Income Tax: Where Do You Stand?

[lorne]

anyone for a poll?

[bmielke]

Don't like it, but every tax attorney I know says I have to pay it so I will continue to pay it.

Those that say I don't have to pay it seem to end up in jail, and frankly have strong cases against them.

See Peter Eric Henderson current Federal Inmate.

[LPC]

I'm not donating any brain cells.

Besides, the people who need them the most wouldn't know what to do with them.

[Gregg]

I'm not donating any brain cells.

Besides, the people who need them the most wouldn't know what to do with them.

What he said ^

[bmielke]

I'm not donating any brain cells.

Besides, the people who need them the most wouldn't know what to do with them.

Exactly they don't grow back and you know what they say there's a TP is born every minute.

[Dr. Caligari]

I see no possibility, however remote, that the income tax laws do not mean what they say or that the courts will not enforce them as written.

That is not to say that I like the current income tax laws; I think they are outrageous in many respects. But that does not mean they are a "scam."

[The Operative]

I wouldn't donate any brain cells either. Harvester, Lorne, Hendrickson and other TPs do not use the few brain cells that they have. Giving them a few more won't make one bit of difference.

The income tax laws mean exactly what they say. Hendrickson is wrong in his interpretation simply because he has a problem with reading comprehension.

[Nikki]

Other: There is SO not a chance I'd donate a cell or two to those aments.

The graft would reject the host.

[Famspear]

I also would not donate any brain cells; tax protesters generally wouldn't know what to do with 'em if they got 'em (I agree with LPC).

The human capacity for self-delusion is very great. As a group, tax protesters illustrate this point, as do those who believe in "individual sovereignty" for individual Americans, as do those who believe in the existence of "reptilian humanoids," as do those who believe that the Federal Reserve System is a "private cartel," as do those who believe that American lawyers are members of some sort of British registry, etc., etc., etc.

[Dr. Caligari]

I'm open to the remote possibility they may be right; I just don't see it.

As others have pointed out in the past, this kind of statement makes no sense when we are talking about law.

If we are talking about a question of historical fact (Did Oswald kill Kennedy? Was the moon landing faked?), there can be doubt about the accepted story, because the truth exists independently of what people think. But when we are talking about a question of law, in the United States, the law is what the courts say it is. If the courts all say that the income tax reaches non-federally-privileged workers, that is the law.

[Lorax]

As it turns out adult brains can grow new brain cells- a scientific study found that memorizing the streets of London causes London cabbies to grow brain cells in the area responsible for memory. I imagine studying subjects like the law or history has a similar effect, or anything that requires a great deal of memorization.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1101/segments/1101-2.htm

Anyway, tax deniers are, without a doubt, delusional when it comes to taxes- I don't think they're all stupid since I happen to know one- and I'm not donating either. Nobody likes paying taxes, but I think that government has to get some amount of money from somewhere, and that the progressive income tax is one of the fairest ways to do it.

[Harvester]

Hendrickson is right. The human capacity for deception is very great. As a group, Quatlosers illustrate this point, as do those who believe a lie repeated loud and long enough will eventually be believed.

(link redacted)

[lorne]

But when we are talking about a question of law, in the United States, the law is what the courts say it is. If the courts all say that the income tax reaches non-federally-privileged workers, that is the law.

And if the judge ruled the tax does NOT reach non-federally-privileged workers, then that is the law. This suggests that if a TP had an impartial adjudicator, one who hadn't taken the federal seminar in how to handle "tax protester" cases and avoid reversal error, a judge who could read & think for him/herself, without fear or influence, and write their own decisions — then we might get a decision upholding the rule of law.

[notorial dissent]

Delusional as charged, and thank you I am keeping mine.

[.]

if the judge ruled the tax does NOT reach non-federally-privileged workers, then that is the law.

Gosh, lorne, how come no judge at any level has made any ruling that remotely resembles your magic words in the last 97 years or so?

It's not like there's never been a chance to do so, over the decades there have been literally hundreds of people like yourself who have been convicted of tax crimes and incarcerated. Your buddy Pete, for instance.

Don't you think that Congress, after all these many years might have taken notice of these terrible injustices and done something about them?

They managed to rewrite significant parts of IRS collection law as recently as 1998. New and higher penalties for frivolous filings were enacted just a few years ago. Yet they have done nothing about your magic words, even though they have passed many "fixes" of many other laws over the years. How do you explain that lack of action?

Do you think the fact that Congress has totally ignored interpretations of tax law concocted by people like you means anything?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[grixit]

Government has to be funded, and the income tax beats tariffs, tolls, capitations, first fruits, forced bribes, or royal patents. And the income tax has been imposed properly, according to the US Constitution and established procedure, just like the one that says you can't sell milk from cows with whooping cough.

Now sure, i don't like some of how the income tax is implemented, or some of the government's spending priorities, but that's a completely seperate subject.

[Thule]

And if the judge ruled the tax does NOT reach non-federally-privileged workers, then that is the law.

And if a cow has balls, it's a bull.

[wserra]

if a TP had an impartial adjudicator, one who hadn't taken the federal seminar in how to handle "tax protester" cases and avoid reversal error

If you believe that it's a good idea to have judges who are ignorant of the law - who don't follow precedent - then you'll need to go somewhere else.

Somalia would probably be a good place to start looking.

[Joey Smith]

And if the judge ruled the tax does NOT reach non-federally-privileged workers, then that is the law. This suggests that if a TP had an impartial adjudicator, one who hadn't taken the federal seminar in how to handle "tax protester" cases and avoid reversal error, a judge who could read & think for him/herself, without fear or influence, and write their own decisions — then we might get a decision upholding the rule of law.

And where are the law professors and other (real) legal scholars voicing their outrage at your alleged wrong decisions?

The Truth is that the Truth is that tax protestors are simply wrong. No credible legal scholar thinks that tax protestor theories are more than a joke. No judge, including some who have ruled against the IRS in other cases have hinted that there might be the slightest merit to tax protestor positions.

Plus, when did the uneducated morons who are pretty much failures at the other parts of their lives suddenly get the monopoly on knowledge?

[LPC]

And if the judge ruled the tax does NOT reach non-federally-privileged workers, then that is the law. This suggests that if a TP had an impartial adjudicator, one who hadn't taken the federal seminar in how to handle "tax protester" cases and avoid reversal error, a judge who could read & think for him/herself, without fear or influence, and write their own decisions — then we might get a decision upholding the rule of law.

Even if you found someone who was totally ignorant of what judges do and how the law works, and someone who knew nothing whatsoever about the history of the United States and the history of the Constitution, and even if you could somehow get that person into a court as a judge, you would still face at least three insurmountable hurdles:

1. There is nothing in the Internal Revenue Code that supports your claims. The best you could hope for is to convince someone gullible that under section 3401(c) most wages are not subject to withholding, but you would still have nothing in the IRC that excludes those same wages from taxable income or that exempts those wages from tax.

2. The 16th Amendment plainly states that Congress can tax incomes from WHATEVER source derived.

3. The idea that the framers of the Constitution, or the authors of the Internal Revenue Code, intended to tax only federal employees and other incomes derived from "federal privileges" makes no sense whatsoever. A government that can tax only the money that it is paying out, or the incomes from resources that it already controls, is a snake eating its own tail.

The fact of the matter is that no rational person could ever rule in your favor, no matter how ignorant or ill-educated that person might be.

And this conclusion is supported by the fact that, in the history of the United States, not a single judge has ever opined that Congress cannot tax the wages of ordinary employees. Not once, not ever, not even in dissent.