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William Hoffman: 'A Consummate Professional'

Posted on Jan. 12, 2022

As national taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson was one of the first officials Tax Notes senior IRS reporter William Hoffman interviewed after he joined Tax Analysts in 2011. Over the next decade, the two spoke many times. In comments below, she reflects on that relationship following his death January 1.

Bill Hoffman was cantankerous, intelligent, filled with curiosity about human beings and the institutions they create, persistent, and a damned fine reporter. A consummate professional. I met Bill at the beginning of his tenure with Tax Analysts; he was assigned the commissioner/national taxpayer advocate beat. Every speech I gave, every panel I was on, it seemed like Bill was there. When I walked off the podium, Bill was there. When I was running to catch a plane or a train or a next meeting, Bill was there. Recorder or notebook (or both) in hand, waiting patiently (or not) for his turn to speak to me, Bill was there.

Bill was an independent thinker—by that I mean he never really asked questions without some underlying plan. Behind his questions was some premise, some aspect that he was chewing on and trying to get more information about, some point he just couldn’t work out but also couldn’t let go. Sometimes I'd say to him, "Bill, you're looking at the wrong thing, look at this other thing." But he couldn't do that until he was satisfied there wasn’t anything more to find out. He wouldn't let go until he was ready.

Being Bill's interview subject was both a fun and annoying experience (he would probably say I was a fun and annoying interview subject). Sometimes he would email his questions in advance of an interview, but other times there was just a general focus, e.g., the filing season, and then we were off. If he asked me a question I thought was too speculative, I would say, "Bill, you know I'm not going to answer that." He would respond, "Fair enough, but it doesn’t hurt to ask," and then he would find a way to ask it again. Like I said, fun and annoying.

A classic Bill story: In 2016 I was traipsing around the country holding public forums with members of Congress on taxpayers' needs and preferences for taxpayer service. Bill was assigned to cover the forums, so wherever I went, he went. That included Hendersonville, North Carolina, where Rep. Mark Meadows was hosting the public forum. Hendersonville is a tiny town in the Blue Ridge mountains; the downtown is about three blocks long and the same wide. The morning after the public forum, my staff and I tried to find a cab or an Uber to take us to the local airport. Well, there was only one Uber to be found, and Bill had commandeered it for his own purposes. We finally got the owner of the bed and breakfast we stayed at to drive us to the airport. When we arrived at the airport, there was Bill, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

When I retired as the national taxpayer advocate  on July 31, 2019, Bill gave me exactly 13 days before the first email arrived in my new mailbox at the Center for Taxpayer Rights. The subject line was "Howdy, and a reporter's request for comment." From that point on, every month, and usually multiple times a month, an email would arrive: "Reporter’s request for comment on deadline." I still have his voice on my voicemail, asking for comment on some issue.

One day in early 2019, after a speech, I was rushing to catch a plane, with Bill following. He made some comment about a former commissioner that seemed so disconnected from reality that I stopped in my tracks and told him that one of these days we needed to have a conversation, off the record, about my experiences with all the commissioners I served with. His eyebrows arched, he grinned, and he said, "Deal." From that day on, at least once a month, he’d say, "When are we having that drink?" We actually set a date for March 2020. Of course, COVID intervened.

The last email I received from Bill was on December 9, 2021. It opened with him saying he was "eagerly looking forward to a new year in which we can finally get that drink together, right?" I'm incredibly sad to say that just this once, Bill was wrong. We will never have that drink. If there is an afterlife, I am sure Bill is grinding his teeth, having lost out on a good story. Like I said, he was a consummate professional, and I will miss him very, very much.

Nina E. Olson
Executive Director
Center for Taxpayer Rights

The author is a member of Tax Analysts' board of directors.

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