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-- Hard Evidence That Form 1040 Has NO Legal Basis
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Or you could just operate on the Law of Murphy...if it sounds too good to be true, it is. I will gladly fuck with a collection agent till the cows come home, but I will not fuck with the IRS (unless of course it is a clear cut case of wrongdoing on my part). They are the last people I want on my ass.

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Originally posted by DJMaytag [quote] The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated in their rulings that the 16th amendment DID NOT extend Congress ANY NEW powers of taxation:

It did not extend, it clarified. As Occrider has said it allowed the Income Tax to become an indirect tax. An income tax is not illegal without the 16th amendment either, it would just have to be appropriated (a considerbaly grueling task).

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Your statement that "you must pay your income tax if you make an income" shows your lack of knowledge on this matter (I am by no means an expert, but I've been doing research on the matter for years and have read quite a bit of Title 26). Income by itself is NOT taxable.

Yes, I was simplifying it. Anyone who has filed a tax return knows it is never this simple. However, my point was the constitution (with the 16th amendment) empowers Congress to levy tax on incomes.

The what is "taxable" what is not "taxable" does not matter in his regard, that is left to the treassury dept, congress, and if needed the courts to decide.

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"Taxable Income" is by all means taxable, but do you have any "taxable income" is the key question?

Perhaps this is the key question, but this is another question. Its not the question in which the link you referrered us to (and which both I and Occrider have rebutted) addresses.

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It's a bit of legalese thrown in there to appear one way while meaning another That language is a hallmark of the US Code - and the reason why there are TONS of definitions in every section. Plain old proper english won't get you by when trying to read it, and using dictionary.com to look things up WILL give you completely different meanings for words you think mean what they mean.

Hence my previous' post comment about using an accountant for expert advice.

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That's like going to an auto mechanic and asking for the instructions for fixing your car! They make a pretty decent amount of money off filing taxes for people, so why would want to look into what the truth is? If everyone found out, then there would be a TON of unemployed accountants out there on the streets!

Thats like saying you can't go to a doctor asking him for medical advice on how to stay healthy because he makes a pretty decent amount of money everytime you are sick, and if everyone found out to be healthy he will not have work...

Same argument, doesn't really cut it does it?!

A mechanic is not a professional, an accountant, like a doctor is, they must swear to an oath and are certified by an association for their work. If you still don't think they will give you fair advice because they're only way of professional fulfillment is to make money on a lie, go the academia, go ask the most knowledgeable and educated, those that have done research into Tax law, and those that teach it, go ask the PhDs and the Professors.

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Yeah, nobody in the government has ever lied.

I'm sure you've lied too, to many people, repeatedly. Should I therefore not believe anything you ever say to anyone?

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Fact sheets are NOT legally binding, so the IRS can say whatever they want to in them. It's propaganda to promote their cause, which is to keep people from asking questions.

I didn't say its legally binding, it was just a tax history of the USA...

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BTW, if the government had jurisdiction over "every income made in the USA", what would prevent them from taking 100% of your income?

First you are wrong, the "government" does not have jurisidcition over "every income made in the USA", the Congress does. And what prevent's them from taking 100% of your income is callled "re-election".

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What statutue shows that you are required to pay taxes? Where is it in the tax code, Title 26 of the US Code?

Look, I'm not willing to hunt-down all your answers for you, especially if you won't listen to anything I'll say about the matter. In my last post I addressed that the Congress has the power to impose a tax on incomes. Therefore they have the legal right to do it, whether they are doing it or not, and if you are forced to pay this tax (taxes are by definition involuntary, else they would not be a tax) is another matter, nor have I made a claim one way or the other. I have recommended you pay your taxes however.

The point of the above paragraph is, if you can't concet that the Congress has the power to tax income, there is little point to much further debate.

Where is it that say's you are requried to pay, I'm not sure it does, but as long as the word "tax" is included it means "this is not optional to pay, anyone meeting, a, b, c, etc, criterion must pay this tax".

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Why does the government dodge this simple question at EVERY opportunity? (actions sometimes speak louder than words) If it's such a cut and dry issue, theny why won't they point it out? If I asked the local or state law enforcement officer what law says I can steal your car, he would look it up and tell you what statutue I would be breaking if I did so, and would be able to tell me the penalty as well. Why doesn't the IRS do this when asked?

They can tell you. Ask a tax accountant and he will tell you for instance. But to my knowledge the IRS welcomes questions regarding whether you need to pay a tax or not and have hotlines for such things. I recall having an IRS employee who gave me free advice explaining to me why I did NOT have to file a tax return.

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Why did the IRS drop it's case against a convicted tax offender that was refusing to comply with his probation terms (ie fill out his 1040 forms and let him walk away a completely free man (no more probation either)? Could it have been that they were scared that a legal precedent would be set if he were allowed to present the documetation he wanted to use as evidence? Could it be that the IRS would rather let one guy go to ensure they keep everyone else fooled into filling out 1040 forms and sending in a TRILLION DOLLAR GIFT every year?

That is only one possible explination. The reality is we don't know why the IRS walked away, there could be a dozen other possible explination, and even a multitude of explinations that was the government's real reason for walking away.

Reading that newspaper article you quoted on the subject does however make pretty clear that 1040 might have been misfiled.

However to my general knowledge, you are not required to fill out form 1040, but you are required to fill out a tax return if you have income (and meet criteria, a, b, c, etc). Form 1040 is simply the STANDARD form to report your income and deductions, however there are alternate methods to do this, and I think the INS would even have to accept a mailed in home-made paper entry.

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Originally posted by DJMaytag Yup, they are... and their percentage would be MUCH higher if they weren't avoiding them and moving offshore.

I agree

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If you eliminate OFFENSE spending, you've just shrunk the military spending by about 90% (or more when you think about how much the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions are costing us).

90%? That's a bit far fetched, but like I've said, I do think that defense/offense spending should be greatly cut and Lord knows I was against the Iraqi invasion.

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You may find this hard to believe, but the Federal government existed on that "18%" from it's inception up until 1913 when the Fed and Bureau of Revenue (now IRS) were started (coincidence? I think not...). The government was small and limited, yet we still managed to go from a 3rd world nation to a global power in that time.

Of course that's not a coincidence. Is the N.Y. Mets being founded in 1962 and also winning their first game in 1962 a coincidence? I guess you really wouldn't care if we went back to the way things were during the industrial revolution? Those were some great times.

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WANT? Few would say they WANT them, as it's akin to saying a drug addict WANTS crack. The system has been set up such that people are "hooked" on a service and will vote against anyone trying to get rid of it (FDR knew this, hence why he called Social Security an "entitlement system", and knew that it would be a death trap for any politican who tried to get rid of it). What have been the results of the services by the agencies you listed?

Umm, how about that Social Security has nearly eliminated the poverty rate of senior citizens?

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We still have pollution (ironically, the Federal government is the nation's #1 polluter!) and forests are being chopped down, killing off endangered species (or bringing some close to being endangered) thanks to special interests.

I'm a bigger critic of Bush administration policies than anyone, particularly on the environment, so don't try to claim I'm advocating how the EPA is currently being destroyed. At the same time, do you seriously think that it would be better to have no regulations at all and that EPA standards do not curb more pollution than would exist without any regulation. This is the fallacy of your argument: THE SPECIAL INTERESTS DETERRING REGULATION ARE REPRESENTING THE COMPANIES BEING REGULATED!!! Wihthout the EPA pollution levels would be even worse than they are and the problems you're describing are getting worse as a result of the current administration stripping the EPA's abilities. So that almost seems like an argument for more EPA enforcement, rather than eliminating it.

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The VA is ineffective and will try to screw you at any opportunity (my ex was in the military, got disabled, and had to put a HUGE amount of effort to get ANYTHING done there).

No doubt that there are huge problems with the VA. Illinois is one of the worst, which is why people like Senator Obama is putting great effort into reforming the VA and has acheived significant progress so far.

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The FDA hasn't stopped food poisoning from happening, has it? The testing process is driving up prescription costs to dizzying levels, as well as kept new drugs from those who will die before they get certified before release to the public (if you're terminal, wouldn't you at least want the CHANCE to try a new drug that might help? What does a terminally ill patient have to lose?). If a company puts out bad food, then people WILL be affected, and the word will be out with a quickness in this era of communication. A business wants to suceed and grow, therefore it's in it's own interests to put out a safe product for consumption (this may not be true for non-food/drug companies).

Again, just like with pollution, special interests trying to curb regulation represent the companies being regulated. I'm real sure that food companies would still inform their customers of what their products contain on the labelling if they weren't required to by law. How about if something causes serious birth defects or cancer down the line? Well, the companies will be boycotted and change their policies a decade or 2 down the line when people actually see the effects? Not all, but many companies will cut corners and hide things if it means it will cut costs and increase profits.

[/QUOTE]
I can't think of a soul who is not employed or related to someone employed by the FBI that would want to keep it around (same goes for the CIA). If the FBI/CIA was truly a bumbling bunch of fools that had no idea about what was going to happen on 9/11, then they DESERVE to be cut. Hell, more than likely the FBI is more apt to be spying on YOU OR I than anything else!
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, we'd be much better not having any national intelligence at all, that would really improve things. That would have been really comforting after 9/11 to have had no intelligence in place and have people ask "who did this?" and just have the government shrug. 9/11 would have happened earlier with the Millenium bombing plot that was foiled by those useless agencies. I think that's a bit of a stretch to say that the FBI's #1 concern is spying on people on TA.

