Stan,

I have seen a lot of those stories too. And in the Internet world it probably happens. If you follow most of them there is usually a catch. "I made $10,000 on my songs, you can too, ask me how..." Many are internet legends and myths, fourth and fifth hand retelling. In actuality it probably violates a lot of laws but people do that all the time too.

In a song, unless it has activity, in the form of performance or sales royalties, or in a catalogue that derives actual income it is not of tangible value. So I would question whether the IRS would be taking that as payment. If so Willie could have gotten out of a lot of trouble 15 years ago. He could have just "sold his songs." In reality he did in a way. He recorded an album, "Who wants to buy my memories" in which the proceeds were devoted to his $10 million dollar tax debt. He also had to sell his golf course.

That is a well known solution a lot of songwriters have tried over the years, with not much success. The music industry is a feast or famine business. You can go years between having substantial income, and bills accrue during that time. Often you find hit songwriters really don't make much money on the hit song because they owe a lot of money racked up in draws, salaries, advances, loans, prommisary notes, etc.

Many get huge hits and do well for a while thinking the gravy train will never end. Those are the ones like MC Hammer who end up having their houses forclosed upon and everything sold to pay the tax liens.

I am not saying you're wrong. I don't know. It is something we hear a lot of. And a LOT of songwriters would love to find that solution. "Hey, I've got a bunch of songs that are worth a fortune. I'll just turn them over to you Mr. IRS man and you can sell em' up." I am sure a lot of people would love that deal. But I doubt the IRS would go too much for it. Having been through the audit process with the IRS, I can pretty much say for sure that is the case.

There are always a lot of this that goes around. My Dad was in the collector car business. There was always someone that paid $500 for a $50,000 Mercedes because the wife caught the owner cheating. Happens sometimes, but not quite like most people would be led to believe. My Dad even went for a scheme one time where a guy ran an ad in Playboy Magazine. "Make million dollars overnight only Ten Dollars." It was book that you sent of to a post office box. When he got the book back it had one page.

"Get 100,000 people to send you ten dollars."

Was what it said.

So I imagine there are some people that pay outragous prices for song catalogues, collector art that an aunt got from Picasso, an antique sword that someone paid $10,000 in Hong Kong for only to find out that the sword was a cheap knock off, the Picasso was actually a paint by numbers by Bernie Pickasso, a plumber from upstate New York,or the song catalogue is actually a collection of poems from Artie McCartney and Chester Lenon.

It is buyer beware.

MAB