Peymon Mottahedeh and Freedom Law School on Youtube

[Cspeter8]

I made a post here earlier without having clear thoughts about what I was trying to say, so I deleted it. You folks who are interacting on here have impressive intellects. I want my comments to be worthy of your time.

[The Observer]

My memory was inaccurate. He lists 3 scenarios he cannot help with directly: (1) IRS’s backup withholding “C” program (2) Jeopardy assessments under IRC Section 6861, which are extremely rare (3) IRS “lock-in” letters, which the IRS occasionally and arbitrarily sends employers, telling the employer to withhold the maximum amount from your pay. He suggests the solution to item 3 is to work in one's own business. Source: https://www.freedomlawschool.org/restor ... -agreement. BTW, does this board prefer not to see any links to Peymon's website? If not then I won't include them, although it would seem to make it harder for a reader to follow our discussions.

And there is a reason he cannot help with any of those issues directly or even "indirectly", whatever that may mean. Scenarios 1 and 3 originated because people were evading paying the taxes they were liable for by taking money out of sources (withdrawals from investment accounts or filing W-4s with excessive deductions from their paycheck) and then failing to pay the assessment. Scenario 2 is rare as you note, and is typically applied to situations where large cash hoards have been seized (like drug dealers). No one has successfully challenged these rules because it is obvious that not contesting these actions would lead to a situation where a massive number of people could evade paying the tax. Peymon's pseudolegal gibberish can't deal with situations where the money is effectively taken up front.

How does that work out for people who would appeal to a tax court judge for the right to withhold private information that the IRS requests? It seems to me that signing a 1040 form puts a defendant in an indefensible position before any tax court. Just my opinion.

And that is because the Supreme Court has already ruled that the 5th Amendment does not apply in situations regarding the requirement to file and sign a tax return. In fact, the courts have ruled that even criminals must file a returne and include the income they have earned through illegal means; they do not have to reveal the source of the income and cannot be prosecuted for those solely on the basis of a filed return. So youhave been misled into believing that the government can prosecute you for filing an accurate return. But if you are filing returns that are not accurate because you are trying to evade paying tax, then you can be prosecuted - for tax evasion.

Actually Peymon does address this. The "Automated Substitute for Return" ASFR program is now suspended, see recomendation #1 in https://www.tigta.gov/sites/default/fil ... 0078fr.pdf

I still do not understand the relevance of this issue to your maintaining that Peymon is legally correct about the income tax being illegal. I note that the link references a TIGTA audit conducted in 2017. Do you have anything to show that the ASFR program is still currently suspended?

I agree, it is dishonest to file a 1040 return which contains false claims. However, with the income tax record keeping burden and filing burden so massive, and with the foundation of legitimacy of the entire income tax so shaky that no federal lawmaker has ever shown us the law that requires us to file and pay federal income taxes, a very large number of taxpayers are deciding they are done with filing 1040 tax returns.

But none of those arguments mean that the income tax is illegal. Your term "a very large number" needs to be quantified and verified, but even if you do that, it does not mean that income tax is illegal.

Impressive court citations. I'll pass this along to Peymon. I think Peymon's point is, however, that a randomly selected jury of citizens might very well decide that all of these judicial decisions are wrong. They seemed to think Joe Bannister deserved an aquittal.

Except it is rare for juries to resort to jury nullification like Peymon is advocating. Most tax evasion cases result in convictions. And as I pointed out to you before, Bannister was not being prosecuted for tax evasion but for conspiracy, an entirely different allegation and one that is significantly harder to win a guilty verdict. You don't seem to be able to see the difference.

Law-school educated attorneys believe that the constitution is interpreted solely by the courts. However freedom activists believe the constitution is written in plain language to be read and understood and interpreted by every citizen, so that citizenry can use it to limit the power of overreaching government, including courts.

Attorneys don't "believe" anything of the sort. Judicial review has been reserved for the courts ever since our court systems have been established. Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist # 78 that "...[t]he interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts." And there has never been a power or right given in the Constitution that allows people to "limit" the courts by "interpreting" the Constitution on their own volition. This is just more pseudolegal gibberish that has no basis in history or law.

If everyone could just undo the law by coming up with their own interpretation of the law, how long do you think it would take for utter chaos to ensue? How would you recover against a person who injured you in a traffic accident if that person suddenly "interpreted" the traffic laws to be violating his Constitutional freedoms and the court could not award you damages?

I respectfully submit that you refer to the arguments as gibberish because you have too much invested to ever entertain the idea that there is actual substance in that gibbersh.

And I respectfully submit that you are making an assertion that you cannot prove. You have no idea of what I have "invested" or even what I believe. For instance, I do not like the income tax. I think it is invasive and burdensome, and is prone to being used to socially engineer society due to those who believe that being wealthy is somehow morally wrong. I believe it interferes with the day-to-day economy and results in adverse outcomes. I would prefer to see a national tax replace the income tax. But none of my thoughts or beliefs about the income tax mean that the tax is illegal - just like your beliefs or Peymon's arguments mean that it is illegal.

That seems to be what Joe Bannister's 12 jurers concluded.

You had to quantify that with the word "seems." A Freudian slip, I presume. See my above remark about Bannister if you have forgotten why that is not what Bannister's jury concluded.

Much of the message at Peymon's website is that the IRS and the courts do ultimately follow the law, as you say, ...

Well, if Peymon says the courts do ultimately follow the law, then why does he keep saying that the courts are corrupt? And if he believes that the courts do follow the law, then why didn't he make the Freedom law school arguments in his own case? The very arguments about his rights being violated by the "illegal" income tax laws?

...[A]nd that they consistently have a real challange following basic legal requirements in the IRC.

Are you saying the courts are having a real challenge following the IRC? Do you mean they don't understand it? I am certain you can't mean they are purposely refusing to follow the IRC since you just said that Peymon's message is that they follow the law.