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I think I addressed highways as being paid for out of excise taxes, as they always have been.

True, though those excise taxes would be stretched a lot more without any additional revenue in place after you stop paying income taxes.

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The problem with the Federal government providing these services is that our country no longer becomes a democracy. We're heading down the path of socialism with all this stuff. You might remember this quote in a recent thread:

You're completely wrong here, unless you believe that Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and on and on aren't democracies. Democracy is not an economic system, something is democratic if the majority of citizens want government to take an action.

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The power of the government to control our lives has grown ever since 1913 with the creation of the Fed and IRS. It most certainly grown leaps and bounds since FDR's New Deal. At what point does it stop? Where do we draw the line when it comes to a new social program "for the greater good"? It's pretty easy for me, it's all or nothing. We can't have just a little bit of socialsim, because it will become full blown socialism eventually (as i has been growin over the last 80 years).

Yep, it would be far better to live with absolutely no government programs at all. Poor kids should get no education at all if their parents can't afford it because it would lead us toward socialism to do anything about it as a nation.

With all due respect, I agree with a lot of your criticisms, but that's why I'm against who's in charge right now. As far as Democrats, I'll agree they're nowhere near perfect either. I think a lot of special interest problems could be dealt with by having real campaign finance reform and publicly funded elections, which is currently being fought for in a number of states through referendum initiatives. I think reforms and making progress is better than going back to the 19th Century.

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Originally posted by wolverine16 blah blah blah Hitler quotes blah balh blah posting Hitler and Marx quotes in reference to me blah blah second paragraph that goes blah blah blah I was a communist because I thought more should be done to insure the poor blah blah

Different thread so leave it there and don't bring it here or up again please. Thank you.

My original comment stays intact for THIS thread.

Interesting about the use of a pre-Reserve Act year though.

Non-Hitler quotes:

Such is the Pavlovian device: repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity of communicating dissent and opposition. This is the simple formula for political conditioning of the masses. This is also the actual ideal of some of our public relation machines, who thus hope to manipulate the public into buying a special soap or voting for a special party.

During the Second World War the Nazis showed that they too were very much aware of this conditioning power of the word. I saw their strategy at work in Holland. The radio constantly spread political suggestions and propaganda, and people were obliged to listen because the simple act of turning off one's radio was in itself suspicious. I remember one day during the occupation when I was taking a bicycle trp with some friends. We stopped off to rest at a cafe that, we later realized, was a true Nazi nest. When the radio, which had been on ever since we arrived, announced a speech by Hitler, everyone stood up in awe, and it was a must to take in the verbal conditioning by the Fuhrer. My friends and I had to stand up too, and were forced to listen to that raucous voice crackling in our ears and to summon all our resistance against that long, boring, repetitive attack on our eardrums and minds.
Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D
The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

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Originally posted by Trancer-X Correction, the reason your job gets so complicated is because of the ignorance displayed by said individuals. While there is a vein of conspiracy theory running through that book, much of it is well-founded - but hardly a source of professional financial advice or guidance. You also have to keep in mind that at one time in the not too distant past, there were all sorts of widely acknowledged 'conspiracies' such as the Earth being flat, our solar system revolving around the earth as opposed to the sun (geocentric vs heliocentric), etc. If it weren't for such conspiracy theorists such as Copernicus, Giordano Bruno (who was put to death for his heretical beliefs), Galileo, Isaac Newton, etc., we might still be living in relatively dark times.

Some people like living in the cave they are in and refuse to see the outside world beyond the shadows on the wall.

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Originally posted by DJMaytag That's like going to an auto mechanic and asking for the instructions for fixing your car! They make a pretty decent amount of money off filing taxes for people, so why would want to look into what the truth is? If everyone found out, then there would be a TON of unemployed accountants out there on the streets!

+1

DJMaytag I guess the Code is going to have to be opened on them. Show them the one where it lists what income is. But also show them where the United States is as well. Follow me?

Bottom line, I'm paying my taxes and ain't gonna incur the expense of a constitutional lawyer to argue about whether or not I should pay them at all when I'm behind bars, which seems the case here in the original thread. Note the constitutional lawyers are not behind bars, but have deep pockets and will argue until you run out of money for attorney fees. They are not bound by your freedom as a condition of those fees.


[[[smoke]]]

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Originally posted by Yoepus However, my point was the constitution (with the 16th amendment) empowers Congress to levy tax on incomes.

I don't dispute that it does allow for an indirect tax on incomes, but the 16th Amendment did NOT expand Congress� taxing jurisdiction to all Americans. The Supreme Court and the Secretary of the Treasury say it did not. The Federal government still has limits on what their jurisdiction is to tax. Some examples:

If I'm selling a product to people in another country, the profits from those sales are the "sources" that are considered to be taxable income, as the government does have the jurisdiction to regulate interstate commerce (international commerce) and does so via taxes. Tariffs would/could be placed on the product as a direct tax for the government to collect, and the profit "source" would be imposed as an indirect income tax. In this case, it is not the interstate sales that are being taxed (gross receipts), but the net profit from those sales (ie income - deductions = taxable income). The source rules in section 861 specifically state that when determining taxable income, foreign source income is NOT exempt.

If someone comes into the US to work, it is NOT a right for them to work here, but a privilidge. Thus, as a non-resident alien, the government has the jurisdiction to impose an indirect income tax on whatever they earn while they're here. Going back to my original post, this can be shown by the validity of the 1040NR form, which has been properly submitted as a required form for non-resident alien, and has the proper statutes backing it up. The source rules in section 861 specifically state that when determining taxable income, non-resident alien income is NOT exempt.

If I'm selling a product to people WITHIN the United States, it's a completely different story. Excise taxes could be collected as direct taxes if the product is something like gasoline, tobacco, or alcohol. But the net profits would not be considered as a "source" from which an indirect income tax could be imposed upon. The government does not have jurisdiction to regulate intrastate commerce.

Citizens of the US working exclusively within the United States however, have the right to work here, and the Constitution never granted the government the right to tax what people earned. That was one of the major points of the whole revolutionary war, to avoid the taxes King George was imposing on the colonies! Why in the world would our founders go through all that effort, to simply allow the exact same thing to happen with our new government?

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Originally posted by Yoepus Perhaps this is the key question, but this is another question. Its not the question in which the link you referrered us to (and which both I and Occrider have rebutted) addresses.

Occrider was rebutting in favor of MY argument. Sorry to inform you that he's agreeing with me. His post was pretty much a verbatim quote from http://taxableincome.net/articles/sourcerelevant.html

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Originally posted by Yoepus Hence my previous' post comment about using an accountant for expert advice.

Why? The tax code has the definitions included in it (in plain English), so one can simply look up what the word means. You may think you know what a word in the code means in plain English, but the definition listed may well show something completely diferent (in plain English).

From section 3 ("English vs. Legalese") on http://taxableincome.net/report/taxinc1.html:

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26 USC � 5841 states that "[t]he Secretary [of the Treasury] shall maintain a central registry of all firearms in the United States which are not in the possession or under the control of the United States." The law has a far more limited application than this section by itself would seem to imply. In 26 USC � 5845(a) it is made clear that the term "firearm" in these sections does not include the majority of rifles and handguns (while the term "firearm" in basic English obviously would), but does include poison gas, silencers and land mines. The average citizen reading the law will naturally tend to assume that he already knows what the words in the law mean, and may have difficulty accepting that the legal meaning of the words used in the law may bear little or no resemblance to the meaning that those words have in common English. For example, reading the phrase "all firearms" in Section 5841 in a way that excludes most rifles and handguns is contrary to instinctive reading comprehension. (But any lawyer reviewing Sections 5841 and 5845 would confirm that such a reading would be absolutely correct.) Reading one section of the law without being aware of the legal definitions of the words being used can give an entirely incorrect impression about the application of the law.

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Originally posted by Yoepus Thats like saying you can't go to a doctor asking him for medical advice on how to stay healthy because he makes a pretty decent amount of money everytime you are sick, and if everyone found out to be healthy he will not have work... Same argument, doesn't really cut it does it?!

Yes it does, because they cannot prevent many sicknesses, and certain diseases that are preventable are not avoided by many (lung cancer would be an obvious one that could be prevented but those that smoke take that risk).

Accidents happen as well, so there will ALWAYS be a need for doctors. There is NO way for there to be almost no need for doctors. If the truth about income taxes comes out, there WILL be almost no need to acountants

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Originally posted by Yoepus A mechanic is not a professional, an accountant, like a doctor is,

No? Them mechanics sure do alot of testing and certification to be still considered amateurs then... next time you get your car fixed, tell your mechanic that he is not a professional. I'm sure his response will be one you won't like.

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Originally posted by Yoepus they must swear to an oath and are certified by an association for their work. If you still don't think they will give you fair advice because they're only way of professional fulfillment is to make money on a lie, go the academia, go ask the most knowledgeable and educated, those that have done research into Tax law, and those that teach it, go ask the PhDs and the Professors.

See my rebuttal above, but also see http://taxableincome.net/articles/fraud.html for the reasoning as to why tax professionals wouldn't tell you what I'm telling you - the main reason is that they don't know! They've been taught a certain viewpoint of how to fill out tax forms for people and know certain parts of the law. They're also operating under the same false assumptions that you are, and those false assumptions make it hard for most humans to change their viewpoints.

