A Mansfield, Ohio, woman was arrested and jailed for failure to file a 2001 city income tax bill totaling 96 cents.
Markeeta Gould, 26, earned $55 that year, working part-time as a nurse's aide. She says when she received a letter from the Income Tax Division of the city finance director's office last year about missed filing, she explained the situation to a city employee who told her not to bother with the trifling amount.
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"She said, 'If you only made $55, we won't worry about it,' " Gould told the Mansfield News Journal.
But, on Feb. 19, she was arrested in front of her children.
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The trouble began that day when Gould reported a break-in.
"The officer who came out said, 'Do you know you have a warrant out for your arrest?'" she said.
Gould was shocked.
"I had to call my brother to come and get my kids," she said. "I bailed myself out of jail."
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She pleaded innocent to the charges of failure to file a tax return. Her bench trial is scheduled for March 15.
Finance Director Sandra Converse told the paper the city has a mandatory income tax return filing requirement for working-age residents – whether they earned income or not. She says her employees repeatedly tried to get Gould to file the return, and tried to contact her five times by mail, phone or in person between Oct. 10, 2003, and Dec. 8, 2004.
Converse said Gould's initial court date was Jan. 7, but she didn't show.
Gould said she was not informed of the court date.
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When the city brings charges, the amount owed is not the issue; it's non-compliance with rules everyone else has to follow, Converse said.
"We don't know what people owe if they do not file," she said. "We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't enforce this (filing rule). Sometimes people owe quite a bit of money and that's why they haven't filed."
Gould said she was embarrassed to be arrested.
"I'm a mother and I'm a law-abiding citizen," she said. "I paid my taxes every year before and I paid my taxes every year after. With me getting arrested, I could lose my job."
