American Notes TAXES

"It's purely a business decision," said the note left by Alex Council for his wife Kay in their High Point, N.C., home in 1988. "You will find my body on the lot on the north side of the house." In a chilling tale for taxpayers, the widow last week told a Senate subcommittee that her husband, 49, killed himself so she could use his $250,000 life insurance policy to fight a claim by the Internal Revenue Service that the Councils owed $300,000 in taxes.

"We didn't do anything wrong," Kay Council, 48, testified. "We just got caught up in the middle of a big IRS screw-up." She said she sold their house, paid lawyers $70,000 to take on the IRS and "was cheated of growing old with the man I love."

It was cold comfort, but a federal tax court in October 1988 ruled that the Councils did not owe $300,000 to the IRS. The court said they owed nothing.