Tax Audit

A bright, young, fresh-out-of-school auditor just joined the IRS, excited to begin tracking down high-powered offenders-just as the Enron or WorldCom guys. Anxious for his first high-powered audit, he was a bit dismayed when his assignment was to audit a Rabbi.

Looking over the books and taxes were pretty straight forward, and the Rabbi clearly very frugal, so he thought he'd make his day interesting by having a little fun with the Rabbi. "Rabbi," he said, "I noticed that you buy a lot of candles."

"Yes," answered the Rabbi.

"Well, Rabbi, what do you do with the candle drippings?" he asked.

"A good question," noted the Rabbi. "We actually save them up and when we have enough, we send them back to the candle maker. And every now and then, they send us a free box of candles."

"Oh," replied the auditor somewhat disappointed that his unusual question actually had a practical answer. So he thought he'd go on, in his obnoxious way..."Rabbi, what about all these matzo purchases? What do you do with the crumbs from the matzo?"

"Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi calmly, "we actually collect up all the crumbs from the matzo and when we have enough, we send them in a box back to the manufacturer and every now and then, they send a box of matzo balls."

"Oh," replied the auditor, thinking hard how to fluster the Rabbi. "Well, Rabbi," he went on, "what do you do with all the foreskins from the circumcisions?"

"Yes, here too, we do not waste," answered the Rabbi. "What we do is save up all the foreskins, and when we have enough we actually send them to the I.R.S."

"The I.R.S.?," questioned the auditor in disbelief.

"Ahh, yes," replied the Rabbi, " the I.R.S." ...and about once a year, they send us a little prick like you."