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In any field of thought, it is very easy for false assumptions to be self-perpetuating. For example, for years scientists searched for a substance responsible for the phenomenon called "heat." For years doctors tried to perfect blood-letting. Suggestions that the "experts" in any field are missing something fundamental are usually greeted with ridicule by those "experts." The idea that little creatures too small to see ("germs") were making people sick was considered absurd. The idea that the earth is a sphere revolving around the sun was ridiculed. Traveling faster than the speed of sound was long considered a physical impossibility. These obstacles to human understanding are due in large part to the fact that only very rarely does an individual begin to study a certain subject without preconceived assumptions (whether incorrect or correct). The same is true of tax professionals today. The possibility is very slim that anyone in America over the past half century received training to become a tax professional without being told that most income is taxable. Instead, they started with a false assumption (which they had before they had the slightest idea of what the law actually said), and then perhaps studied details in the law about deductions, exemptions, etc. When an assumption is strong enough, an enormous amount of direct evidence contradicting that assumption can be dismissed by an individual. Perhaps the individual simply assumes that the evidence was somehow misunderstood. Or perhaps the individual simply ignores whatever does not match the preconceived ideas. The human mind is very resourceful when it comes to manipulating the physical evidence to match a preconceived conclusion. A scientist might simply throw out some result which contradicts the bulk of his findings, and assume it was the result of some error in the experiment.

I think the entire report on http://www.taxableincome.net/ would be a good read for you since you seem to be inclined enough to engage in this debate. While you're at it, see http://www.861.info/ and http://www.861evidence.info/ too.

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Originally posted by Yoepus First you are wrong, the "government" does not have jurisidcition over "every income made in the USA", the Congress does. And what prevent's them from taking 100% of your income is callled "re-election".

As I've tried to educate you on (and have failed, not that I had any hopes of doing so), Congress does have to power to tax incomes, but they absolutely DO NOT have the power to tax "every income in the USA", as you said. Occrider's post clearly showed that 16th Amendment did not extend the government's taxing power. Prior to the 16th Amendment, the incomes of US citizens earning an income solely within the United States was not taxable. Seeing as how the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated what they have about the government's taxing jurisdiction not changing with the 16th Amendment, I can't see how anyone can believe that that jurisdiction did indeed change and grant power to tax everyone's income.

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Originally posted by Yoepus Look, I'm not willing to hunt-down all your answers for you,

Are you scared of what you might find? What you won't find is what should scare you. The answer to this question has been researched by many, and no answer has been found. The question has been asked point blank to Mark Everson, the IRS commissioner, and he completely dodged the question. Thousands of letters have been sent to Congress and to the IRS asking where it is in the tax code that makes one liable to file and pay your taxes. What has been the response? SILENCE!

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Originally posted by Yoepus In my last post I addressed that the Congress has the power to impose a tax on incomes.

For the last time, yes they do have that power. Does it extend to everyone with an income? No.

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Originally posted by Yoepus I have recommended you pay your taxes however.

To prove a point, I recommend that you pay your moonshine distillery taxes.

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Originally posted by Yoepus The point of the above paragraph is, if you can't concet that the Congress has the power to tax income, there is little point to much further debate.

I have repeatedly stated as such in the reply, as well as prior to this, but the fact of the matter is that Congress's power does not extend to US Citizens earning an income exclusively within the US.

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Originally posted by Yoepus Where is it that say's you are requried to pay, I'm not sure it does, but as long as the word "tax" is included it means "this is not optional to pay, anyone meeting, a, b, c, etc, criterion must pay this tax".

If you are liable to pay a tax, then yes, you MUST pay that tax. Am I liable to pay a tax for the work that I do? (I'm an electrician, BTW) NO! Why? I work exclusive in the US, I'm a citizen (as opposed to being a non-resident alien), and I do no engage in any foreign commerce.

Am I liable to pay state taxes? Yup (and I do). Am I liable to pay Social Security taxes? As far as I know (and I do, begrudgingly)

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Originally posted by Yoepus They can tell you. Ask a tax accountant and he will tell you for instance. But to my knowledge the IRS welcomes questions regarding whether you need to pay a tax or not and have hotlines for such things. I recall having an IRS employee who gave me free advice explaining to me why I did NOT have to file a tax return.

OK, call them up and ask them what statute makes you liable to pay YOUR taxes? Ask them specificaly for the statute in Title 26 of the US Code. If they cannot cite which one it is, they are dodging your question (out of ignorance though - this whole fraud is a conspiracy of ignorance, not of purposeful deception, as only a select few really know what's going on).

While you're at it, ask them what statute requires you to fill out a 1040 form (or any of it's variations like 1040A, 1040EZ, etc). Odds are VERY good that you won't get a straight answer from them. Odds are VERY good that a reference to the 16th Amendment will be made and probably something in the instructions of the 1040 booklet (the latter would actually be the truth, as the instruction telling you to sign it and mail it in is what makes you liable for anything you've put down!)

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Originally posted by Yoepus That is only one possible explination. The reality is we don't know why the IRS walked away, there could be a dozen other possible explination, and even a multitude of explinations that was the government's real reason for walking away.

How cut and dry of a case was it though? Man is on probation, terms of probation were violated (the same conduct that got him on probation in the first place!), man is threatened with jail time if he doesn't comply. Sounds like a case a child could win as a lawyer, but they dropped it. It just doesn't make sense, unless you consider the fact that the evidence he was about to present would have won his case and set a nasty precedent in the courts.

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Originally posted by Yoepus Reading that newspaper article you quoted on the subject does however make pretty clear that 1040 might have been misfiled.

The OMB forms have to be properly submitted with the correct documentation, as well as listing the associated statutes on the form. Since there are no statutues making it a requirement to fill out a 1040 form, they had to use the alternative form.

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Originally posted by Yoepus However to my general knowledge, you are not required to fill out form 1040, but you are required to fill out a tax return if you have income (and meet criteria, a, b, c, etc). Form 1040 is simply the STANDARD form to report your income and deductions, however there are alternate methods to do this, and I think the INS would even have to accept a mailed in home-made paper entry.

Having income does not mean you have to fill out a tax return. As I've said before, where is the statute that says this? What income is taxable and under what conditions? I think I've answered these questions already above.

I'm cutting out some of the arguments we got into to focus on the topic at hand. I know we can (and I think have) debate until the end of time about social programs and my Libertarian nature of wanting to cut those programs. The legitamacy of the income is what I want to focus on here.

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Originally posted by wolverine16 90%? That's a bit far fetched, but like I've said, I do think that defense/offense spending should be greatly cut and Lord knows I was against the Iraqi invasion.

It costs a TON to upkeep and staff all our bases in other countries. If the story about Bin Laden is true about resenting our presence in Saudi Arabia (a whole 'nother topic entirely), then it cost us two landmarks and thousands of live on 9/11 as well.

Most of the military spending from the 80's build up until now has been on offensive weapons and systems. While I do agree that some military R&D is needed, if we're not fighting anyone on foreign soil, most of those weapons are not needed.

Maybe 90% was going too far, but 70% is realistic is we're limiting the military to solely protecting our borders.

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Originally posted by wolverine16 Of course that's not a coincidence.

I'm no expert on the Fed, but from what little I have read, the income taxes were implemented to pay for the interest on the borrowing that was done thru the Fed. If this is true, then it is no coincidence that the two were created at the same time.

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Originally posted by wolverine16 True, though those excise taxes would be stretched a lot more without any additional revenue in place after you stop paying income taxes.

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Originally posted by wolverine16 Yep, it would be far better to live with absolutely no government programs at all. Poor kids should get no education at all if their parents can't afford it because it would lead us toward socialism to do anything about it as a nation.

Once people wake up to the truth about paying income taxes that they're no liable for, then people across the board will have more money available to them to use for private education, should that be the route they take. FYI, public education is largely paid for out of STATE taxes (taxes I do pay, BTW), so public education will NOT dissapear once the great awakening occurs and the Federal government cuts the Dept of Education.

I had to snip your comment about "those were some great times" in regard to pre-Industrial revolution times, but I will address an aspect of it here. Are we better educated now than we were then? It seems as if our students are progressively getting worse and we're falling into the bottom of the heap of industrialized nations on proficiency scores.

I have to say something on this, as public education was particularly traumatic for me, having had ADD through it (and not knowing until after college), learning math and sciences at a faster rate than almost everyone else (and getting bored with the lack of challenges), learning english and writing at a slower pace (and getting frustrated with not learning and being able to perform like everyone else, something that affected my self esteem for quite a while after "graduating"), and the social aspect of being there (I wasn't particularly outgoing or involved in things, leading to it being a pretty bleak experience and something I dreaded for the entire time I was there, something that has also negatively effected me, likely up until this day). I know of some Libertarians who advocate getting rid of federally and/or mandated public education for just this reason, as I am one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands that went thru this trauma (as well as made the experience worse for those around me, making it harder for others to learn due to my disruptive attitudes and behaviors while there).

Needless to say, my kids will be homeschooled in a nurturing enviroment, and can be taught the skills they need to get on this world, instead of being taught how to conform and be good cogs in the wheel of the corporate world.

quote:

Originally posted by wolverine16 With all due respect, I agree with a lot of your criticisms, but that's why I'm against who's in charge right now. As far as Democrats, I'll agree they're nowhere near perfect either. I think a lot of special interest problems could be dealt with by having real campaign finance reform and publicly funded elections, which is currently being fought for in a number of states through referendum initiatives. I think reforms and making progress is better than going back to the 19th Century.

I think it is possible to go back to the 19th century, while still making progress. For one, you would never have to worry about being against your president like you do now, as a president operating without the funds like he has been given now can't really do too much to screw things up royally. No wars, no tanking the economy, no supression of the Bill Of Rights, none of that.

I know that we both see it from our own perspective on this one, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree here. The only problem is that if the message gets out there about what I believe about our income tax system, your ideals about the proper way to do things and have all sorts of social programs are going to come under fire. They may not dissapear (many could - and SHOULD - be reverted back to the control of the individual states).

quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 DJMaytag I guess the Code is going to have to be opened on them. Show them the one where it lists what income is. But also show them where the United States is as well. Follow me?

No, they're going to have to do the research on it like I did. I can only hope to post stuff here and provide the spark like someone did for me to start questioning what's really going on.

I can't say I follow you about "where the United States is as well". That's an argument that leads directly into being classified as a non-resident alien. Non-resident aliens do have to pay federal income taxes. I don't buy that theory, nor do I buy the one about not being liable for income taxes because the 16th Amendment wasn't properly ratified. That goes against my argument as well, as the 16th Amendment didn't change a damn thing as far as taxes that I would have anything to do with.

DJMaytag, I don't have time to respond to your post indepth, but where exactly in the constitution is it a "right" for a US citizen to be able to work?

Why is a non-resident any different then a US citizen in this regard?

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus DJMaytag, I don't have time to respond to your post indepth, but where exactly in the constitution is it a "right" for a US citizen to be able to work? Why is a non-resident any different then a US citizen in this regard?

Maybe this might ring a bell:

quote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If from the Declaration of Independence. Does it need to be in the Constitution to say you have a right to work? How about a right to have children? Own property? A right to eat? sleep? breathe? think? I don't think that unalienable rights need to be spelled out in the Constitution.

A non-resident is not a citizen of the US, and is here temporarily on a visa of some sort. They have the unalienable right to work in their country, but have made to choice to work in ours while they're here (if they're even able to do so, as some visas don't allow you to be employed while you're here!)

A non-resident alien can simply avoid the income tax by either not working while they're here, or simply not travelling/visiting here. It's just like a direct tax, it can be avoided by not engaging in that activity that's taxed, such as things like alcohol or tobacco. You don't want to pay a tax for booze or smokes? Then don't drink or smoke, simple enough.

Obviously another alternative to avoiding this income tax would be to become a citizen. Then they'd be a US Citizen just like anyone else.

quote:

Originally posted by DJMaytag Maybe this might ring a bell:

It does, and your argument would be that since taxes make you sad they should be outlawed?:conf

quote:

If from the Declaration of Independence. Does it need to be in the Constitution to say you have a right to work?

Umm yes. In the bill of rights preferably too.

quote:

How about a right to have children? Own property? A right to eat? sleep? breathe? think? I don't think that unalienable rights need to be spelled out in the Constitution.

The government taxes children, property, food, and air (via EPA), and books and informaiton services. If these are all "rights" where is the moral or legal argument against taxation of these things?

quote:

A non-resident alien can simply avoid the income tax by either not working while they're here, or simply not travelling/visiting here.

Guess what? So can a US citizen.

quote:

It's just like a direct tax, it can be avoided by not engaging in that activity that's taxed, such as things like alcohol or tobacco. You don't want to pay a tax for booze or smokes? Then don't drink or smoke, simple enough.

But income tax is an indirect tax, not a direct tax, if it was a direct tax that would be a problem, hence the 16th amendment.

Its like say you don't want to pay property tax, don't own property. But one way or another, you will always pay property tax whether directly or indirectly.

quote:

Obviously another alternative to avoiding this income tax would be to become a citizen. Then they'd be a US Citizen just like anyone else.

I don't get it, you agree to the fact that Congress has the constitutional ability to tax incomes yet then go on to argue why Congress has no constitutional ability to do so.

So which is it, can Congress tax incomes or not?

I'm just trying to get some agreemenet here at the macro level before diving into the micro.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus It does, and your argument would be that since taxes make you sad they should be outlawed?:conf

They don't make me sad (Federal taxes), since I am not liable to pay them. I am sad, however, that many are not aware that they are paying a tax that they are not liable for.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus Umm yes. In the bill of rights preferably too.

You must not understand the premise of the Bill of Rights...

The BOR is what WE THE PEOPLE tell government it cannot do, like restrict our speech, take away our guns, etc. It doesn't work the other way around, the government does NOT grant us rights.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus The government taxes children, property, food, and air (via EPA), and books and informaiton services. If these are all "rights" where is the moral or legal argument against taxation of these things?

I'm afraid you have this all wrong. The STATE (whichever one you're in) can and most do tax some of these things. Sales taxes on these things are pretty obvious, and yearly property (land) assessments all go to the state coffers, which is within their limits (AFAIK) to do because of the 10th Amendment.

I know of no tax on children though. Air is a bit iffy too.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus Guess what? So can a US citizen.

How is one to make a living then? Sure, we could have 100% unemployment and watch what the government does with only it's Constitutional revenue stream. I'd find that amusing to see, as it'd be the same thing that would happen if everyone woke up to the income tax scam.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus But income tax is an indirect tax, not a direct tax, if it was a direct tax that would be a problem, hence the 16th amendment.

The subjects and activites associated with the incomes that are allowed to be taxed are indeed an indirect tax, as they cannot be avoided.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus I don't get it, you agree to the fact that Congress has the constitutional ability to tax incomes yet then go on to argue why Congress has no constitutional ability to do so. So which is it, can Congress tax incomes or not? I'm just trying to get some agreemenet here at the macro level before diving into the micro.

How many times do I need to write it? Yes, the government has the right to tax incomes, but it's taxing jurisdiction prevents it from taxing EVERYONE's income. The "source derived" is where the activities that are allowed to be taxed come into play. When looking at it when it says "from whatever source derived", does NOT mean any and every source.

Digest that for a bit, and I'll get into more of this with you, as it really has to be taken piecemeal.

quote:

Originally posted by DJMaytag No, they're going to have to do the research on it like I did. I can only hope to post stuff here and provide the spark like someone did for me to start questioning what's really going on.

My original thought before my previous post.

While Pollock does create a constitutional issue with income taxation, that does not mean that it was a very good ruling. Which is, in part, the reason why it has been universally ignored by both the courts and the legislature. Warning. This is going to be a long read:


Purging Out Pollock:
The Constitutionality of Federal
Wealth or Sales Tax

Professor Erik Jensen argues that Congress may not tax wealth and may not adopt a national sales or consumption tax.1 The apportionment clauses of the Constitution say that federal "direct taxes" must be apportioned among the states according to their population.2 Apportionment according to population is a hobbling requirement, somewhere between utterly silly and impossible for any tax base that is uneven per capita among the states. Apportionment yields not fair results but perverse results. As a practical matter if apportionment is required, the tax is impossible. The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, was written to allow Congress to tax income without the hobbling apportionment requirement. Professor Jensen says that the adopters of the Sixteenth Amendment knew the difference between an income tax and a tax on consumption or on wealth3 so the fact that the Amendment frees only "income" from the apportionment requirement means that federal consumption and wealth taxes are excluded. The Treasury Department is currently considering proposals to replace the federal income tax with a national sales or consumption tax.4 A federal tax on wealth has recently been proposed to pay for capital grants to young adults.5 Jensen casts thunderbolts in both directions, making both wealth and consumption taxes impossible or just short of impossible.
Professor Jensen's argument on the Sixteenth Amendment would not matter, unless one presumes, inappropriately, that the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust6 in 1895 was rightly decided and remains good law.7 The case law that preceded Pollock, going back to the Founders, had held that apportionment was not written to hobble federal taxation so that the governing principle was that no tax would be considered to be an apportionable "direct tax" if apportionment of the tax was unreasonable. Pollock ripped up the pre-existing law so as to veto the income tax. Pollock was itself overturned by the Sixteenth Amendment as to apportionment of income, but if Pollock's destruction of the prior law and resurrection of apportionment remains as a sound principle, notwithstanding all that has happened to Pollock since, then apportionment can be used as a tool to veto other federal taxes, as Professor Jensen would indeed use it.

Pollock was, however, wrong when decided, and has been properly beaten back by the Court, the Congress, and the People. At this point Pollock, if not strictly reversed, is such a moribund case that a puff of breath will blow it out. It would clean up the law a bit for the Supreme Court to declare that Pollock stands reversed in full, leaving intact the wise case law that preceded it. Clean, clear law is indeed a virtue. Still, in the meantime, Pollock should not matter much. One should not erect an edifice or a legal argument on a foundation as crumbling as Pollock. Without Pollock, an unapportioned federal tax on wealth or on sales or consumption is perfectly constitutional.


The Glory of Hylton


Article I, sections 8 and 9 of the Constitution requires that capitation and other "direct taxes" must be apportioned among the states according to their population, counting slaves as three- fifths of a free citizen. Apportionment is a vestige of the requisition rule under the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution. Under the Articles, Congress had no tax power of its own and almost no employees and could raise revenue only by telling a state to pay over its quota of a requisition. The formula used to determine each state's quota was an attempt to measure the relative wealth of the states. Congress could get no more accurate appraisals of wealth of the states than their population, especially under the wartime conditions when the quota system was first adopted. Counting slaves as three-fifths was a hard-fought compromise over how much slaves should be considered as contributing to the wealth of a state.8 As John Adams said in July 1776, the numbers of people were taken by the apportionment rule as "an index of the wealth of the state" and "not as subjects of taxation."9 "Population" was adopted in the Convention and justified in the ratification debates because it was the "best measure of wealth."10
Apportionment among states by population was brought into the Constitution only because it taxed slaves, counting the slaves at three-fifths of a person. Apportionment of tax became part of the Constitution in the course of the debates over how much slaves should affect voting power in the House of Representatives. In those debates, the North protested that slaveholders should not get more voting power by buying more slaves.11 The North acquiesced in slaves increasing slaveholders' voting power only once it was decided that additional slaves would also increase the South's share of a requisition, or a tax in lieu of requisition that bypassed the states and taxed individuals directly.12 Apportionment of direct tax was written to increase tax on the South because of their slaves, not to protect wealth from tax. With the end of slavery, apportionment lost its original rationale.