This appears due to a severe morale and competence problem at the IRS, which is evident to anyone who looks through many of the references under his step 2 and step 3 sections.

Wait a minute, now you appear to be saying that the courts are having difficulty in following the IRC because of IRS morale and competence? How would that come about? Given that Peymon's "victory" list only had one case that went to US Tax Court for trial (and then that one resulted in the government agreeing to settle before a verdict was issued) and that every other "victory" was due to IRS actions taken to resolve it, I can't see where you think that the courts are having a difficult time "following" the law.

If I blindly accepted everything Peymon says, then I wouldn't be trying to study and understand the legal practicioner point of view.

But you are not trying to understand. Statements like "the legal practioner point of view" are meaningless since they, tax practioners, don't have an opinion about the legality of our court systems and the laws. You are stuck in the mindset that laws aren't really laws and that any one person's opinion about a law is equal to or better than another person's opinion - even if that person happens to be a sitting judge who has had years of study, examination and experience with the law.

And there doesn't seem to be much interest amongst the law practicioners in understanding what legally uneducated people perceive as logic within the gibberish. The court judges certainly dont seem to want juries to hear any of this during trials.

Why would a law practictioner need to understand what uneducated people see as logic in gibberish? Just because you "see" logic doesn't mean that you are suddenly right. Especially when the "logic" is based on lies, twisted or misreported facts, half-truths, resentment of authority, and the fervent wish or belief that somehow all of these will allow you to escape being liable for income tax. And that is the reason you are pursuing this hogwash.

And there is that quantifier "seem" again. Judges don't allow gibberish to be admitted into trials so that the jury can interpret it - no matter how much logical sense it may seem to make to them. As stated earliers, jurors are to try facts and come up with a verdict based on the facts presented, not to determine what they think the law should be.

Edited to correct some grammar errors and to add a couple of clarifications.

[The Observer]

The courts are under the authority of lawmakers, who have appointed all the court judges.

Only for the purposes of appointment and removal. They do not have authority over courts when it comes to interpreting the law and enforcing the law with decisions.

And the People are in authority over all the lawmakers, who have elected them.

Only in terms of voting the lawmakers in or out of office. There is no other authority given to the people.

And per the preamble of Constitution, the supreme law of this land, We the people collectively are the masters over all of our servants in government.

Have you actually read the preamble? It doesn't say anything of the sort. What it does say is this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It says nothing about the people are the "masters" over the "servants" of government. The preamble is merely an opening paragraph explaining the reasons for why the Constitution has been drawn up.

Locke and other natural rights philosophers said that the purpose of government is to protect natural rights. Thomas Jefferson agreed and in the Declaration of Independence argued that the protection of rights is the main purpose of government.

All true. But none of that means you or I have the right to interpret laws or determine a law is illegal. And none of those writings are considered law.

And the graduated income tax is the 2nd point found withing chapter 2 of the communist manifesto.
"2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."

Wow. Does that mean when the Prime Minister of Great Britain William Pitt instituted the income tax in 1798 that he was a communist? 50 years before Karl Marx came up with the idea? Wait a minute - I just realized that in 10 AD the Chinese Emperor Wang Mang established an income tax of 10% - over 1800 years before Marx wanted one. Who knew that communism was around that long ago? Not to mention what a plagiarizer old Karl was.

Why were we the people so much more prosperous before this tax was snuck into the govt bureaucracy?

First, the tax was not "snuck into" government bureaucracy. The income tax was enacted by a corrupt and power-hungry Congress, first in 1861 to fund the American Civil War, as well as additional legislation in 1862. It was repealed in 1872, by the corrupt and power-hungry Congress. Then they enacted another income tax in 1894 - again because they were power hungry and corrupt. But they got a surprise - in 1895, the corrupt and power-hungry Supreme Court ruled that the tax violated the direct apportionment clause of the Constitution. Imagine that - a power-hungry and corrupt Court interpreted the law and ruled in accordance with the law! So the power-hungry and corrupt Congress decided to - of all things - propose an amendment that would allow the income tax to be legal, which was then ratified by a bunch of power-hungry and corrupt state legislatures. Of course, all of this was done in the open in front of the citizenry, not in some smoke-filled room behind the House of Congress. I am guessing that the power-hungry, corrupt lawmakers just didn't get the idea of how corrupt and power-hungry legislators are supposed to conduct business.

Second of all, whether the tax renders us as less prosperous does not mean the tax is illegal.

Is this maybe part of the problem of why the IRS is a crumbling structure that spends billions on IT upgrades yet is still over 40 years obsolete?

Again, this is an irrelevant argument or position that has nothing to do with whether the income tax is illegal.

[Pottapaug1938]

Cspeter8 claims:

"Law-school educated attorneys believe that the constitution is interpreted solely by the courts. However freedom activists believe the constitution is written in plain language to be read and understood and interpreted by every citizen, so that citizenry can use it to limit the power of overreaching government, including courts."

This is simply a regurgitation of his contention that what an individual believes to be true about the law is entitled to serious consideration, with the added contention that "the constitution is written in plain language to be read and understood and interpreted by every citizen...." That is so far from the truth that it takes a figurative telescope to spot it.

As was stated above, if every citizen was able to determine what the law was as they understood it, we would have nothing less than anarchy and lawlessness.

[Cspeter8]

Cspeter8 claims:

"Law-school educated attorneys believe that the constitution is interpreted solely by the courts. However freedom activists believe the constitution is written in plain language to be read and understood and interpreted by every citizen, so that citizenry can use it to limit the power of overreaching government, including courts."

This is simply a regurgitation of his contention that what an individual believes to be true about the law is entitled to serious consideration, with the added contention that "the constitution is written in plain language to be read and understood and interpreted by every citizen...." That is so far from the truth that it takes a figurative telescope to spot it.

quite expressive a choice of metaphor sir.

