The Great Auction of Madness
When Billy Long, the fast-talking, cowboy-hat-wearing auctioneer from Oklahoma, took over the I.R.S., nobody saw it coming. One day, people were filing taxes, the next, Billy had installed a mechanical gavel that slammed every 4 seconds, whether anyone was bidding or not.
“Alright folks,” he said on his first day, standing on a podium in the main office of the I.R.S. with a microphone in one hand and a confused-looking poodle in the other, “We’re makin’ this gub’ment lean, mean, and sellin’ everything in between!”
The staff watched in horror as Billy threw open the doors and rolled in a cart labeled “TOP SECRET TAXPAYER FILES.”
“Let’s start the biddin’ at twenty-five dollars for ol’ Margaret P. from Boise — she’s got three kids, a gluten allergy, and a Costco addiction! Who’ll give me thirty? Thirty-five? Sold! To the man in the trench coat with a suspicious van!”
Despite protests from legal teams and common sense, Billy continued. He began livestreaming daily auctions on “I.R.S. After Dark.” One Tuesday evening, he auctioned off 15,000 Social Security numbers, a rare Beanie Baby collection from a Miami accountant, and a slightly chewed IRS intern lunch.
But things took a turn when Billy discovered the “IRS Puppy Therapy Program,” a wholesome internal project meant to reduce tax-time stress. Within seconds, he had converted the puppy playpen into “Billy’s Bargain Kennel Bonanza.”
“Next up we got Sprinkles! Five months old, part dachshund, part mystery! He’s trained to bark at tax fraud and sit on auditors’ laps. Do I hear fifty? Sixty? You, sir, with the ‘Emotional Support Crocodile,’ you look like you need a friend!”
Puppies were going faster than Bitcoin in 2017.
Eventually, someone asked Billy, “Aren’t there, uh, laws against this?”
Billy grinned, flashing a gold tooth engraved with “1099.”
“Son, when you are the I.R.S., you are the law. Now who wants a copy of Jeff Bezos’s lunch receipts?!”
By the end of the month, the U.S. Government quietly replaced Billy with a fax machine and a sternly worded apology email to every citizen.
Billy, unbothered, went on to launch his own business: “Long Auctions & Puppies – We Sell What You Love and Know Too Much About You.”
Nobody was safe, but everyone had a good laugh—except for Sprinkles, who now runs a small tax consultancy in Nebraska.
