. wrote:Why is it that a TP (or any taxpayer for that matter) would be the least bit concerned about a NOTICE directed at third parties and which has nothing to do with the validity or enforceability of the statutory lien as against the taxpayer?
'Tis a puzzlement.
Yes, my theory is that it's because those people don't really study the law. They don't make a serious study of the law, and they don't learn or use proper methods of legal analysis. So, they see the term "Notice of Federal Tax Lien" and (almost with realizing that they're doing it) they assume that it is the notice itself, or the existence of the notice, or the issuance of the notice, or the recordation of the notice, that "creates" the lien or that "makes the lien be legally valid" against the taxpayer. A person trained in legal analysis should be able to say:
....wait a minute, I'm making an ASSUMPTION HERE. Before I go further, I need to determine whether this assumption is correct. What exactly is the PURPOSE of the Notice of Federal Tax Lien? What is the LEGAL EFFECT of the signing of the notice? What is the LEGAL EFFECT of the recordation of the notice? Which entities are affected by this Notice, and which are not?
About 99% of tax protester zzzzzoooooooommm by those questions; it never occurs to them that they are even making an assumption, much less one that might be incorrect.
It's the same kind of mistake that causes people to incorrectly assume that the Sixteenth Amendment's language, "shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes", means that the Amendment CREATED the power to impose the income tax -- to incorrectly assume that the power to impose the income tax did not exist before the amendment. They look at the words and read something into the words that is not really there -- in part because they don't know the context and in part because they are not only unaware that they are making an incorrect assumption, they are unaware that they are even making an assumption at all.
SteveSy and others look at the language of section 6065 and it's as though they don't really "see" the phrase "required to be made". What they "see" are the words "under any provision of the internal revenue laws.....".
In essence, they are misreading section 6065, as though it were worded as follows:
.....any return, declaration, statement, or other document [deleting the words "required to be" here] made [inserting the words "by either the taxpayer or the Secretary" here] under any provision of the internal revenue laws or regulations.....
And, of course, they create the additional phantom "requirement" that in order for an internal IRS document to be "exempt" from the "rule," the "provision" made by the Secretary must somehow take some particular form or be issued in some particular way, with some particular "formality." It's like people who believe that they have a right to see the "actual assessment" of tax in order for the assessment to be legally valid. They "read in" a phantom legal requirement, in part because it's "sounds reasonable" to them that there should be such a requirement.
I think that on some level, many of them really don't realize that they're making it up as they go along -- they're just so narcissistic that they "believe" that the world (and in particular, the "tax law world") somehow actually does work the way their own minds work. They see themselves as the center of the universe. They think of their own thought patterns as being "the world's" thought patterns.
It is as Dan said recently: what they write is gibberish to us, because what we write is gibberish to them. People like Steve really don't see the world (and the tax law in particular) the way it really is, because these people can't distinguish the world from themselves -- or to be more precise, they can't distinguish the world from their own delusional beliefs about themselves.
I had an acquaintaince a few years back who was very caught up in narcissistic personality disorder, and it was obvious that he really did not realize that most people were not nearly as interested in HIS thoughts, HIS beliefs, HIS desires, HIS interests. He really did not have a strong grasp of how disliked he was among other people; he was simply so self-centered that he could not use objective criteria -- criteria imposed on an outside "authority" as a basis for evaluating himself or his daily life. Everything in the world, in his mind, was about what HE believed, what HE desired, what HE was interested in.
Tax protesters as a group suffer from this. Not only are court rulings, for example, not considered by these people to be
authority, they really consider everything outside their own idiosycratic method and belief system to be somehow "not real." What is "real" for them (what they "believe" to be real) are their own thoughts, their own desires. They "want" the tax law to be invalid; therefore, in their minds, it is invalid.
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet