I know how to revolutionize our income tax system.

[Famspear]

Frank Brushaber filed this suit not because tax was being taken from him, and NOT because he had to pay the tax himself on his own income, but to contest the burden laid upon his corporation in being forced to bear the burden and expense of being made a federal tax collector in the form of a Withholding Agent, and as such, to consequently collect income tax for the federal government from certain persons. As a shareholder (an owner of the company), Frank Brushaber had legal standing to contest the legal and economic burdens placed on the company by the legislation in mandating that the company collect tax for the federal government from certain persons.

Corporation and business are taxable under the 16th amendment and therefore valid because they are indirect not direct.

Again, you're bobbing and weaving -- apparently in an effort to imply that had the tax been imposed "directly" on Frank Brushaber, the Court in this case would have concluded that the tax was a "direct tax" on him, and that the tax would therefore have been unconstitutional, since "direct taxes" have to be apportioned, and this tax was not apportioned.

If you believe that the Supreme Court would have ruled the tax to be unconstitutional had it been applied "directly" to Mr. Brushaber, you are wrong.

I can do this with you pretty much indefinitely, fella.

[Famspear]

Jamey wrote:

The Court recognized that since the power granted by the Amendment to tax income, by virtue of the wording of the 16th Amendment itself, is "without apportionment", then it cannot be applied as a direct tax, because direct taxes MUST still be apportioned....

Incorrect. The Court recognized no such thing in Brushaber.

You are still equivocating on the word "direct." Here, you are taking what the court SAID about "direct taxes" (where the Court was referring to "direct taxes" as that term is used in Article I, section eight) and you are falsely applying the Court's statements to the term "direct tax" as YOU are using the term - to mean, more or less "a tax imposed directly on Mr. Brushaber" (or directly on you or directly on me or directly some other individual).

You are engaging in a logical fallacy called "whole word equivocation."

I took Logic of Legal Discourse in law school, buddy, and I made an A in the course.

[The Observer]

The idiocy of tax protesters shows there is no limit to their stupidity when they try to argue that the 16th Amendment doesn't mean what it says. This idiocy gets taken to several extremes, as Jameson has demonstrated here. But the basic idiocy is the protester believing that Congress went to all that effort to pass an amendment that somehow results in a different outcome than what Congress intended. Either we have to believe that:

(1) Congress did not want to tax incomes, but produced an amendment that appears to say that the government can tax incomes. The problem with that angle is if Congress did not want to tax incomes, they would not have needed to pass any amendment in the first place due to the status quo.

(2) Congress did want to tax incomes, but got the language wrong - effectively the "magic" loophole. So the protester relies on twisting the meanings of words/phrases and relying on tortured interpretations of court rulings to come to the fallacious conclusion that the amendment doesn't allow income to be taxed. But if that were the case, all Congress had to do was pass another amendment that would correct the "faulty" language. The fact that this has not happened over the last 102 years would suggest to logical people that the amendment is properly and legally sufficient in granting the government to power to tax incomes.

(3) Congress wanted to only tax some incomes, and not everyone's income. In other words, not the tax protesters's income, but just government employees, foreign citizens, lawyers, or any other person besides the TP. Except you cannot find anything in the amendment that specifically shows that only certain income was be taxed on certain occupations.

The bottom line on all of this, leaving out the legal rulings of Brushaber, Pollock, etc., is the common sense argument: Why in the hell would Congress go to the effort of passing the 16th amendment if there was no intention on their part to tax income? And why would they would be inept in constructing such an amendment if they wanted to ensure that they could tax income? I am reasonably confident that the language of the 16th was submitted to a number of reviews so that it would pass legal muster when it would inevitably be challenged in the courts.

[Famspear]

This has to be frustrating for Jamey, because neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any other federal court has ever bought his argument.

Tax protesters have contended for years that the lower federal courts just don't follow the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on this "direct tax" concept. Yet, every single time that a taxpayer who loses at the lower courts tries to get the Supreme Court to overturn the lower courts, the Supreme Court simply lets the lower court's supposedly "erroneous" decision stand -- by denying the taxpayer's petition.

Example, Hayward v. Day:

Nelson W. Hayward, convicted by a jury in 1978 of four counts of failure to file an income tax return in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7203, appeals the denial of his postconviction petition filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255.

In this pro se appeal Hayward contends: (1) An income tax on wages is illegal as a direct tax on the source of income; (2) he therefore had no duty to file an income tax return; (3) his failure to file could not have been willful; and (4) the district court erred in denying the petition without a hearing.

These claims are frivolous. Congress clearly intended to tax income regardless of the source. See Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1, 18, 36 S.Ct. 236, 241, 60 L.Ed. 493 (1916)....

This appeal is dismissed as frivolous......

--from Hayward v. Day, 619 F.2d 716 (8th Cir. 1980) (per curiam), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 969, 100 S. Ct. 2951 (1980) (footnote not reproduced).

PS: The U.S. Supreme Court denial of Hayward's petition came on May 27, 1980.

[The Observer]

This appeal is dismissed as frivolous......

Wait a minute - are you implying that Jameson's position is...dare I say it?...frivolous?

[Famspear]

....The bottom line on all of this, leaving out the legal rulings of Brushaber, Pollock, etc., is the common sense argument: Why in the hell would Congress go to the effort of passing the 16th amendment if there was no intention on their part to tax income? And why would they would be inept in constructing such an amendment if they wanted to ensure that they could tax income? I am reasonably confident that the language of the 16th was submitted to a number of reviews so that it would pass legal muster when it would inevitably be challenged in the courts.

Not only that, but the Sixteenth Amendment was approved by the legislatures of 42 states. The tax protesters would apparently have us believe the state legislatures must have somehow "known" that the Amendment didn't "really" mean what it says -- that the members of the state legislatures somehow "knew" that the Amendment had this twisted, convoluted "meaning" that the tax protesters claim it somehow means.

Same thing for the Supreme Court's decision in Brushaber. The Court rejected every challenge to the constitutionality of the federal income tax presented in that case, and yet Jamey and others of his ilk strain to try to argue that somehow the current federal income tax imposed "directly" on them under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as amended is somehow unconstitutional.

This idiocy reminds me of the old "Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified" argument. Some tax protesters argue that most of the states never ratified the Amendment -- despite the fact that not one member of any state legislature ever objected when the Secretary of State certified the Amendment as having been ratified in February 1913. This stupid argument never even showed up in a court dispute until SIXTY-TWO YEARS LATER -- in 1975! Not one state legislature has ever claimed that it did not really ratify the Amendment, either before 1975 or since.

[Fmotlgroupie]

I don't think logic has much to do with Jameson's positions. He's far enough down the rabbit hole that the only protection he has from a tax-penalty-induced bankruptcy is the ephemerally thin protection of TP ideas, and he's trying to make them real through the intensity of his belief. It's the only way he could read the same court decisions the rest of us read, and come away thinking the court said the opposite of what it actually did.

[Duke2Earl]

What it comes down to when the manure is spread out is 2 points...
1. The fallacy that the government, either MA or Federal have any obligation whatsoever to explain anything to him at all, and
2. The fact that the hammer hasn't come down yet means it won't.

Everything else is simple nonsense

[Pottapaug1938]

I don't think logic has much to do with Jameson's positions. He's far enough down the rabbit hole that the only protection he has from a tax-penalty-induced bankruptcy is the ephemerally thin protection of TP ideas, and he's trying to make them real through the intensity of his belief. It's the only way he could read the same court decisions the rest of us read, and come away thinking the court said the opposite of what it actually did.

To quote, again, Charles P. Pierce's Third Great Premise of Idiot America: fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

Jamey is a poster child for this premise.

[Hyrion]

1. The fallacy that the government, either MA or Federal have any obligation whatsoever to explain anything to him at all, and
2. The fact that the hammer hasn't come down yet means it won't.

And 3:

Do you realize this is just in theory?

[Jameson3171]

The Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. In this case (Brushaber) The Supreme Court tells Frank Brushaber (an American citizen) that the tax IS Constitutional as an indirect tax, and that he (Brushaber) cannot interfere with its scheme of collection at the source by withholding, or the duty of the corporation to withhold tax from certain persons identified in the law.
The court knew that where the burden of the tax is shifted away from the third party tax collector and to the subject taxpayer by withholding, and that where there is no contact between the government and the taxpayer, only between the government and its tax collectors, that the tax is classically indirect, and recognized that the tax was therefore constitutional, and was not imposed by the enacting legislation as a direct tax without apportionment on all persons, or on all income, in the United States, but , rather, was imposed as an indirect tax in the form of a corporate excise and as an individual tax that is collected indirectly by federal tax collectors, those Withholding Agents, by withholding.

