Orth - TP uses WEvGOV.com materials but avoids 6673 penalty

[notorial dissent]

Look at Peter E. ("Blowhard") Hendrickson. When his nonsense is shot down in court, he strains to explain that his nonsense was not really shot down, because his followers just didn't present his nonsense quite correctly, or that the courts didn't use "just the right" words to explain what Hendrickson's nonsense is.

But wait - what is Pete's explanation when he presented his nonsense in court and got shot down?

It's all a vast and dark conspiracy against the revealed truf of Prattlin' Pete, a vast conspiracy and judicial fraud. Of course.

[KickahaOta]

Saying 'This argument is frivolous' is shorthand for 'No reasonable person, having done basic research of the issue, would believe that this argument has any chance of success in court.'

As a result, 'frivolousness' is basically a combination of two factors: the meritlessness of the argument, and the number of times that the argument has been presented and lost before.

To give an example of one extreme: Suppose I argue that I should be exempt from income tax because all US currency and income tax forms have embedded nanoelectronics that monitor my thoughts and transmit hostile messages into my brain, and that thus the government has unclean hands. There's a very good chance that this particular argument has never been presented in court before. But even so, it could safely be described as a frivolous argument, because it's so unbelievably meritless that no reasonable person would believe that it has a chance of success.

To give an example of the other extreme: Suppose I argue that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified. This is an argument that, when originally made, was not frivolous, because there were indeed some irregularities in the process surrounding the Sixteenth Amendment (and others), and because the issue of what makes an amendment 'properly ratified' had not been completely worked out to begin with. But as of now, the argument has been made in court again and again and again and again and again, and it has lost at all levels (including the Supreme Court) again and again and again and again and again, and there is no indication that the Supreme Court has any intention of changing its mind on the subject. So it's a frivolous argument, because no reasonable person having looked at the cases would believe that it has a chance of success.

Most of the frivolous arguments listed in documents like "The Truth About Frivolous Tax Arguments" are somewhere in the middle. They're frivolous because the arguments themselves have little or no intrinsic merit, and because the courts have considered and rejected the arguments.

[Jeffrey]

So putting aside the regulation that says money isn't "property" for purposes of §83, could someone argue that his pay isn't taxable because under §83 the value of what he received equaled the value of what he paid?*

That's what I think Myrland is trying to argue. Although as Famspear points out, it's a bit like reading tea leaves.

[Burnaby49]

So putting aside the regulation that says money isn't "property" for purposes of §83, could someone argue that his pay isn't taxable because under §83 the value of what he received equaled the value of what he paid?*

That's what I think Myrland is trying to argue. Although as Famspear points out, it's a bit like reading tea leaves.

If I understand this correctly our Canadian freeman and De-Tax types have tried that one numerous times, arguing that all they did was a non-profit exchange because they gave up labour and time equal in value to their wages. If I recall correctly while I was working in the CRA I found a tax case from the 1950's with exactly the same argument.

We've had the same argument from people wanting to reduce their income through charitable donations. They contribute time to a charity for free and then try to claim the purported value of their time as a charitable deduction. A big one was some scientific researcher who claimed hundreds of thousands of unverifiable (and unreceipted) charital donation deductions for free scientific work he claimed he'd done as a charitable endeavour. He multiplied the number of his estimated unbilled hours by some arbitrary dollar per hour rate he said he was worth to get the claimed amount.

[The Observer]

The general argument that "my-time/labor-wipes-out-my-gain" has been around for a long, long time and has never been accepted by the courts here in the US. Yet we continue to see new idiots swallowing this nonsense and trying to litigate it as though it was the newest concept under the sun.

[notorial dissent]

To paraphrase, those who don't read history, or legal case history, are doomed to repeat it over and over and over.

[Pottapaug1938]

Question 1: "So, you are claiming that you had no income, only an even exchange of labor and time for the cash value of that labor and time."

Answer 1: "That's right."

Question 2: "What was your cost basis? In other words, how much did it cost you to obtain the labor and time which you then exchanged for the cash?"

Answer 2: "Nothing."

Question 3: "So, since your labor and time cost you nothing, yet you were able to exchange it for money, you have received a taxable gain, in the form of income; and you are required to pay taxes on that income."

Answer 3: (insert your choice of irrelevant babblings here).

[LaVidaRoja]

This gets into an issue which (IIRC) was dealt with in the 1980's. The non-compliant claimed a "basis" in their bodies - costs of being fed, clothed, educated, etc. Then they claimed an annual depreciation or depletion allowance that managed to equal their reported income.

[jcolvin2]

This gets into an issue which (IIRC) was dealt with in the 1980's. The non-compliant claimed a "basis" in their bodies - costs of being fed, clothed, educated, etc. Then they claimed an annual depreciation or depletion allowance that managed to equal their reported income.

Maybe TP should argue that the birth bonds connected with their SSNs provide them with basis?