As was stated above, if every citizen was able to determine what the law was as they understood it, we would have nothing less than anarchy and lawlessness.

You prompted me to do a bit more digging. And I do concede that scholars do recognize the judicial supremacy view remains subject to debate https://constitution.congress.gov/brows ... _00000034/

Ultimately, some scholars who do not accept judicial supremacy argue that because the Constitution expresses the fundamental values of the American people as a nation, it is essential to a democracy that the political branches and the public have a central role in exploring constitutional meanings.

[Cspeter8]

..Only for the purposes of appointment and removal. They do not have authority over courts when it comes to interpreting the law and enforcing the law with decisions.
...Only in terms of voting the lawmakers in or out of office. There is no other authority given to the people.
...Have you actually read the preamble? It doesn't say anything of the sort. What it does say is this:
...It says nothing about the people are the "masters" over the "servants" of government. The preamble is merely an opening ...All true. But none of that means you or I have the right to interpret laws or determine a law is illegal. And none of those writings are considered law.
...Wow. Does that mean when the Prime Minister of Great Britain William Pitt instituted the income tax in 1798 that he was a communist? 50 years before Karl Marx came up with the idea? Wait a minute - I just realized that in 10 AD the Chinese Emperor Wang Mang established an income tax of 10% - over 1800 years before Marx wanted one. Who knew that communism was around that long ago? Not to mention what a plagiarizer old Karl was.

Your criticisms are mostly on point. In response to these criticisms I plead guilty to having posted mostly gibberish. Sometimes I am guilty of typing before my brain is fully engaged. Apologies.

First, the tax was not "snuck into" government bureaucracy.

I suspect that you are alluding to G Edward Griffin's Creature From Jekyll Island, where there is an account of how it was snuck in, during a Xmas recess if I recall correctly. It's a favorite book of mine. But I recognize many consider Griffin a kook due to the many issues described at redpilluniviersity.org which some find impossible to accept. I cannot prove the accuracy of Griffin's writings to skeptics, but I personally believe his accounts are reliable.

Is this maybe part of the problem of why the IRS is a crumbling structure that spends billions on IT upgrades yet is still over 40 years obsolete?

Again, this is an irrelevant argument or position that has nothing to do with whether the income tax is illegal.

Going forward, I may consider clarifying which of two purposes each of my assertions are intented to support. Those two purposes being (1) illegality of income tax, and (2) why non-filers are unlikely to be prosecuted in the present age. But this assertion really needs the accompanying reference linked in Peymon's website, which you may find a fascinating read, particularly if your background is in IT: https://www.atr.org/40-years-of-failure ... er-system/

[Cspeter8]

So youhave been misled into believing that the government can prosecute you for filing an accurate return.

If you take financial information to 5 tax preparers, every preparer can potentially come up with a different amount of owed tax. Which of the 5 returns is the accurate one? Would you disagree if I asserted that the IRC has many inconsistencies, which no IRS employee who "might" answer the phone can give a consistent answer? To say any return is beyond qestion "accurate" requires quite a leap of faith.

Actually Peymon does address this. The "Automated Substitute for Return" ASFR program is now suspended, see recomendation #1 in https://www.tigta.gov/sites/default/fil ... 0078fr.pdf

I still do not understand the relevance of this issue to your maintaining that Peymon is legally correct about the income tax being illegal. I note that the link references a TIGTA audit conducted in 2017. Do you have anything to show that the ASFR program is still currently suspended?

I omitted important context of your prior response. I was refuting your assertion that the taxpayer is likely to pay penalties and interest on top of the original tax when they do not file a 1040. Without an active ASFR program the IRS is not equipped to pursue nonfilers for tax payments. Nothing about ASFR suspension implies illegality of income tax.

I agree, it is dishonest to file a 1040 return which contains false claims. However, with the income tax record keeping burden and filing burden so massive, and with the foundation of legitimacy of the entire income tax so shaky that no federal lawmaker has ever shown us the law that requires us to file and pay federal income taxes, a very large number of taxpayers are deciding they are done with filing 1040 tax returns.

But none of those arguments mean that the income tax is illegal. Your term "a very large number" needs to be quantified and verified, but even if you do that, it does not mean that income tax is illegal.

This scanned correspondance (pdf name so ugly it causes errors when ... this post) from the IRS suggests non-filers in 1999 could have been as high as 63 million, more than half the 119 million people who filed the 1040 form for that year. I agree that this does not mean income tax is illegal. But it could mean that compliance with the income tax is far less than the IRS wishes us to believe, which tends to erode, along with other factors, the perceived legitimacy or morality of voluntarily complying with filing the 1040 form. I think you raised a huge issue yourself that the income tax isn't even intended to raise revenue, but instead to empower govt to distort wealth allocations within the population and interfere with social behavior. With the Fed creating money to buy up more and more of it's own debt, ever faster chasing its own tail, even the revenue raised is becoming less relevant. I can appreciate your perspective that we can't willy-nilly ignore law, and I agree. There is a fine line to walk, when the legal status quo becomes too absurd to support any more.

...Bannister was not being prosecuted for tax evasion but for conspiracy, an entirely different allegation and one that is significantly harder to win a guilty verdict. You don't seem to be able to see the difference.

you are correct I don't understand. He didn't file the 1040 because he believed there was no law his supervisor was aware of. I would like to understand how Bannister's case was about conspiracy.

Law-school educated attorneys believe that the constitution is interpreted solely by the courts. However freedom activists believe the constitution is written in plain language to be read and understood and interpreted by every citizen, so that citizenry can use it to limit the power of overreaching government, including courts.

