SteveSy wrote:
First off it's not a fraudulent tax scheme. The government refuses to prove whether his information is invalid or not.
First off, the government specifically argued in open court that Benson's information is invalid -- and the court has ruled that Benson's information is invalid. And the government has not "refused" to prove Benson's scheme is fraudulent. Benson rehashed his arguments in this particular case. The government argued that Benson's scheme is fraudulent, and the court ruled that the scheme is fraudulent. I posted the quotes from the decision already. Remember, Steve, we're talking here about the real law, not the fake "SteveSy law" that you have previously said you decide for yourself.
The courts have ruled Benson's non-ratification argument to be without merit - over and over for the past twenty years or so. Benson's own arguments could not keep him out of jail years ago. Despite this, Benson himself again raised his arguments again in this very case in this year of 2007.
Benson's hair-splitting over whether he has been allowed to "prove" his case -- which you and other tax protester types have gullibly parrotted -- betrays a misunderstanding of (or, more likely, a refusal to accept) the central reality of the whole "non-ratification" argument, which is:
Whether the Sixteenth Amendment is a valid part of the Constitution is not a question of "fact" that can be "proven" or "disproven" in precisely the same way that one might "prove" or "disprove," for example, that a party to a contract signed a document or that an operator of a waste facility dumped chemical waste on a particular date. Whether the Amendment is a valid part of the Constitution
is a question of law, not a question of fact.
This means that at this point in the history of the republic, the only material inquiry on this point: What have the
courts already ruled? Not "what does Benson say", and not "what do the original source documents say". Philander Knox (the Secretary of State in 1913) looked at the source documents many years ago. Bill Benson supposedly looked at source documents in the mid-1980s, and made his arguments in open court. And the courts have repeatedly considered Benson's arguments. Benson and others like him litigated and re-litigated the issue. The courts ruled in every single case that the Sixteenth Amendment is a valid amendment to the United States Constitution.
In law, we have concepts called res judicata and collateral estoppel. This means that for Benson to
continue to re-litigate this issue as he undeniably did, and to try to sell materials that
claim that the Amendment is not a valid part of the Constitution -- when in reality the courts have already ruled against Benson on that very point -- was fraudulent, according to the court's ruling in this case. In part, it was fraudulent because Benson
actually knows that he and many others have already lost this point in court, and yet continues to try to profit from his incorrect argument by selling his nonsense on the internet.
As an aside: This whole non-ratification fraud scheme was created and furthered by Benson and others in part as a result of their erroneous idea that if the Sixteenth Amendment were not part of the Constitution, Federal income taxes on compensation for personal services (whether called salary, wages, commission, or any other name) would somehow be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, a Federal income tax on such compensation has NEVER been unconstitutional, either before or after the Amendment -- a point which continues to sail right over the heads of many tax protesters.
SteveSy wrote:
Second, simply reading documents should never imply guilt or possible guilt.
Phony argument. Nobody is saying that "simply reading documents" implies guilty or possible guilt -- at least not in the sense I think you mean. The false implication here seems to be that merely having bought Benson's package over the internet would be enough evidence to convict someone of something.
And even if "simply reading documents" does imply guilt or possible guilty, that is not a valid objection. In criminal law, there is essentially no such thing as conclusive evidence of guilt as a matter of law. Even eyewitness testimony that Defendant X shot Victim A is not "conclusive evidence" that Defendant X is guilty of murder, or that Defendant X even shot Victim A. To argue that the IRS should not be able to obtain Benson's customer list merely because a government prosecutor, etc., might infer that a customer is guilty merely because that customer "simply read" the materials is specious. Even if every government law enforcement official were to make that dubious inference, that would not necessarily invalidate the legal authority of the IRS to obtain that information as part of its investigation of that person's tax situation.
The issue is (or would be, if the IRS were to choose to take the section 7602 administrative summons route) whether the IRS should be able to legally force Benson to disclose his customer information as part of an investigation of the customers' tax liabilities.
Essentially, it's POSSIBLE that some customers may have used Benson's materials to commit crimes. It's also POSSIBLE that some of Benson's customers may have used Benson's materials to understate or under pay taxes. It's also POSSIBLE that NONE of Benson's customers have broken the tax laws. It's also POSSIBLE that none of the customers actually owe any tax.
The IRS probably has the legal right to use information from Benson as PART OF THE PROCESS of trying to make its own administrative determination as to which, IF ANY, of Benson's customers may fit into those categories. That is a perfectly permissible use of Benson's material. And even if the IRS concludes that Customer X owes tax or even has committed a crime, Customer X will be entitled to the same rights as anyone else -- regardless of what personnel in the "evil government" might believe about Benson's customers.
Ultimately, at least in the criminal context, the IRS's administrative determination is not binding. Criminal culpability is determined not by the IRS as an administrative matter, but instead through the judicial process.
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet