Columbia, S.C. ? F. Scott Fitzgerald probably didn’t care for the Internal Revenue Service any more than the rest of us.

In 1934, for instance, he got a “Second Notice” demanding payment and warning of a 6.4-cent-a-day penalty if he didn’t cough up the cash.

Some things never seem to change.

And how do we know this? Because the University of South Carolina, in something of an audit from the grave, has coughed up the late writer’s tax returns from 1920 to 1940, the period that encompassed his writing and tax-paying lifetime.

The university unveiled them Tuesday, capitalizing on the proximity to April 15.

They are part of USC’s Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli collection of Fitzgerald materials, and are the only known archival set of tax returns for a major American writer.

Matthew Bruccoli, Jefferies Professor of English at USC and a biographer of the author, fished the returns out of Fitzgerald’s daughter’s garbage can several decades ago.

“With her permission,” Bruccoli hastily added.

Examining them makes it clear that Fitzgerald  best known as the author of “The Great Gatsby” and ranked with William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway among the giants of 20th century American literature  wasn’t quite the money-scrounging boozehound that myth has it, Bruccoli said.

In fact, in his first return in 1920, Fitzgerald reported an income of $16,495, which translates into something between $112,000 and $160,000 in 2002 currency. The difference depends on whether you make a conservative or liberal calculation, Bruccoli said.

In 1925, the year “Gatsby” appeared, Fitzgerald’s income was $17,148. The following year, in which he started receiving money from the novel’s publication, his income jumped to $23,000. In other words, Fitzgerald didn’t have to get by solely on the kindness of his friends.

His worst year, in the middle of the Depression, came in 1936 when his earnings fell to $7,500. But employment by MGM studios in Hollywood came to the rescue, and in 1937 he reported income of $23,000.

In 1938, he filed separate returns for himself and his wife, Zelda, totaling $48,000, or the liberally figured equivalent of nearly half a million dollars.

In 1939, the year before his death, his income included a fascinating pittance: $625 paid by David O. Selznick, producer of “Gone With the Wind,” for a few days work rewriting a scene involving the character Aunt Pittypat.