Attorneys don't "believe" anything of the sort. Judicial review has been reserved for the courts ever since our court systems have been established. Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist # 78 that "...[t]he interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts." And there has never been a power or right given in the Constitution that allows people to "limit" the courts by "interpreting" the Constitution on their own volition. This is just more pseudolegal gibberish that has no basis in history or law.

If everyone could just undo the law by coming up with their own interpretation of the law, how long do you think it would take for utter chaos to ensue? How would you recover against a person who injured you in a traffic accident if that person suddenly "interpreted" the traffic laws to be violating his Constitutional freedoms and the court could not award you damages?

99% of the time I whole-heartedly agree. The law and the judiciary is good and necessary. Sometimes however our affairs go off the rails and judges are too fearful that an appropriate judicial review would flip over the apple cart, so they let it all ride. Whether the income tax is such a case, perhaps, along with creation of the federal reserve. Both have fed the cancerous federal bureaucracy with extreme corruption and immorality to where I wonder if this nation will continue for even another 10 years.

...And I respectfully submit that you are making an assertion that you cannot prove. You have no idea of what I have "invested" or even what I believe. For instance, I do not like the income tax. I think it is invasive and burdensome, and is prone to being used to socially engineer society due to those who believe that being wealthy is somehow morally wrong. I believe it interferes with the day-to-day economy and results in adverse outcomes. I would prefer to see a national tax replace the income tax. But none of my thoughts or beliefs about the income tax mean that the tax is illegal - just like your beliefs or Peymon's arguments mean that it is illegal.

We agree about much regarding the income tax. I think though that illegality goes back to step 1: peymon's "gibberish" legal theories, along with judges being too fearful of upsetting the overall order of things to put income tax legislation under judicial review early on, before all the case law built up. As I said earlier, not all the legal scholars hold to the view that the general population hold no rightful role in interpreting the law, as a check and balance against judiciary.

Well, if Peymon says the courts do ultimately follow the law, then why does he keep saying that the courts are corrupt? And if he believes that the courts do follow the law, then why didn't he make the Freedom law school arguments in his own case? The very arguments about his rights being violated by the "illegal" income tax laws?

They follow the mechanics of IRC code, but they are too timid to overturn the whole ediface on the basis of his own legal reasonings. in https://www.freedomlawschool.org/7-steps-1 he has a series of videos implying that the judiciary should have stopped this in the very beginning, but didn't, that I think is quite convincing. It's mostly in video format which you would likely find insufferable to watch. Thus we really cannot discuss any specifics about Peymon's legality claims.

I actually looked at Peymon's claims many years ago, and dismissed it all as being too impractical. But I was persuaded to take a much more serious look after a blog post by someone who I have followed for awhile and consider to be extremely intelligent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kirsch He asserted that Peymon was right. That had a profound impact on me.

...[A]nd that they consistently have a real challange following basic legal requirements in the IRC.

Are you saying the courts are having a real challenge following the IRC? Do you mean they don't understand it? I am certain you can't mean they are purposely refusing to follow the IRC since you just said that Peymon's message is that they follow the law.

Not the courts, the IRS has a real challenge following requirements in IRC around due process, due to disorganisation and poor morale.

If I blindly accepted everything Peymon says, then I wouldn't be trying to study and understand the legal practicioner point of view.

But you are not trying to understand. Statements like "the legal practioner point of view" are meaningless since they, tax practioners, don't have an opinion about the legality of our court systems and the laws. You are stuck in the mindset that laws aren't really laws and that any one person's opinion about a law is equal to or better than another person's opinion - even if that person happens to be a sitting judge who has had years of study, examination and experience with the law.

Maybe poor choice of words. Rather, I try to understand the point of view of those from the camp of judicial supremecy. Judges are still human, and can be lacking in the moral fortitude necessary to stop the speeding locamotive railroading all of us based on the gibberish that maybe isnt quite gibberish, just too scary to act upon if a court judge.

Why would a law practictioner need to understand what uneducated people see as logic in gibberish? Just because you "see" logic doesn't mean that you are suddenly right. Especially when the "logic" is based on lies, twisted or misreported facts, half-truths, resentment of authority, and the fervent wish or belief that somehow all of these will allow you to escape being liable for income tax. And that is the reason you are pursuing this hogwash.

We could do a point by point detailed discussion of the alleged hogwash, but wouldn't that would be too disrespectful to disregard the judgement of the many judges who built our current established case law? And even if I could convince you, you would say the law is what the judges say it is, not what you and I say it is. We are irrevocably in two different camps, you and I. You believe established case law is the last word. I believe that is not always true because sometimes, hopefully very rarely, a higher moral/logical imperative can exist.

And there is that quantifier "seem" again. Judges don't allow gibberish to be admitted into trials so that the jury can interpret it - no matter how much logical sense it may seem to make to them. As stated earliers, jurors are to try facts and come up with a verdict based on the facts presented, not to determine what they think the law should be.

Jury Nullification is established by supreme court justices John Jay 1789, Samuel Chase 1996, Oliver Wendell Holmes 1902 Harlan F Stone 1941, and U.S. vs Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139, (1972) so says page 6 of "Citizens Rule Book" pamphlet.

[Cspeter8]

A new thought entered my mind regarding this quote:

When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

The IRS is built upon massive fear and intimidation.

Much of Peymon's effort is an attempt to remove the fear and intimidation the IRS meters out to every one of us.

So, if this quote is a trueism, then is it possible that Peymon is working towards replacing tyranny with liberty?

Anyone rebutting this statement should consider first looking at the material at https://www.freedomlawschool.org/step-3 before making statements such as non-filers will go to jail or pay taxes with fines and penalties.

[Pottapaug1938]

You prompted me to do a bit more digging. And I do concede that scholars do recognize the judicial supremacy view remains subject to debate https://constitution.congress.gov/brows ... _00000034/

Ultimately, some scholars who do not accept judicial supremacy argue that because the Constitution expresses the fundamental values of the American people as a nation, it is essential to a democracy that the political branches and the public have a central role in exploring constitutional meanings.

It's something more than a scholarly debate. While there are those who do not believe that constitutional interpretation should be the exclusive province of the judicial branch of government, it is still the law of the land that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is . . . If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each." If individual states or government officials could make their own interpretations of the law, and have those laws taken seriously, we would have anarchy, because it would be impossible for anyone to know what the law is. Peymon may opine all he likes; but he must ground his opinions on legal precedent if he wants them to be considered by any court. I have had cause to suspect that a politicization of the SCOTUS is underway; but I would rather have questions of law decided by the one branch of government which is at least designed to be immune from the passions of the day, rather than politicans worried about the next election.

[Cspeter8]

You prompted me to do a bit more digging. And I do concede that scholars do recognize the judicial supremacy view remains subject to debate https://constitution.congress.gov/brows ... _00000034/

Ultimately, some scholars who do not accept judicial supremacy argue that because the Constitution expresses the fundamental values of the American people as a nation, it is essential to a democracy that the political branches and the public have a central role in exploring constitutional meanings.

It's something more than a scholarly debate. While there are those who do not believe that constitutional interpretation should be the exclusive province of the judicial branch of government, it is still the law of the land that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is . . . If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each." If individual states or government officials could make their own interpretations of the law, and have those laws taken seriously, we would have anarchy, because it would be impossible for anyone to know what the law is. Peymon may opine all he likes; but he must ground his opinions on legal precedent if he wants them to be considered by any court. I have had cause to suspect that a politicization of the SCOTUS is underway; but I would rather have questions of law decided by the one branch of government which is at least designed to be immune from the passions of the day, rather than politicans worried about the next election.

This is definitely a core issue of the entire tax protester debate. Thus I feel it is important that each side of this discussion is developed further.

from https://famguardian.org/Publications/Ci ... e-book.pdf:

“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.” John Jay, 1st
Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1789
“The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.” Samuel Chase, U.S. supreme
Court Justice, 1796, Signer of the unanimous Declaration
“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.” Oliver Wendell
Holmes, U.S. supreme Court Justice, 1902
“The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.” Harlan F. Stone,
12th Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1941
The Citizen's Rule Book 6
“The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard
instructions of the judge...” U.S. vs. Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139. (1972)

Are these supreme court jutice quotes not accurate, nor carry no weight?

[Cspeter8]

Well, if Peymon says the courts do ultimately follow the law, then why does he keep saying that the courts are corrupt? And if he believes that the courts do follow the law, then why didn't he make the Freedom law school arguments in his own case? The very arguments about his rights being violated by the "illegal" income tax laws?

They follow the mechanics of IRC code, but they are too timid to overturn the whole ediface on the basis of his own legal reasonings. in https://www.freedomlawschool.org/7-steps-1 he has a series of videos implying that the judiciary should have stopped this in the very beginning, but didn't, that I think is quite convincing. It's mostly in video format which you would likely find insufferable to watch. Thus we really cannot discuss any specifics about Peymon's legality claims.

There is a better alternative to the videos of step 1 on Peymon's website. At https://www.freedomlawschool.org/step-5 he provides "Do it yourself petitions to Congress" which I believe have the same content as the step 1 videos. There are 6 variations: for both single and married filing status, there is a petition for individual income tax, employment taxes, and self employment taxes/1099. As a starting point I'd like to invite discussion on the points of the indiv. income tax with married filiing status: it is 39 pages, a somewhat daunting length.

If the contents of this petition can be dismissed as frivilous nonsense through a process of logical reasoning in an intellectually honest manner, then Peymon's entire movement would be delt quite a serious blow of credibility. What is the best means of faclitating open discussion of this document?

[JamesVincent]

“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.” John Jay, 1st
Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1789
“The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.” Samuel Chase, U.S. supreme
Court Justice, 1796, Signer of the unanimous Declaration
“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.” Oliver Wendell
Holmes, U.S. supreme Court Justice, 1902
“The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.” Harlan F. Stone,
12th Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1941
The Citizen's Rule Book 6
“The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard
instructions of the judge...” U.S. vs. Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139. (1972)

I'm guessing that every single quote deals with jury nullification in one form or another.

Nullification of the law can take the forms of non- prosecution, judge or jury nullification, and pardon or amnesty. Jury nullification occurs when jurors, based on their own sense of justice, refuse to follow the law and acquit a defendant even when the evidence presented seems to point to an incontrovertible verdict of guilty.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-libra ... reject-law

Jury nullification has been discussed many times on Quatloos and, every time it comes up, it begins a long discussion. It is usually pushed by people who believe that they shouldn't have to be held to the same standard as everyone else and fully believe that a jury will refuse to find them guilty as long as they use the correct magic words during a trial. Not a single person who pushes for it has ever had it happen for them, the cases are long and varied against. There simply is nothing, especially in the case of tax law, that is so egregious that normal, everyday people would consider it an affront to humanity. Every normal person knows you have to pay taxes, every normal person knows that you have to file so why should those same people, who file their taxes as required, become so riled up by Xyz Denier that they believe the law shouldn't be upheld? And that's what it boils down to.

Part of the problem in dealing with quotes from random websites is that they are pretty lacking in context. For example the quote from Jay. No case number, nothing about it at all.

"It may not be amiss, here, Gentlemen, to remind you of the good old rule that on questions of fact, it is the province of the jury; on questions of law it is the province of the court to decide. But it must be observed that by the same law which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have nevertheless a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. On this and on every other occasion, however, we have no doubt you will pay that respect which is due to the opinion of the court: for, as on the one hand, it is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts, it is, on the other hand, presumable that the court is the best judge of law. But still both objects are lawfully, within your power of decision."

