Escaping the Plague of Anonymity

On New Year's Eve, I received an anonymous email. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I believe you are a good person and deserve to be saved,” it began.

What disturbed me most about the email wasn’t this person’s accusations about why I needed to be saved, but their arrogant, patronizing assumption that they can accurately judge someone they don’t know, that they think they have the power to “save” anyone (especially someone they don’t know), and that engaging anonymously is acceptable, even righteous.

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A little over a year ago, I agreed to write an article for our local paper, The Crestone Eagle, investigating what seemed to be some kind of governmental or corporate tax fraud.

For years, the town of Crestone had been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sales tax revenue from online purchases made by individuals who did not live within the town’s jurisdiction.

Residents who lived in an unincorporated area adjacent to the town of Crestone had been forced to pay excess sales tax to a government that did not represent them, since those who live outside the town can’t vote in town elections, nor run for office. Despite this fact, companies such as Amazon and AirBnb had been charging these folks an extra 3.5% in sales tax, and remitting this revenue to the town of Crestone since 2020.

Most disturbing was that my research seemed to show that the Crestone Board of Trustees knew they were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of excess tax, but had done nothing to correct the mistake. Instead of acknowledging the error and placing the excess revenue in a reserve account, they spent the money on increased salaries for town staff.

When I initially agreed to write the article, I hadn’t set out to expose anybody. At first, I didn’t know where the excess sales tax revenue was going. Was it being kept by Amazon? Was it being sent to the state? Was the state remitting it to the town or the county? Only after spending many hours tediously combing through the last six years of town budgets did it become clear that the erroneous tax had ended up in the town’s bank account, and email records seemed to show that the town was aware of the mistake.

I’m not a professional journalist working for a major news publication, but I imagine that if I were, this kind of finding would have felt thrilling. Exposing governmental tax fraud seems like it would be a major “win,” but I did not feel like a winner. I felt trapped.

Catching strangers in wrongdoing is a lot different than catching people you see at the grocery store every day. One particular member on the town board was someone I deeply admired — someone who had lived in Crestone for over 30 years, and who I knew wasn’t the type to harbor stolen tax revenue.

I felt torn between two different kinds of loyalty. One was a loyalty to journalistic integrity, and the commitment I’d made to write as truthfully as possible, even when it felt uncomfortable. The other was a loyalty to communal integrity, and an understanding that everyone is owed the opportunity to tell their side of the story.

My hope was that I could somehow manage to achieve both, but if not, I decided that my commitment to communal integrity was more important.

Journalism, after all, is a modern institution meant to compensate for our societies’ lack of communal values. When humans lived in small, hunter-gatherer bands, everyone knew everyone else’s business. There was nothing to expose, because nothing was hidden. There was no privacy, no anonymity, and no one had the ability to operate in the dark.

Only in a much larger society without communal values and with endless opportunities to hide, lie, and deceive, is journalism necessary. To prioritize journalism over community seemed antithetical to the point.

Despite the initial objections of The Eagle’s managing editor, we both ultimately agreed that in the interest of community, I should have an off-the-record conversation with the member of the board who I knew and admired, before going to print. I felt terrified and awkward, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

After two hours of conversation, I felt relieved. “Thank you for not engaging in ‘gotcha journalism’” she said, and hugged me as I left.

Our society is so fractured, and so hell-bent on promoting ego and cowardice over vulnerability and humility, that publishing a “gotcha” article accusing someone of tax fraud feels easier and more noble than sitting down with them face-to-face to ask “what happened?”

I am proud of the article I wrote. I feel I was able to honor my loyalty to both truth and community. No one went to jail, the town copped to their mistake, and the truth ended up being complex and nuanced, as it generally is.

What I hadn’t known prior to having this face-to-face conversation was that the town did contact the Colorado Department of Revenue to ask about the increased sales tax revenue, and was told there wasn’t an error. The increased revenue coincided with Covid, when online purchases, and therefore sales tax revenue, increased significantly. The town did not receive a breakdown of sales tax revenue by address, so they couldn’t properly assess where the purchases were made, and they chalked up the increase to a spike in online shopping.

Ultimately, it became clear that Amazon’s tax software is faulty, and I found evidence of this problem in small towns like ours across the country. Once the Department of Revenue understood the issue, they immediately contacted Amazon to correct the mistake. The Crestone Board of Trustees created a reserve account to deposit any excess sales tax received while the problem was being corrected.

I was reminded by this experience that engaging communally is essential to finding the truth, and that the entire purpose of finding the truth is to honor community.

It’s so much easier to send an anonymous email than it is to say something to someone’s face. Nothing in the email I received has anything to do with me, and if the person who sent it was willing to have an actual conversation with me, this would have been obvious to them. Of course, whoever sent the email has no desire to implicate themselves in their own accusation, which is precisely why they opted for anonymity.

Anonymity is antithetical to community. It prevents growth, hinders self-awareness, and tears down our capacity to cultivate responsibility and accountability.

Living in a small town doesn’t force you to engage with your neighbors, but it certainly makes them harder to avoid. I have so many stories of growth, repair, and healing that have come out of a commitment to stay present and engaged in the practice of community. For those who are willing to do the work, the benefits and rewards are profound.

At the end of the day, avoiding each other is really just avoiding ourselves.