for the Negro, Candide’s belief that even this injustice must serve a useful purpose shows his passivity in the face of evil.
The question about all of this is where does human nature come from?  Why are humans the way they are?  Candide asks Martin:
Do you believe that men have always massacred one another as they do today?  That they have always been liars, traitors, ingrates, thieves, weaklings, sneaks, cowards, backbiters, gluttons, drunkards, misers, climbers, killers, calumniators, sensualists, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?
And Martin says, “What do you think?  Do you think hawks have always eaten pigeons when they could find them?  For Martin, human nature is as fixed as hawk nature.  The overwhelming theme in Candide is that people are corrupt, even if they were not born that way.  This is a very pessimistic view of the world, but even Martin, the pessimist, admits that it is always good to have hope.  This book offers the only hope for happiness in a largely corrupt world through the exercise of a collective free will, that is, “cultivating our gardens” or creating a greater social good.
The whole little group entered into this laudable scheme.  Each one began to exercise his talents.  The little plot yielded fine crops.  Cunegonde was, to tell the truth, remarkably ugly, but she became an excellent pastry cook.  Old Woman did the laundry.  Everyone did something useful.  Pangloss sometimes used to say to Candide, ‘All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds, for, after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunegonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t traveled across America on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the Baron, if you hadn’t lost all of your sheep from the good land of El Dorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.
‘That is very well put,’ said Candide, ‘but we must cultivate our garden.’
There are lots of ways we can interpret cultivation of our garden.  Voltaire uses a metaphor about “mice in the galleys.”  This metaphor suggests that the universe was not made for our specifications any more than the ship was made for mice.  Like the mice, we are accidental tourists on this planet.  Speculations about good and evil, about the purposes of creation, are as foolish as mice speculating on the nature of the ship.
The Turkish farmers says that work keeps us, individually from boredom, vice and poverty.  That is, if we stay busy, we will be less likely to be entangled in pointless speculations like the mice on the galley.  Martin says, “Let’s work without speculating, it’s the only way of rendering life bearable.”

Voltaire Quotes
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Scott Allen E.A. has witnessed the success of his family’s IRS resolution practice first hand and is carrying on the tradition to the second generation.  Tax Debt Advisors, Inc. in Arizona has been helping individuals like you with IRS tax problems since 1977.  You will only work with Scott Allen E.A. from start to finish.  Scott is licensed to represent you before the IRS in all 50 states.  He will only take your case if it is in your best interest.  That is why our family business is enjoying its 37th year.  Scott Allen E.A. promises straight answers and follow through service and guarantees the most aggressive tax preparation and IRS settlements allowed by law.  Call Scott to schedule your free initial consultation at 480-926-9300.  He will make today a great day for you!  For more information go to Stop IRS Action.com.

info@taxdebtadvisors.com

Written by Scott Allen

We are Mesa Arizona’s Top IRS Problem Solvers for Offer in Compromise—Big Warning !

Let’s start out with a big warning. Very few taxpayers qualify to do an IRS Offer in Compromise. Most cannot afford the amount of the Offer the IRS will accept. If you are told by a IRS resolution professional that you qualify for an Offer in Compromise get a second opinion. This is especially true if you are talking with an out of state company that often make promises they cannot keep. Get your second opinion locally here in Arizona. You will probably find out that you do not qualify for the Offer amount you were first told and you will likely feel better about using a local company as well.
Scott Allen E.A. of Mesa AZ is the right choice to get your correct determination if you qualify for an Offer and the amount you would qualify for. Often the Offer in Compromise option is not the best settlement option. Before you leap into a commitment financially, call Scott Allen E.A. at 480-926-9300 and schedule a free initial consultation. You will quickly know you have made the right decision during your first appointment.

info@taxdebtadvisors.com

1 2