Taxes: Puns Won't Pay the Irs

As the dapper, pun-prone host of Public Broadcasting Service's Wall $treet Week, Louis Rukeyser instructs his 10 million viewers on how to invest their money. Now the Internal Revenue Service is suggesting that the teacher may need some lessons of his own. The agency is demanding more than $400,000 in back taxes and penalties from Rukeyser and his wife Alexandra.

The dispute involves losses totaling some $820,000 that the Rukeysers deducted from their income on tax forms for 1980 and 1982. IRS officials say that the deductions, which came from investments in real estate and other tax shelters, were illegitimate because the ventures were never intended to make money. Rukeyser insists that he was expecting profits, and has challenged the IRS claims in U.S. tax court.