Apportionment of direct tax turned out to be a rule too silly to enforce, in those cases in which the tax base is not equal per capita among the states. In Hylton v. United States,13 in 1796, the Court looked at a carriage tax, for instance, which was a perfectly legitimate and common tax of the times. Carriages, however, are an urban vehicle and New York, the Court assumed, might have 10 times more carriages per capita than Virginia.14 To meet apportionment under those circumstances, tax rates would have to be 10 times higher on carriages in Virginia than in New York. Indeed, the poor fool to drive the first carriage into Kentucky would have to bear Kentucky's entire state quota. There is and never was any rhyme or reason for why Virginian or Kentuckians should pay higher rates on their carriages, although that result is forced by the rule of apportionment. The Founders just did not see it when they adopted the rule.15

Apportionment is still too silly a rule to enforce. Connecticut has about twice the per capita wealth and consumption of Mississippi.16 An apportioned federal tax on consumption or wealth would mean that Mississippians would have to pay tax at twice as high tax rates as Connecticut citizens. The results are adverse to reason and policy, but are forced by apportionment by state. Under apportionment Mississippians would need to pay tax at twice the rates because they are relatively poor and have so little tax base over which to apportion their quota. The Founders misunderstood the effect and thought that apportionment would protect the poorer states.17

In the 1658 case of James v. Morgan,18 James convinced Morgan to buy a horse for a price equal to one barleycorn doubled for each nail in the horse's hooves. That formula turned out to yield more barley than existed in all of England. The court gave Morgan the horse, but for the price of only the fair market value of the horse. While the parties understood the English words in the contract in some sense, and Morgan agreed to the words, the contract as applied turned out to be too silly to enforce. Apportionment, where the tax base is uneven per capita among the states, is like a contract for one barleycorn, doubled per nail.19

In the debates over ratification of the Constitution "direct tax" had often been used as a synonym for all "internal taxes." "Indirect tax" was in turn a synonym for the "impost," that is, the tax at the water's edge on imports.20 "Dry taxes" were "direct taxes."21 The leading Anti-Federalist spokesmen, including Brutus,22 Federal Farmer,23 and Minority of the Pennsylvania Convention24 used "direct tax" as a term that included all internal or dry land taxes. The leading Federalist spokesmen, including James Madison,25 James Wilson,26 and Alexander Hamilton27 did too. Jefferson, who wavered on the Constitution, also used "direct" and "internal" tax as synonyms.28 "Direct" also meant "not through the states." The Articles of Confederation had allowed the Congress only requisitions on the states, taxing people or things indirectly, but the Constitution was to allow Congress to bypass the state and tax people and things directly. "Direct tax" commonly referred to the taxes the states would have used to meet a requisition, except that under the new Constitution the Congress could borrow the state tax base or tax in the same way that the state had taxed and collected the taxes directly. Carriage taxes were on Treasury's 1796 inventory of state or "direct tax," compiled to allow an apportionment of federal internal taxes among the states.29

The Court in Hylton held that apportionment would not be required where apportionment was not reasonable. Notwithstanding how "direct tax" was used in the ratification debates, the court in Hylton avoided apportionment by defining "direct tax" creatively. Alexander Hamilton argued on behalf of the government in Hylton that the federal tax on carriages was not a direct tax because "no construction ought to prevail calculated to defeat the express and necessary authority of the government." "It would be contrary to reason," he said, "and to every rule of sound construction, to adopt a principle for regulating the exercise of a clear constitutional power which would defeat the exercise of the power."30 The argument had been critical to Congress's adoption of the carriage tax.31 The Supreme Court agreed with the argument:


The Constitution evidently contemplated no taxes as direct taxes but only such as Congress could lay in proportion to the census. The rule of apportionment is only to be adopted in such cases where it can reasonably apply; and the subject taxed, must ever determine the application of the rule.32

Alternatively stated, "[a]s all direct taxes must be apportioned, it is evident that the Constitution contemplated none as direct but such as could be apportioned."33 A tax on carriages was deemed to be not a direct tax as a matter of law so that it would not have to be apportioned.
The Justices who decided Hylton were James Wilson, William Paterson, Samuel Chase, and James Iredell, all of whom were major players in the debates on tax and federal power leading up the Constitution.34 They knew the Constitution far better than we do. When Hylton was decided, giants still walked upon the earth and they served as the Justices in Hylton.

Hylton was of course properly decided. Jensen treats Anti-Federalist arguments that lost by the adoption of the Constitution as if they were the arguments of the Federalists who wrote the text of the Constitution and won. The Anti-Federalists hated giving direct or internal tax to the federal government more than any other aspect of the Constitution. The Anti-Federalists generally conceded that the new federal government could have the impost or tax on imports, but none of them wanted the federal government to have the power to lay internal or dry taxes. To render the Congress "safe and proper," Anti-Federalist James Monroe argued, "I would take from it one power only -- I mean that of direct taxation."35 The hardest fought issue of the ratification debates had been the fight over Anti-Federalists' attempts to deny the federal government any power to lay direct tax. The Federalists, however, had fought back and victoriously passed a Constitution that gave the federal government the power to lay direct taxes.36 The Federalists who wrote the Constitution defeated the attempts to veto or hobble direct tax.

The proponents of the Constitution described the power of direct tax as properly unhobbled. Hamilton argued for the power of government over direct tax in the New York ratification convention, saying


A constitution cannot set bounds to a nation's wants; it ought not, therefore, to set bounds to its resources. Unexpected invasions, long and ruinous wars, may demand all the possible abilities of the country. Shall not your government have power to call these abilities into action? The contingencies of society are not reducible to calculations. They cannot be fixed or bounded, even in imagination.37

War was said to be increasingly a matter settled by the purse and not the sword, argued Oliver Ellsworth in Connecticut. A government that could command only a fraction of its resources for revenue, he said, was "like a man with but one arm to defend [him]self."38 In time of war, an enemy with a powerful navy could cut off revenue from the impost by an effective blockade: "Take direct taxation from the list of federal authorities," said Madison, and Virginia will be open to "surprize and devastation whenever an enemy powerful at Sea chuses to invade her."39 More generally, the first purpose of the Constitution was to solve a fiscal crisis, the destitution of the federal level, and to allow the federal government to raise enough revenue to pay off the Revolutionary War debts. When war came again, as the Founders expected, the federal government would have had to borrow again.40
George Washington told Thomas Jefferson he would embrace any tolerable compromise and would not have much objection to any of the suggested amendments except for the amendment that goes to the prevention of direct taxation and that one, he presumed, would be the amendment most strenuously insisted on.41 Washington's stubborn refusal to allow anything that goes to the prevention of direct taxation represents the Founders' intent.

The hard-fought debate over direct tax was a debate over a tax that on its face was subject to apportionment. The fight over federal power to lay direct tax arose long after the Philadelphia convention had added apportionment for reasons that had nothing to do with any reservations about whether federal direct tax was a good idea or not. The Anti-Federalists did not see apportionment as directed to or meeting their concerns and they did not adopt apportionment as their own. Neither side understood the purpose of apportionment was to restrain or hobble a federal tax or to make it absurd. No important player at the time knew or understood the absurdity of apportionment when the tax base is not even among the states.

The wisdom of Hylton was good law for a hundred years. In 1868, for example, the Supreme Court held that a Civil War tax on the income and principal of insurance companies was constitutional although not apportioned. The tax was not direct because the consequence of finding that apportionment was required was unacceptable:


The consequences, which would follow the apportionment of the tax . . . in the manner prescribed by the Constitution, must not be overlooked. They are very obvious. Where [insurance] corporations are numerous and rich, it might be light; where none exist, it could not be collected; where they are few and poor, it would fall upon them with such weight as to involve annihilation. It cannot be supposed that the framers of the Constitution intended that any tax should be apportioned, the collection of which on that principle would be attended with such results. The consequences are fatal to the proposition.42

In 1875, in Scholey v. Rew,43 the Court held on the same logic that a tax on wealth transmitted at death was not direct because

[i]f all taxes that political economists regard as direct taxes should be held to fall within those words in the Constitution, Congress would be deprived of the practical power to impose such taxes, and the taxing power would be . . . crippled; for no Congress would dare to apportion, for instance, the income tax.44

Finally, in Springer v. United States,45 in 1881, the Court held that Civil War income tax on individuals was not direct on the logic and authority of Hylton:

It was well held [in Hylton ] that where such evils would attend the apportionment of a tax, the Constitution could not have intended that an apportionment should be made. This view applies with even greater force to the [income] tax in question in this case. Where the population is large and the incomes are few and small, it would be intolerably oppressive.46
Pollock Comes Into the Garden


In 1895, in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.,47 the Supreme Court overruled Hylton and its successors by a 5-4 margin so as to require that federal tax on income had to be apportioned. Apportionment is silly for an income tax because per capita income is not equal among the states and apportionment may, in fact, be impossible because for many citizens it is not even possible to ascertain which state quota various tax payments should be credited to. The Supreme Court did not seem unpleased by making a federal tax impossible. The majority made up a false history and rationale for the apportionment rule, saying that it was designed "to prevent an attack upon accumulated property by mere force of numbers."48 Justice Field announced, apocalyptically, that the income tax's

assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich, -- a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness. 'If the court sanctions the [graduated income tax], "it will mark the hour when the sure decadence of our present government will commence."49

Apportionment, the majority opinion said, was "one of the bulwarks of private rights and private property."50
While "preventing a tax on accumulated wealth" might well capture the intent of the Justices in Pollock, that intent turns the historical meaning of the apportionment formula on its head. Apportionment in original meaning was a means to reach individual wealth by taxing according to relative wealth of the states. The Founders believed in wealth taxes. The land tax was a major wealth tax for the period, and the Founders wrote the Constitution to be able to reach wealth.51 When Hamilton asked Madison, for instance, for recommendations about what taxes the new government should impose, Madison advised a federal tax on land, as "an essential branch of national revenue . . . before a preoccupancy by the States becomes an impediment."52 The Founders often expressed sympathy with the aristocratic notion that those "who own the country should govern it,"53 but even within that viewpoint, the conclusion was that those who own the country should pay its tax.

Pollock itself seems to be a victim of misleading textualism. The text says that tax of a certain kind must be apportioned among the states according to population. The Justices reverse engineered from the text to create a rationale that the purpose must have been to protect wealthy states from populous states. That rationale created a right, in the Court's mind. When the income tax came into effect, after the Sixteenth Amendment, three- quarters of the revenue from the income tax, given its exemptions, would come from just eight rich states. New York alone would come to pay 35 percent of the income tax.54 If rich states had a right to avoid tax, the right cried for a remedy and repelled narrow interpretations that might deny the right.

The difficulty is that both the rationale and the consequent right are entirely made-up history. The Founders treated population solely as the measure of wealth, so that in historically accurate thinking, the wealthy and the populous states were the same, within the margin of error. Apportionment was intended to reach wealth. Pollock got the historical meaning of the apportionment clause exactly upside down. The Hylton court, overruled in Pollock, understood the history.

In Pollock, the Court also concluded that the purpose of the apportionment requirement was to prevent the imposition of tax within a single state by overall national majority: "Nothing can be clearer than that what the Constitution intended to guard against was the exercise by the general government of the power of directly taxing persons and property within any State through a majority made up from the other States."55 This language makes no sense at all within the constitutional system. An overall majority in the House and Senate can adopt federal taxes, and the apportionment requirement does nothing to change that. There is no requirement that a state must agree to a federal tax for individuals within the state to be subject to the tax and there is no immunity from federal tax if a majority within a state would vote against the tax. The Constitution, more generally, did not give each state some kind of Calhounian veto on legislation. The Constitution created not a compact among states, but a federal government resting directly on the sovereignty of the people and able to raise revenue directly from people and transactions without approval by the states.

States are not even rights-bearing entities under the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation had been a compact among states, signed by delegates representing sovereign states.56 The Constitution replaces the Articles with a government drawing its legitimacy from the sovereignty of the people, and able to operate and draw revenue without recourse to the states.57 States are artificial entities, without rights of their own, and they are not even a very good proxy for individual rights. A concept of equity among states that necessarily requires Mississippi residents to pay tax at twice the rate of Connecticut residents and could put the whole of a state's quota on a single carriage driver cannot be justified as a vindication of equity or rights on the individual level.


The Withering of Pollock in the Supreme Court


Pollock was bad history when it was decided and it quickly became a pariah and shrank in importance. As Senator Joseph Bailey of Texas said in the debate over the Sixteenth Amendment, "an overwhelming majority of the best legal opinion in this Republic believes that Pollock was erroneous."58 An article in the Harvard Law Review expressed faith that "the strong consensus of opinion of the legal profession will work out the right:"59

When a court of last resort not only overrules in effect three direct adjudications made by itself, but also refines away to the vanishing point two other of its decisions, and thereby cripples an important and necessary power and function of a coordinate branch of the government, and delivers an opinion in which is laid down a doctrine that is contrary to what has been accepted as law for nearly one hundred years, it is neither improper nor unprofessional carefully and earnestly to scrutinize that decision and the authorities and reasons upon which it is founded.60

The five-man majority were "nullifying judges" who ought to be impeached, wrote the former governor of Oregon.61 Justice Harlan described Pollock at the time as the "decision [that] will become as hateful with the American people as the Dred Scott case."62
Both Court and politics attacked Pollock and both beat back the Pollock doctrine wherever it mattered. Almost immediately the Supreme Court began retreating from what it later called its "mistaken theory" in Pollock,63 by expanding the definition of "excise tax" elastically so that it could take over almost the entire world of tax. In the constitutional debates, apportionable direct tax had been commonly defined to include "excise taxes."64 If you know the secret that apportioned taxes cannot have uniform tax rates, however, then you can deduce that excise taxes are excluded from the definition of apportionable direct taxes, because excise taxes have to have uniform tax rates across the nation.65

Whether excluded or not in the debates, at the time of the Constitution, "excise tax" referred first to the whiskey tax66 and beyond whiskey, it referred only to sin and luxury taxes, enacted to suppress vice and encourage good morals.67 In reaction to Pollock, however, the Court expanded "excise" way beyond its original meaning. Four years after Pollock, the Court held that a trade tax on the Chicago Board of Trade was an excise tax.68 Five years after Pollock, in 1900, the Court held that the graduated estate tax was an excise tax.69 If the 1895 Pollock Court had thought that it could protect accumulated capital from an assault by Congress, the Court's decision in 1900 that Congress could enact a graduated estate tax terminated that rationale. In 1904, the Supreme Court said that a tax on the gross receipts of a corporation was an excise tax that did not have to be apportioned.70 That decision, in turn, justified a tax on the net income of a corporation, although the decision did not come down until 1911, after Congress had passed the Sixteenth Amendment.71 A tax on corporate business receipts or a corporate income tax is no less an assault on accumulated wealth than an individual income tax is. By 1929, the Court summarized the excise tax exemption as allowing "a tax imposed upon a particular use of property or the exercise of a single power over property incidental to ownership" without apportionment.72

None of these taxes bears any resemblance to the whiskey tax or other taxes on vice, which was the meaning of "excise" in the constitutional period. The use-versus-mere-ownership rationale did not arise until after the constitutional period, and only once the Congress had realized that apportionment was a hobble, and so was seeking to invent narrow definitions of "direct tax."73 The excise cases are all heroic expansions of what an "excise" originally meant. Still, even though the excise tax cases represent opportunistic use of words to limit Pollock to its facts, the excise cases are properly decided because it was Pollock itself that was illegitimate.

The only remaining important tax that the Court's containment of Pollock left as an apportionable tax, by the time of consideration of the Sixteenth Amendment, was the individual income tax itself. The Sixteenth Amendment, proposed by Congress in 1909 and ratified in 1913 overrules Pollock in that last important redoubt.


The Political Assault on Pollock


Pollock was pushed back not just by the Supreme Court but also by the other branches of the federal government and by the states. In the presidential campaign of 1896, which immediately followed Pollock, the Democratic and Populist parties had sought to reverse Pollock. The Republican candidate, William McKinley, however, wanted high tariffs to protect American products from foreign competition in domestic markets, and had no interest in a graduated income tax, and it was McKinley who won the election.74 When McKinley was assassinated, however, his vice president and successor, Theodore Roosevelt, favored a graduated inheritance tax and also a graduated income tax: "The man of great wealth," Roosevelt told Congress, "owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."75 In 1908, the Republican candidate was Roosevelt's nominee, William Howard Taft, and both Taft and his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, supported a progressive income tax at least in emergencies. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates announced that Pollock was wrongly decided.76 During the Taft administration, Congress passed what became the Sixteenth Amendment, which allows an income tax without apportionment, for ratification by the states.
The movement for an income tax took the position that the Supreme Court might allow an income tax, if Congress just passed it again, by distinguishing or reversing Pollock. The Democratic platform supporting William Jennings Bryan in 1896 said that it was the duty of Congress to use all its constitutional power "which remains, or which may come to it by reversal" so that burden of tax shall not be borne entirely by the poor.77 The Populist Party platform said that Pollock was a misinterpretation of the Constitution.78 Cordell Hull of Tennessee (later Secretary of State) was an important instigator for the income tax in the House of Representatives and he said that Pollock was a "palpably erroneous decision stripping a coordinate body of the Government of one its strong arms of power and duty."79 "It seems inconceivable to me," Hull wrote, "that we had a Constitution that would shelter the chief proportion of wealth of the country from the only effective method of reaching it for its fair share of tax."80 Hull thought that a court would allow an individual income tax. After all if the corporate tax could be justified as a tax on doing business as a corporation, then an individual tax on income could be justified as a tax on doing business as an individual.81 The excise taxes on stock trades, gross receipts of a corporation, and estates surely already had very little resemblance to a whiskey tax, so that "excise tax" looked like it was an infinitely malleable term useful to avoid apportionment.

Professor Jensen argues that the reversal of Pollock by constitutional amendment rather than by a challenging reenactment of the income tax must be understood as an affirmation that the income tax was a direct tax, and that apportionment would be necessary absent an amendment.82 That is not how the amendment was understood at the time.