[Jameson3171]

Frank Brushaber filed this suit not because tax was being taken from him, and NOT because he had to pay the tax himself on his own income, but to contest the burden laid upon his corporation in being forced to bear the burden and expense of being made a federal tax collector in the form of a Withholding Agent, and as such, to consequently collect income tax for the federal government from certain persons. As a shareholder (an owner of the company), Frank Brushaber had legal standing to contest the legal and economic burdens placed on the company by the legislation in mandating that the company collect tax for the federal government from certain persons.

Corporation and business are taxable under the 16th amendment and therefore valid because they are indirect not direct.

Again, you're bobbing and weaving -- apparently in an effort to imply that had the tax been imposed "directly" on Frank Brushaber, the Court in this case would have concluded that the tax was a "direct tax" on him, and that the tax would therefore have been unconstitutional, since "direct taxes" have to be apportioned, and this tax was not apportioned.

If you believe that the Supreme Court would have ruled the tax to be unconstitutional had it been applied "directly" to Mr. Brushaber, you are wrong.

I can do this with you pretty much indefinitely, fella.

Are you just an idiot? Why are you coming back moronic statements?
In this case (Brushaber) The Supreme Court tells Frank Brushaber (an American citizen) that the tax IS Constitutional as an indirect tax, and that he (Brushaber) cannot interfere with its scheme of collection at the source by withholding, or the duty of the corporation to withhold tax from certain persons identified in the law. The court knew that where the burden of the tax is shifted away from the third party tax collector and to the subject taxpayer by withholding, and that where there is no contact between the government and the taxpayer, only between the government and its tax collectors, that the tax is classically indirect, and recognized that the tax was therefore constitutional, and was not imposed by the enacting legislation as a direct tax without apportionment on all persons, or on all income, in the United States, but , rather, was imposed as an indirect tax in the form of a corporate excise and as an individual tax that is collected indirectly by federal tax collectors, those Withholding Agents, by withholding.

[Famspear]

Are you just an idiot? Why are you coming back moronic statements?

No, I am not an idiot and I am not making moronic statements. But you are an idiot, and you are making moronic statements.

Let's get something straight, grasshopper. I have more knowledge of the Brushaber case in one fingernail than you will ever hope to have in whatever is located between your ears.

[Famspear]

....The court knew that where the burden of the tax is shifted away from the third party tax collector and to the subject taxpayer by withholding, and that where there is no contact between the government and the taxpayer, only between the government and its tax collectors.....

That's bulls**t.

[Pottapaug1938]

I don't give the south-facing end of a north-facing rat whether the income tax is direct or indirect. I simply know that its constitutionality is beyond serious dispute.

[Jameson3171]

Jamie, here's an example of some of the language you're quoting, but apparently not understanding:

However, the Amendment, which removes only "taxes on incomes" from the apportionment rule, was not intended to repeal the direct-tax clauses: not all direct taxes were understood by proponents and ratifiers of the Amendment as "taxes on incomes." The article examines the meaning of these key terms and concludes that it is still possible for a tax to be direct but not a tax on incomes.

You and countless other tax protesters over the years keep missing the point: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER A GIVEN INCOME TAX IS DIRECT OR INDIRECT. POLLOCK WAS OVERRULED BY THE 16TH AMENDMENT.

No! Apparently you are not understanding! Don't take my word for it take, take law professor Erik M. Jensen word for it! http://law.case.edu/OurSchool/FacultySt ... spx?id=118
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=790546

You are in fact a idiot! You making nothing more than moronic statements!

[Jameson3171]

I don't give the south-facing end of a north-facing rat whether the income tax is direct or indirect. I simply know that its constitutionality is beyond serious dispute.

You are also an idiot by making moronic statements!

[AndyK]

And, as the sun sets slowly in the west, this thread has come to an end.

It is obvious that the IP is totally unwilling to accept any facts, laws, or court decisions which contradict his viewpoint.

LOCKED