Nickles will make change for the IRS.

Qualifications: Dislikes taxes, suspicious of politicians, knows debtor law and professes poverty. Wake Forest University law professor Steve Nickles figures he's well equipped for his new role: IRS watchdog.

He's one of nine on the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board, created by Congress in 1998 to help modernize and rein in an agency critics accuse of operating with the sensitivity of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Nickles, 51, got a preview of government at work. Nominated for the four-year term by Bill Clinton, who taught at the University of Arkansas law school when he was a student there, his confirmation dragged on until last September. "I was scrutinized mercilessly by everybody from the IRS to Congress and the White House. After all these years, it finally worked in my favor to be poor and boring."

In fact, he's neither. As a department chairman, he earns more than $100,000 at Wake. But as the only academic in a group that includes a big rancher and business executives, he figures he's the poorest of the lot. He grew up in Little Rock, son of a railroad man, and earned a bachelor's in political science in 1971 from the University of Arkansas. He got law degrees from Arkansas in 1975 and from Columbia in 1980. He taught at Arkansas, Texas and Minnesota before his wife joined the faculty at Wake's Wayne Calloway School of Business and Accountancy in 1995. Soon after moving to Winston-Salem, she was hit by a car while jogging. She survived a year-long coma but is disabled.

He and the other oversight board members advise an agency that spends $10 billion a year to collect $2 trillion from taxpayers. The board doesn't make policy but oversees how IRS plays the hand Congress deals it. "Political forces hold up the IRS as an icon--a shield -- for their own actions. Often, it's not so much errors on the part of the IRS as that folks simply disagree with taxes and tax rates." He's among them. "I hate taxes."

At the top of the board's agenda is suggesting to the treasury secretary someone to fill the new post of national taxpayer advocate. "Congress redefined the mission of the IRS. It's not only to collect taxes but to provide customer service and ensure fairness."

The board meets quarterly, but members travel nearly every week on fact-finding trips. For this, they're paid $25,000 a year. Before taxes.

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