First, from the beginning, the movement for an income tax had two parallel remedies, one to challenge the Court and force it to retreat, and the other to respect the Court as institution and go for amendment of the Constitution. Which remedy to take was solely a matter of tactics, within the same overall purpose to defeat Pollock. Theodore Roosevelt's State of the Union address in 1906 said that Pollock might be reversed in full, but that an amendment would follow if it were not:


As the law now stands it is undoubtedly difficult to devise a national income tax which shall be constitutional. But whether is absolutely impossible is another question and if possible it is certainly desirable. . . . The question is undoubtedly very intricate, delicate and troublesome. The decision of the court was only reached by one majority. . . . Nevertheless, the difficulty evidently felt by the court as a whole in coming to a conclusion, when considered with all the prior decisions on the subject, may indicate the possibility of devising a constitutional income-tax law which substantially accomplishes the results aimed at . . . but if this fails, there will ultimately be no alternative to a constitutional amendment.83

Hull told the House of Representatives that it was the duty of Congress "to invoke every remedy at its command for the restoration of that lost [taxing] power" including both a reenactment of an income tax and an amendment.84 His assessment after the fact was that "the two proposals [for amendment or for challenging the Supreme Court] contributed to the success of each other."85
The decision to go for an amendment to the Constitution rather than pass an income tax bill to invite the Court to find another distinction from Pollock or to reverse it was explained at the time as arising from respect for the Supreme Court as an institution, and not as a means of giving respect to the erroneous Pollock decision. Roosevelt, while energetically opposing Pollock on its law and policy, said nonetheless that Pollock "is the law of the land, and of course accepted as such and loyally obeyed by all good citizens."86 President Taft's influence ultimately decided the tactical course and his choice was defended as a matter of respect for the Supreme Court. Taft's tax package included both an immediate income tax on corporations and also an amendment to the Constitution for an income tax on individuals:


I prefer an income tax, but the truth is that I am afraid of the discussion which will follow and the criticism which will ensue if there is another serious division in the Supreme Court on the subject of the income tax. Nothing has ever injured the prestige of the Supreme Court more than [ Pollock ] and I think many of the most violent advocates of the income tax will be glad of the substitution [of a corporation tax] for same reason. I am going to push the Constitutional Amendment, which will admit an income tax without question, but I am afraid of it without such an amendment.87

In the same vein, Taft wrote that "I am really in favor of an income tax, but I fear the Court would follow the Pollock case and declare it unconstitutional, and I do not desire that."88
The Senate Finance Committee decided that "it would be indelicate, at least, for the Congress of the United States to pass another measure and ask the Supreme Court to pass on it, when they had already passed on the proposition."89 Edward Whitney argued in the Harvard Law Review that the Court in Pollock had weakened the confidence of the people in the Judiciary and made the "Constitution plastic on all points," but that a second overruling would further undermine the Court, "even to restore the Constitution as originally defined."90 If, moreover, the Court refused to distinguish or overrule Pollock invalidated the income tax again, the public outrage would threaten the institution as a whole. In the end, the Congress decided not to challenge the authority or majesty of the Supreme Court, while reversing Pollock on its holding that an unapportioned income tax was unconstitutional.

The tactical choice to go for the amendment can also not be interpreted as affirmation of Pollock in part because there is crossing between the two parties in which the stronger advocates of the income tax pushed for amendment while the less fervent supporters pushed for court-challenging re-enactment of the income tax. In the presidential election of 1908, for example, Democrat William Jennings Bryan supported an amendment to the Constitution on the ground that it seemed improbable that the Congress could circumvent the Supreme Court's objections to an income tax.91 The Democratic platform of 1908 called only for an amendment.92 Republican Taft was on the other side in the 1908 campaign. While he later changed his mind to avoid challenging the Supreme Court, in 1908, Taft's position was that "it is not free from doubt how the Supreme Court, with changed membership, would view a new income tax law."93 Taft, in his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination, said that he believed in an income tax "which, under the decisions of the Supreme Court, will conform to the Constitution."94 Neither party was closely wedded to one side or the other of the tactical decision as to whether to go for an amendment or not.

Congress, in proposing the Sixteenth Amendment, also rejected language that could have confirmed the holding of Pollock that the income tax was a direct tax. Senator Norris Brown of Nebraska first offered a resolution that "Congress shall have power to lay and collect direct taxes on incomes without apportionment among the several States according to population."95 That language would have confirmed Pollock in treating the income tax as a direct tax that would need to be apportioned without the amendment. The language adopted by the Sixteenth Amendment, however, is that Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source, without apportionment, and that language does not confirm Pollock. The change, rejecting Brown's language, is relevant evidence that Congress, in proposing the amendment, did not mean to treat the income tax as direct, and did not mean to make taxes, that fell just outside the definition of income, as taxes that failed for want of apportionment.

The states that ratified the Sixteenth Amendment, finally, also did not understand they were confirming Pollock. In New Jersey, for example, then Governor Woodrow Wilson told the state assembly that Pollock was an erroneous decision, based on "erroneous economic reasoning."96 The ratifiers understood that the amendment came to bury Pollock, not to praise it.

Pollock shares with Dred Scott97 and Chisholm v. Georgia98 the dubious honor of being a court decision over-ruled by a constitutional amendment. A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states to be effective. Constitutional amendments require such a high level of consensus of the country that they are not technical documents or even lawyers' documents, but floods. The proposal for the Sixteenth Amendment passed almost unanimously in the House and Senate.99 No doubt, as Hull said, the old guard gave the appearance of acquiescing while in fact wanting the amendment to be defeated,100 but the old guard did largely acquiesce to the proposal. John D. Rockefeller announced that "[w]hen a man has accumulated a sum of money within the law . . . , the people no longer have any right to share in the earnings resulting from that accumulation."101 Rockefeller proved wrong as a matter of descriptive constitutional law. In the end, even the wealthiest states whose citizens would pay disproportionately more of the income tax supported the amendment.102

When the Sixteenth Amendment was proposed, the individual income tax was the last important tax still at issue. The Court had already allowed the "assaults on capital" in the form of estate tax, a tax on gross receipts of a corporation and a stock-trade tax and in 1911 it would affirm Congress's judgment that a tax on corporate income could also avoid apportionment. Politics is the art of the possible, although it is not always conceptually neat. Putting unnecessary coverage into the Sixteenth Amendment would have imperiled its passage, under the extraordinary high level necessary for a constitutional amendment without helping on the apparently last tax that the Court had not freed from apportionment, the graduated income tax itself.


Pollock in the Modern Era


Pollock was not completely overruled by the rapid expansion of the definition of "excise tax" to cover the assaults on wealth, that is, the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the stock transfer tax. The Supreme Court, however, found that every tax that came before it in the 20 years after Pollock was an excise tax. Given its rapid expansion, "excise" should be understood as a malleable concept that a Court can use to avoid apportionment. Similarly, Pollock was not technically overruled by the Sixteenth Amendment, which covered only an income tax.103 Still, "income" too is a malleable concept that a court can use to avoid apportionment. It is possible that we could go on for some time, always distinguishing Pollock to avoid apportionment of whatever tax is under consideration. Manipulation of the terms "excise," "duty," and "income" to avoid apportionment might be legal fictions if the terms are held to their original meaning, but legal fictions can be sufficient tools to reach the right result.
Indeed, not only can the courts avoid apportionment by manipulative expansion of such terms as "duty," "excise," and "income, but they have a duty to do so, for the reasons expressed in Hylton. Apportionment is a silly and hobbling requirement, as the Founders recognized in Hylton, when the tax base is uneven. The Founders intended that the federal government should have the power to tax equitably. Apportionment of taxes where the tax base is uneven per capita among the states does not help equity or further any rational goal, it is just perverse. No court should ever again veto any federal tax, by imposing the apportionment requirement, now that the original purpose of apportionment, to tax slaves, has no remaining life. After the Sixteenth Amendment and the expansion of "excise tax," Pollock is too bad an egg, a terrible example of judicial bad behavior that now serves mainly as a warning to a court as a precedent to avoid.

Given that Pollock should never be followed again, it is time to reverse it in full to return to the case law, derived from Hylton, that preceded Pollock. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the "Great Dissenter," showed his wisdom by saying that "[t]he known purpose of this [Sixteenth] amendment was to get rid of nice questions as to what might be direct taxes."104 Consistently, Professor Thomas Reed Powell wrote that the public understood the Sixteenth Amendment to be a recall of the Pollock decision that restored what had gone before.105 Pollock has been beaten back by the Supreme Court, by the other two branches of the federal government, and by the states that ratified the Sixteenth Amendment. Apportionment, where the tax base is uneven, is too perverse to ever be applied again. Enough is enough.
http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readi...cc?OpenDocument


In other words, if Pollock became a problem it would in all liklihood be reversed as it stands on weak ground.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Very interesting read Occ, I had to read it a couple times already. I may have to go back again to fully digest it, as I'm still not sure how to take that info. Either way, I realized that the constitutional aspect of this topic is a moot point.

The Constitution is the law that the government is held to, how it has to behave. The law (ie US Code) is what WE THE PEOPLE are held to.

Regardless of the constitutional aspect of whether it says the government (or Congress, if you want to get technical) can collect taxes on income, they still have to put it in writing in law to be able to do so. The ability to do something is completely different than actuall doing it.

I still have yet to find where in Title 26 of the US Code that it is a requirement to make a tax return and pay taxes. I still have yet to find where it is in there that makes you liable to pay taxes. Many, many others are in the same boat.

