Having spent three full months in Louisiana shooting a movie, I have a certain affinity for its down home charm and drive-thru daiquiri shops. The more you read about and deal with this state, however, the more you come to understand just how thoroughly fucked it is.
I received a letter in the mail a few months ago from the Louisiana Department of Revenue claiming that I failed to pay sufficient taxes on income I earned while shooting I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell back in the summer of 2008. I was shocked both at the letter’s tardiness (it’s been TWO YEARS) and, after reviewing the Louisiana tax code, it’s factual correctness. I immediately sent in a check for the past due amount and it cleared about a month later.
Well, yesterday I got another letter in the mail from the Louisiana Department of Revenue. This time threatening dire consequences if I did not remit payment immediately. Fearing they might throw the book at me and levy some heinous, draconian punishment like forcing me to live there, I called the customer service number on the letterhead this morning.
It was busy. I called again. Busy again. I called twenty minutes later. Still busy. Busy??? What kind of public agency only has a single phone line?!? It’s not like I was trying to call the Office of the Registrar for Left-Handed Pedophiles. I was calling the Department of Revenue!
The Department of Revenue is, I would gather, one of the state’s more important public agencies. Sure, Louisiana regularly ranks amongst the country’s poorest states, but that can’t possibly mean they are so poor that they can afford only a single phone line?! Can it?
I’d call the Louisiana Office of Public Relations to find out, but it’s lunchtime there right now and they’re probably all at a casino chain-smoking over a buffet plate.