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/3/1/

Would you believe that the case had nothing to do with taxes? And that the quote was not from the holding but from the instructions given by Justice Jay? The case was Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. 1 (1794) and it had to do with debts owed by a (fresh) American to a British company after the Revolutionary War.

[Pottapaug1938]

[quote=Pottapaug1938 post_id=296572 time=1702010037 user_id=25

This is definitely a core issue of the entire tax protester debate. Thus I feel it is important that each side of this discussion is developed further.

from https://famguardian.org/Publications/Ci ... e-book.pdf:

“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.” John Jay, 1st
Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1789
“The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.” Samuel Chase, U.S. supreme
Court Justice, 1796, Signer of the unanimous Declaration
“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.” Oliver Wendell
Holmes, U.S. supreme Court Justice, 1902
“The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.” Harlan F. Stone,
12th Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1941
The Citizen's Rule Book 6
“The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard
instructions of the judge...” U.S. vs. Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139. (1972)

Are these supreme court jutice quotes not accurate, nor carry no weight?

First of all, those quotes need context. Are they genuine, and are they contained in substantive court rulings, or are they simply dicta? Are they outlier quotes, or are those opinions held by the legal community at large? I think that you will find that neither is the case, and that while juries are the finders of fact, it is the lawyers who argue the law, and the judges who decide what the law is, based on legal precedent. There are juries which do go rogue, and bring a verdict based on their own opinions about the law; but as I noted earlier, that is a recipe for anarchy, because the law then becomes what any jury chooses it to be.

[Pottapaug1938]

Ultimately, some scholars who do not accept judicial supremacy argue that because the Constitution expresses the fundamental values of the American people as a nation, it is essential to a democracy that the political branches and the public have a central role in exploring constitutional meanings.

Yes, the public does have a central role in exploring constitutional meanings; but they do so by their choices of their representatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Nowhere within our system of laws is there a provision whereby an individual citizen may make their own authoritative decision on what the law is. They can voice their opinions; but those opinions carry no weight in legal proceedings.

[The Observer]

If you take financial information to 5 tax preparers, every preparer can potentially come up with a different amount of owed tax. Which of the 5 returns is the accurate one?

That is a ludicrous and highly unlikely situation. If you have experienced, educated preparers, even if they come up with 5 different “amounts” it is likely that the amounts will be within tolerable amounts that the government would not bother trying to prosecute as a tax evasion case.

Would you disagree if I asserted that the IRC has many inconsistencies, which no IRS employee who "might" answer the phone can give a consistent answer? To say any return is beyond qestion "accurate" requires quite a leap of faith.

No, I wouldn’t agree. The IRC doesn’t have inconsistencies. It is the law. Any “inconsistencies” that could have existed have either been corrected through amended legislation or addressed in court rulings. And it does not mean that the IRC is inconsistent if one of its employees gives a wrong answer. And please show me any court case where a taxpayer was prosecuted for evasion because they relied on a wrong answer given by an IRS employee. One other thing for you to consider is that the IRS on average prosecutes 3,000 criminal tax cases a year - while at the same accepting and processing over 160 million returns. That means the IRS isn’t spending time looking to prosecute a taxpayer who made an honest error on their return. Please stop making mountains out of non-existent mole hills.

I omitted important context of your prior response. I was refuting your assertion that the taxpayer is likely to pay penalties and interest on top of the original tax when they do not file a 1040. Without an active ASFR program the IRS is not equipped to pursue nonfilers for tax payments. Nothing about ASFR suspension implies illegality of income tax.

The suspension you refer to was back in 2015. It was reinstated in 2019. So we are back to the taxpayer likely having to pay extra due to penalties and interest. But again, what does that have to do with maintaining that the requirement of filing returns is illegal?

This scanned correspondance (pdf name so ugly it causes errors when ... this post) from the IRS suggests non-filers in 1999 could have been as high as 63 million, more than half the 119 million people who filed the 1040 form for that year.

Well, since I can’t get the link to work, I have no idea what you are referencing. But the number you quote seems to be abnormally high in the face of the fact that the IRS typically identifies 9-10 million non filers every year. In light of the figure of 160 million plus returns being processed suggests that there is something horribly inaccurate with your number.

I agree that this does not mean income tax is illegal. But it could mean that compliance with the income tax is far less than the IRS wishes us to believe, which tends to erode, along with other factors, the perceived legitimacy or morality of voluntarily complying with filing the 1040 form.

But we aren’t discussing whether the income tax is illegal because it is immoral. That is a subjective argument and is not one that courts consider. That is a political question.

I think you raised a huge issue yourself that the income tax isn't even intended to raise revenue,...

You think wrong, I never said that. The main purpose of the income tax is to raise revenue. You are misinterpreting my opinion that some legislation has been enacted for social engineering purposes. And again, this is totally irrelevant to the legality of the tax.

but instead to empower govt to distort wealth allocations within the population and interfere with social behavior. With the Fed creating money to buy up more and more of it's own debt, ever faster chasing its own tail, even the revenue raised is becoming less relevant. I can appreciate your perspective that we can't willy-nilly ignore law, and I agree. There is a fine line to walk, when the legal status quo becomes too absurd to support any more.

Again, you are arguing issues that have no relevance to the legality of the tax.

you are correct I don't understand. He didn't file the 1040 because he believed there was no law his supervisor was aware of. I would like to understand how Bannister's case was about conspiracy.

Walter Thompson was a businessman who decided that he shouldn’t have to file employment returns (F941) nor withhold his employees income taxes and Social Security/Medicare contributions nor pay the employer’s contribution as well. He hooked up with Bannister at some point and received advice on how to resist the government on this issue. The government then went ahead and prosecuted Thompson and Bannister in separate trials. Thompson was charged with conspiracy to defraud the government and 13 additional counts of tax evasion. Bannister was only charged with conspiracy. This had nothing to do with Bannister not filing his own 1040. Thompson and Bannister were found not guilty of the conspiracy charge, but Thompson’s jury agreed that he had evaded taxes and convicted him, including one count for failing to file his 1040. He received a six year prison sentence.

99% of the time I whole-heartedly agree. The law and the judiciary is good and necessary.

Then that should mean you trust the courts to interpret the tax laws correctly 99% of the time. Your issue is not liking there is a income tax, but have no idea on to how overcome it. And you are buying into Peymon’s nonsense that somehow there is a legal loophole that will allow you to escape.

I think though that illegality goes back to step 1: peymon's "gibberish" legal theories, along with judges being too fearful of upsetting the overall order of things to put income tax legislation under judicial review early on, before all the case law built up.

Yet you believe the courts are correct and good at least 99% of the time. How can that be if you also believe that the judges are too fearful of “upsetting the order?”

As I said earlier, not all the legal scholars hold to the view that the general population hold no rightful role in interpreting the law, as a check and balance against judiciary.

And that means absolutely nothing in light of the last 240 years of American jurisprudence and Supreme Court rulings. Your hope that juries are suddenly going to turn to mass nullification of the tax laws is misplaced.

They follow the mechanics of IRC code, but they are too timid to overturn the whole ediface on the basis of his own legal reasonings. in https://www.freedomlawschool.org/7-steps-1 he has a series of videos implying that the judiciary should have stopped this in the very beginning, but didn't, that I think is quite convincing. It's mostly in video format which you would likely find insufferable to watch. Thus we really cannot discuss any specifics about Peymon's legality claims.

And that, being Peymon’s layman opinion, is worthless. It’s a “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve” argument that overlooks history, legal tradition and facts. Peymon went looking for facts to support his theory instead of looking at facts and concluding what those facts mean. And when the facts didn’t suffice, he resorted to sophistry, half-truths, spin, misinterpretation, misstatement of facts, and outright lies in defending his theory. A theory, I might add, that he failed to push in his own tax case.

I actually looked at Peymon's claims many years ago, and dismissed it all as being too impractical. But I was persuaded to take a much more serious look after a blog post by someone who I have followed for awhile and consider to be extremely intelligent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kirsch He asserted that Peymon was right. That had a profound impact on me.

This is just another person who has no background in law. While he may be an intelligent person, he has no foundation to come up with conclusions about a subject on which he has no knowledge or expertise. Coincidentally, I note that he has an engineering degree and background. A significant number of tax deniers come from that environment.

Maybe poor choice of words. Rather, I try to understand the point of view of those from the camp of judicial supremecy. Judges are still human, and can be lacking in the moral fortitude necessary to stop the speeding locamotive railroading all of us based on the gibberish that maybe isnt quite gibberish, just too scary to act upon if a court judge.

You just want them to stop taxation without regard to the actual reality that the tax is legal. That isn’t within a judge’s responsibility or authority - to make a moral decision that you desire.

And even if I could convince you, you would say the law is what the judges say it is, not what you and I say it is. We are irrevocably in two different camps, you and I. You believe established case law is the last word. I believe that is not always true because sometimes, hopefully very rarely, a higher moral/logical imperative can exist.

I say that the law is what the law is, and that 240 years of judges’ decisions regarding the law confirms that. Your wish that judges will overstep those boundaries set by the law and make the moral decisions that you wish to make is a dangerous one. What happens when a judge makes a moral decision that you do not agree with? It will be too late for you to demand that the law be followed instead.

Jury Nullification is established by supreme court justices John Jay 1789, Samuel Chase 1996, Oliver Wendell Holmes 1902 Harlan F Stone 1941, and U.S. vs Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139, (1972) so says page 6 of "Citizens Rule Book" pamphlet.

No, it isn’t. James and Pottapaug have already explained that you are pulling quotes without context that could be dicta, personal opinions and the like - none of which reaches the level of a legal binding decision.

[morrand]

I agree that this does not mean income tax is illegal. But it could mean that compliance with the income tax is far less than the IRS wishes us to believe, which tends to erode, along with other factors, the perceived legitimacy or morality of voluntarily complying with filing the 1040 form.

But we aren’t discussing whether the income tax is illegal because it is immoral. That is a subjective argument and is not one that courts consider. That is a political question.

To put a finer point on it: what the law ought to be has no bearing on what the law is. Arguing that the income tax is a tool of Communist oppression, social control, or whatever, does not change the fact that the law of the United States, and the laws of most of its states, obligate most of their citizens to pay a tax on their incomes regardless of whether they, individually, think it is a wise or appropriate policy. Anyone who says otherwise is, to crib a line, trying to sell you something.

[The Observer]

To put a finer point on it: what the law ought to be has no bearing on what the law is. Arguing that the income tax is a tool of Communist oppression, social control, or whatever, does not change the fact that the law of the United States, and the laws of most of its states, obligate most of their citizens to pay a tax on their incomes regardless of whether they, individually, think it is a wise or appropriate policy. Anyone who says otherwise is, to crib a line, trying to sell you something.

And that is the tactic that Peymon uses to sell his clients: to stir up their moral outrage against a system that he paints as corrupt, broken, and the like. Doing so helps gloss over the glaring holes and pitfalls in the psuedolegal garbage that he sells to them. It is only after they run aground on the rocks of law that they find they got cheated. Of course, they make Peymon's job easier by being greedy and thinking that they don't have to pay for the benefits that they enjoy due to the government's existence.

[wserra]

This [jury nullification - WS] is definitely a core issue of the entire tax protester debate. Thus I feel it is important that each side of this discussion is developed further.

Fine. Let's do that.

“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.” John Jay, 1st
Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1789
“The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.” Samuel Chase, U.S. supreme
Court Justice, 1796, Signer of the unanimous Declaration

Anything before 1895 is obsolete, due to Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895). A criminal jury has always had (and still has) the power to nullify the law due to its ability to render a "not guilty" verdict without explanation, and the fact that such verdict will constitute jeopardy. There is little question that earlier U.S. law also held that a criminal jury had the right to nullify. Sparf changed that.

“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.” Oliver Wendell
Holmes, U.S. supreme Court Justice, 1902

That is a sentence fragment from the Holmes majority opinion in Horning v. District of Columbia, 254 U.S. 135 (1920). In an honest quote, the "T" in "the" would not be capitalized, since it does not begin the sentence. Here is the context:

The judge cannot direct a verdict, it is true, and the jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both law and facts. But the judge always has the right and duty to tell them what the law is upon this or that state of facts that may be found, and he can do the same nonetheless when the facts are agreed.

The issue in the case was the propriety of an instruction, specifically whether that instruction improperly had the effect of directing a verdict. There was no issue as to whether the jury had the right to nullify; Sparf had settled that issue 25 years earlier. It is obviously misleading to take that quote out of context.

“The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.” Harlan F. Stone,12th Chief Justice U.S. supreme Court, 1941

A Lexis search of Supreme Court cases shows that no such quote appears anywhere, whether from Stone or anyone else. I did find a reference to it in a District Court case, Doe v. Morgenthau, 871 F. Supp. 605 (NYSD 1994). Per this case, it appears to be from a 1936 article in the Harvard Law Review, not a court opinion at any level - meaning that it isn't law. Moreover, the article is not available without paying sites like JSTOR for access. Context? Could be anything at all.

The Citizen's Rule Book 6

The what? You mean the tract written by some anonymous guy following WWII? You gotta be kidding.

“The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard
instructions of the judge...” U.S. vs. Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139. (1972)

At least this case does have something to say about nullification. It's against it.

Dougherty is the appeal of a conviction in which the trial judge refused to tell the jury of its power to decide the law, as the defendants requested. The D.C. Circuit ruled that the trial judge was correct in that regard. While the language above does appear in the decision, why not take a look at the context:

The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge. Most often commended are the 18th century acquittal of Peter Zenger of seditious libel, on the plea of Andrew Hamilton, and the 19th century acquittals in prosecutions under the fugitive slave law. The values involved drop a notch when the liberty vindicated by the verdict relates to the defendant's shooting of his wife's paramour, or purchase during Prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
...
The existence of an unreviewable and unreversible power in the jury, to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge, has for many years co-existed with legal practice and precedent upholding instructions to the jury that they are required to follow the instructions of the court on all matters of law. There were different soundings in colonial days and the early days of our Republic. We are aware of the number and variety of expressions at that time from respected sources-John Adams; Alexander Hamilton; prominent judges-that jurors had a duty to find a verdict according to their own conscience, though in opposition to the direction of the court; that their power signified a right; that they were judges both of law and of fact in a criminal case, and not bound by the opinion of the court.
...
In the last analysis, our rejection of the request for jury nullification doctrine is a recognition that there are times when logic is not the only or even best guide to sound conduct of government. For machines, one can indulge the person who likes to tinker in pursuit of fine tuning. When men and judicial machinery are involved, one must attend to the many and complex mechanisms and reasons that lead men to change their conduct-when they know they are being studied; when they are told of the consequences of their conduct; and when conduct exercised with restraint as an unwritten exception is expressly presented as a legitimate option.

What makes for health as an occasional medicine would be disastrous as a daily diet. The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a "necessary counter to casehardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors, does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power. On the contrary, it is pragmatically useful to structure instructions in such wise that the jury must feel strongly about the values involved in the case, so strongly that it must itself identify the case as establishing a call of high conscience,53 and must independently initiate and undertake an act in contravention of the established instructions. This requirement of independent jury conception confines the happening of the lawless jury to the occasional instance that does not violate, and viewed as an exception may even enhance, the over-all normative effect of the rule of law. An explicit instruction to a jury conveys an implied approval that runs the risk of degrading the legal structure requisite for true freedom, for an ordered liberty that protects against anarchy as well as tyranny.

The Court ruled, of course, that the trial judge was correct not to instruct on nullification. Don't you think it a little misleading to quote only the first sentence, with the implication that the Court favored a nullification instruction?

Next time, why not do a little homework before throwing copypasta against the wall, in the hope that something - anything - sticks? Of course, a little homework would also show that Mottahedeh is a lying scammer. Can't have that.

[Cspeter8]

First, the tax was not "snuck into" government bureaucracy. The income tax was enacted by a corrupt and power-hungry Congress, first in 1861 to fund the American Civil War, as well as additional legislation in 1862. It was repealed in 1872, by the corrupt and power-hungry Congress. Then they enacted another income tax in 1894 - again because they were power hungry and corrupt. But they got a surprise - in 1895, the corrupt and power-hungry Supreme Court ruled that the tax violated the direct apportionment clause of the Constitution. Imagine that - a power-hungry and corrupt Court interpreted the law and ruled in accordance with the law! So the power-hungry and corrupt Congress decided to - of all things - propose an amendment that would allow the income tax to be legal, which was then ratified by a bunch of power-hungry and corrupt state legislatures. Of course, all of this was done in the open in front of the citizenry, not in some smoke-filled room behind the House of Congress. I am guessing that the power-hungry, corrupt lawmakers just didn't get the idea of how corrupt and power-hungry legislators are supposed to conduct business

I think your attempt at satire is failing, sir. Particularly when suggesting politicians who repeal the income tax are corrupt and power-hungry. I believe these are quite the opposite.

[Cspeter8]

The suspension you refer to was back in 2015. It was reinstated in 2019. So we are back to the taxpayer likely having to pay extra due to penalties and interest. But again, what does that have to do with maintaining that the requirement of filing returns is illegal?

Yes you are correct! https://foodmanpa.com/did-you-know-that ... m-in-2019/