Joseph Schiaffino - criminal charges, state income taxes

[Famspear]

Remember Joseph Schiaffino? (a friend of Arthur Farnsworth).... Some excerpts from Bucks County, Pennsylvania's Bucks County Courier Times, on September 23, 2010:

Judge: Not paying taxes no laughing matter

By: CHRISTOPHER RUVO Bucks County Courier Times

A judge scolded former Perkasie Councilman Joseph P. Schiaffino, who was held for trial after a hearing on charges he did not pay state income taxes in 2005 and 2006.

Charged with tax evasion, Joseph P. Schiaffino admits he has not paid personal income tax since 1996, but the former Perkasie Borough councilman says he is confident that he will not go to prison. [ . . . ] he argued the criminal charges should be dismissed because there is no legal obligation requiring him - or others - to pay personal income tax. [ . . . . ] Schiaffino believes he will win over a jury at his trial, scheduled for Nov 15.

"Going to prison is not an option. It's not going to happen," said Schiaffino, a proponent of the so-called tax honesty movement, which contends paying income tax is voluntary.

[ . . . . ]

The amount of money Schiaffino, a former vice president of Perkasie Borough Council, owes isn't exactly a bank breaker: $561.82 is what he is supposed to pay [the City of] Harrisburg for the years 2005 and 2006.

"They want to throw me in jail for two years for over $500. It's absurd," Schiaffino said during the hearing.

[ . . . . ]

Schiafinno read from tax statutes, claiming the legal language in them shows it is not mandatory to pay personal income taxes. During and after the hearing, he said authorities have no law they can point to that makes it legal for the government to impose an income tax.[ . . . .]

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/c ... atter.html

(bolding added).

If the charges are true, well, Wow! He actually got himself indicted for allegedly failing to pay only $561.82 in state income tax.

[LPC]

Schiafinno read from tax statutes, claiming the legal language in them shows it is not mandatory to pay personal income taxes. During and after the hearing, he said authorities have no law they can point to that makes it legal for the government to impose an income tax.[ . . . .]

Of course, the Pennsylvania income tax statute is very different from the federal income tax statute.

The relevant provision is section 302 of the Tax Reform Code of 1971, 72 P.S. § 7302, titled "Imposition of tax," and subsection a states:

(a) Every resident individual, estate or trust shall be subject to, and shall pay for the privilege of receiving each of the classes of income hereinafter enumerated in section 303, a tax upon each dollar of income received by that resident during that resident's taxable year at the rate of three and seven hundredths per cent.

Doesn't get much plainer than that.

[Gregg]

Doesn't get much plainer than that.

Oh come on.....

1) I'm not a person
2) The monies I receive in exchange for my non public connected common law things I do are not income as defined by ......
3) Getting paid is a common law right and not a privilege
4) I'm special and sovereign, and don't have to pay taxes

[ktesibios]

I used to live in Pennsylvania. As I recall, the tax rate was pretty low- 2.1% back then, IIRC- and if your income came from a plain old job, the paycheck withholding would turn out to have covered it exactly come tax time every year.

That was because the rate was fixed, rather than dependent on income, so there wasn't any bobbling up and down between rate brackets each payday depending on how many hours you got that week.

Every once in a while it would turn out that I owed them some trivial amount of pocket change, so I would mail them a check for one dollar while giggling that it would probably cost them several times as much to process it.

You really couldn't have thunk up a more convenient setup.