The Australian Author - Apr 1980
Letter
US Author Fights Bureaucracy
WE THINK that we have troubles - which we do - but writers in other countries have their tangles with bureaucracy. Recently to hand is the October/November issue of the SFWA Forum. Among the information therein is an account of the hassle that Alice Sheldon (better known to readers as "James Tiptree Jr.") is having with the tax gatherers of Fairfax County, Virginia. I quote:
"The County Office of Assessments decided that Sheldon was a business and sent her a license application. This license would give her the privilege of forking over 0.31% of her income - and without it she can’t legally write science fiction in Fairfax County!
Paul Smith, who is Director of this Office of Assessments, claims to have issued licenses to poets, musicians and painters. All have tried to sweet-talk or threaten their way out of it, he said, but all of them eventually broke down and got the license.
'Science Fiction writers.' he said, 'are no different from everybody else.'
Alice Sheldon is, though, and she refused to apply. 'It is my hope to achieve jail,' she says."
A. BERTRAM CHANDLER