Randy Nowak, a Florida resident, has been arrested and charge with attempted murder of an employee of the United States for plotting to kill an Internal Revenue Service employee. He wanted the IRS Revenue Officer killed because she was investigating his personal and business finances.

Nowak offered an undercover FBI agent $20,000 to kill the Revenue Officer, and even put $10,000 down toward the deed. He also inquired as to whether the undercover agent would be willing to burn down the IRS office in Lakeland, Florida. The taxpayer allegedly had $4 million hidden in offshore accounts, and was going to owe around $300,000 in back taxes. The tax liabilities related to un-filed corporate taxes for his construction business, R.J. Nowak Enterprises, Inc.

When negotiating with the IRS about tax liabilities, it's probably best if you're not trying to kill the person in charge of auditing you. It's much more cooperative if it doesn't think you're trying to hire a hit man to whack one of its officers. And believe it or not, the IRS does negotiate on tax bills and a taxpayer who goes about it the right way might have some success in reducing what's owed and making payment arrangements.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, run by the University of California provides a great resource for finding ways to reduce your energy consumption through its Home Energy Saver website.

The energy calculator takes climate data as well as local information and combines it with your current residence to find projects you can do to increase your energy efficiency. While the questions are geared toward someone living in a house, my results provided useful tips for apartment living,

I think my favorite part about this energy savings project is that it lets you choose the number of years between installation and the time the upgrade pays for itself. For example when I ran the survey I choose items which would pay for themselves in the first year, since i hope to be moving into a home by that time. I ended up with three actions to take on the actual building which I will pass on for now and two interior activities to reduce energy consumption all of which should pay for themselves in year one. If I purchased a programmable thermostat and finished my conversion to CFL lighting as the survey recommends I would save $120 in energy costs in just one year.

This is a really easy way to get a snapshot of your home energy uses and look for ways to lower your monthly bills. I can't emphasize how great it is to choose actions and upgrades based on the time it takes to pay for itself in savings. Finally the use of local information and the ability to enter my own utility prices pushes this tool over the top. The options I went with are just the tip of the iceberg, homeowners looking for items that pay for themselves over longer periods of time will find even more ideas. I am definitely bookmarking this so that I can run it on any home I am ready to purchase, in case I want to ask for any upgrades before I purchase.

Arguments about the merits of the war effort in Iraq aside, it would be nice to know that the money intended for rebuilding the country and doing positive things was actually doing just that. Sadly, it comes as no surprise to me that hundreds of millions of dollars can't be accounted for in Iraq.

The story goes like this: The Pentagon audited $8.2 billion of U.S. taxpayer money that was supposed to be spent for rebuilding. And almost none of it was accounted for properly. They can't even verify the receipt of goods and services totaling millions of dollars. Crazy items showed up, like $320.8 million paid based on an invoice that simply said "Iraqui Salary Payment." In another situation, $11.1 million was paid to a contractor based upon a voucher that didn't even show what (if anything) was delivered. Allies like the United Kingdom, Poland, and South Korea have been paid $134.8 million, but the Pentagon auditors have no idea why.

All you millionaires reading WalletPop are now put on notice: You're far more likely than me to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Who knew? Well, truthfully, we all probably expected that the IRS audited the wealthy much more often. It just makes sense... the more money there is to audit, the more money there is to squeeze out of the taxpayer. And the IRS has never been about collecting less money from us, the last time I checked.

So the IRS is offering up these odds of being audited... If your income is over a million dollars a year, you have a 1 in 11 chance of being audited. If your income is $100,000 or less per year, you have a 1 in 100 chance of being audited. And for those of you with incomes in between, your chances are in between also.

Lucky for us, audit rates are up across the board. The IRS audited almost 1.4 million tax returns in fiscal 2007, which was about 1% of total individual tax returns. And if you're one of the unlucky who are selected to be audited, you can find a few tips for getting through the trauma successfully on my corporate site.

More on Taxes

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.