Has anyone else found it yet?

somewhat related

Slaves to the Tax State
by Kirby R. Cundiff


The basis of communism is "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs," a slogan that is the basis of a totalitarian society where neither life nor property is secure. The slogan shows itself in other ways too: when the communist manifesto was published in 1848, the second bullet point was a progressive tax system. The progressive tax system and the philosophy behind it, on the surface, seems to be the basis for the U.S. tax code today.

In 2004 individuals with a taxable income over $319,000 pay 35% of their marginal taxable income to the federal government whereas individual making $10,000 pay only 15% to the federal government. As offensive as I find this system, it is not the basis for taxation in the United States today. The real U.S. system is far worse.

The real basis for the U.S. tax code is the federal government taxes absolutely everything that it can, but responds to the abilities of powerful individuals and corporations to leave the system. This results in a maximum tax rate, not for the rich, but for the upper middle class, and a maximum tax rate, not for the nation's largest corporations, but for the medium sized ones.

An extremely obvious example of this is the corporate tax schedule. Corporations making over $18,333,333 pay 35% of their marginal taxable income to the federal government. Corporations making less money, for example $15,000,000, pay a larger fraction of their marginal income to the federal government, 38%.

The system is similar for individuals. I have the income of an average American taxpayer. On a marginal basis, I pay 25% of my income to the federal government, 6.75% to the state in which I live and 6.2% to the social security system and 1.45% to Medicare, putting me in about the 40% marginal tax bracket. Bill Gates tax bracket is well below 15%. Bill Gates and most wealthy Americans make the majority of their money off of capital gains, not earned income.

The maximum long-term capital gains tax rate is 15% and this is only paid when stocks are sold. The net effect is Bill Gates, and other Billionaire's, wealth grows largely tax-free while people whose primary source of income is labor pay 40% or more of their income to the government in taxes.

Federal income tax complications such as the alternative minimum tax, which is affecting more and more middle class Americans, make this problem even worse. The effect of this tax system is to make the rich richer relative to the middle class. The only way the middle class can join the wealthy is by starting and selling companies or by very astute stock selection. Working hard at a job will only result in the government taking most of your money.

Another blatantly regressive tax system is the social security system. As of tax year 2004 Americans pay 6.2% of their income below $87,900 into social security -- the tax rate above $87,900 is 0%. This is the largest tax many lower-income Americans pay. While it does tax middle class and lower income individuals at a much higher rate than high income individuals, the net effect is to make the total federal individual income tax brackets choppy like the federal corporate income tax brackets.

As of 2004, ignoring deductions since they make the tax system even more complicated, individuals making $85,000 per year are in a federal plus FICA plus Medicare tax bracket of 35.65%. This tax rate goes down to 29.45% if they make over $87,900 and then up to 34.45% if they make over $146,750. The federal total tax burden peaks at 36.45% for individuals making over $319,000 per year. It is hard to rationalize this sort of a system with any progress tax rate argument.

What are the reasons for this system? The "rich" have more options than the rest of us. They have lobbying power with the federal government, and perhaps more importantly they can leave the U.S. Tax system. They could, for example, move to Germany and give up their U.S. citizenship as emerging markets investment manager J. Mark Mobius did.

The capital gains tax in Germany, as well as many other countries, is zero. The U.S. must keep its capital gains tax rate somewhat low, or many wealthy Americans, and their capital would flow to other lower tax countries. Most Americans do not have the option of fleeing from high tax America; they must go where their jobs take them. This is the same reason that governments give special tax breaks to corporations to locate within their state or city. The corporations have the option of locating in many different places; their employees must go where the jobs are.

The only real check on the federal government raising income taxes on working Americans is the one the U.S. government realized during the Kennedy Era; slaves are not generally very productive workers. Before 1963, the top marginal tax rate in the United States was 91%. If the government taxes its populace at a 0% tax rate, it does not raise any money, but if it taxes its workers at a 100% tax rate, it does not raise much money either � why work when you get no rewards for it.

The theory of supply side economics and the Laffer curve drove federal marginal tax rates from 91% in 1963 down to 28% when Ronald Reagan left office. Since more people were willing to stay in the work force, the federal government's tax revenues drastically increased due to these tax cutes.

Unfortunately, the federal government's spending increased even more during the same time period. While the theory of supply side economics, and the federal government's desire for more revenue, was used to drive taxes lower during the Reagan era, it is unlikely to drive income taxes significantly lower today. It would be hard to argue that George W. Bush's top federal marginal tax rate cut from 39.6% to 35% will change many workers' behavior.

It is very likely that for the foreseeable future the extremely wealthy in the United States will have a much lower tax burden than the average American. One possible solution to this problem would be tax treaties between governments to create a worldwide uniform tax code to eliminate what has been called "unfair tax competition." I am sure that this is the solution that most governments would favor since they could then raise taxes on all of us without any competitive limits: the cartelization of the looter class.

Another solution, which I strongly favor, is lower taxes for everyone, especially the middle class. After all, the US currently has an higher individual tax rate than most every former communist society, including Russia and Vietnam. Surely we can do better.

___________________________

Kirby R. Cundiff, Ph.D. [[email protected]] is an Associate Professor of Finance at Northeastern State University in Tulsa, OK.




http://www.mises.org/story/1796

quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 What people fail to realize is that the Constitution does not apply to the IRS since they use the US Code Title 26 and therefore expects John Q. Public to use the same. And since Johnny is expected to peform under 26 IRC it becomes de facto as opposed to de jure.

The point here is to remove Commercial law and use Common law.

Holy crap occ. That's probably the longest post I've ever seen.

quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 The point here is to remove Commercial law and use Common law.

Care to expand on that a bit? I'm not sure I'm following you on this comment and what you quoted yourself on.





As far as "Johnny being expected to perform under 26 IRC", how can he be expected to do so if he doesn't know what's IN "26 IRC" (Title 26 of the US Code). Now that I know (or know what's NOT in there), I believe that there is nothing for me to perform in my current situation. Should I start engaging in activities that are listed in Title 26, then I will pay every cent that I am liable for.

quote:

Originally posted by DJMaytag Care to expand on that a bit? I'm not sure I'm following you on this comment and what you quoted yourself on.

Anyone can argue the Constitution in a courtroom but the de facto is the US Code.

There are many people out there that refer to this as Maritine Law or Commercial Law. You'd have to look up information from a man called Freeman. Aside from that, a good law dictionary like Black's or Bouvier's would be a good tool.

quote:

As far as "Johnny being expected to perform under 26 IRC", how can he be expected to do so if he doesn't know what's IN "26 IRC" (Title 26 of the US Code). Now that I know (or know what's NOT in there), I believe that there is nothing for me to perform in my current situation. Should I start engaging in activities that are listed in Title 26, then I will pay every cent that I am liable for.

Ignorance is not going to be a get out of jail free card. I don't mean you, just in general. What happens with statements like that is people rely on the media to be their lawgivers and subsequentially their doom.

By performing, I mean if the de facto is 26 USC, then you are bound to it. What you misconceive is that I am saying for you to abide by it's nature, albeit an errant one, the answer is no. That is why people have to read it themselves to see what exactly it means and not go off on some rants like others have been posting here on why THEY HAVE TO pay income taxes because Uncle Sam says so.

This is why I post Hilter quotes. No one thinks, they just act on impulses of the mind they think belongs to them. A sad tale of so called independent thought.

quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 Anyone can argue the Constitution in a courtroom but the de facto is the US Code.

In regards to taxes, arguing the Constitution would give the IRS a slam dunk case against you, as it would easily prove that you knowingly tried to circumvent the law. From everything I'd read and believe, there is nothing in the Constitution that I disagree with. That is not where the answer lies.

quote:

Originally posted by ogvh5150 Ignorance is not going to be a get out of jail free card. I don't mean you, just in general. What happens with statements like that is people rely on the media to be their lawgivers and subsequentially their doom. By performing, I mean if the de facto is 26 USC, then you are bound to it. What you misconceive is that I am saying for you to abide by it's nature, albeit an errant one, the answer is no. That is why people have to read it themselves to see what exactly it means and not go off on some rants like others have been posting here on why THEY HAVE TO pay income taxes because Uncle Sam says so. This is why I post Hilter quotes. No one thinks, they just act on impulses of the mind they think belongs to them. A sad tale of so called independent thought.

While I do ask the question of "Where is it in Title 26 that shows that I am liable?", it is merely a rhetorical question to get those to do the research for themselves.

I am not personally ignorant on the issue, as I have done the research of reading thru the text of Title 26 (a long and boring process for sure). While I have read the info from others in this regard, I am NOT blindly following what they say without doing the research myself. At the same time, I sure as hell am not following the conventional wisdom that says that you have to pay taxes just because everyone else is.

I have no problem with Title 26 being the defacto law and I will abide by any tax therein that I am liable for. Thus far, I have seen no activity that I am engaged in that would make me liable IN THAT SECTION OF THE US CODE (for example, Social Security lies elsewhere, in Title 42).

I haven't read this, but look at:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/friv_tax.pdf

quote:

Originally posted by DJMaytag In regards to taxes, arguing the Constitution would give the IRS a slam dunk case against you, as it would easily prove that you knowingly tried to circumvent the law. From everything I'd read and believe, there is nothing in the Constitution that I disagree with. That is not where the answer lies.

Agreed

quote:

While I do ask the question of "Where is it in Title 26 that shows that I am liable?", it is merely a rhetorical question to get those to do the research for themselves. I am not personally ignorant on the issue, as I have done the research of reading thru the text of Title 26 (a long and boring process for sure). While I have read the info from others in this regard, I am NOT blindly following what they say without doing the research myself. At the same time, I sure as hell am not following the conventional wisdom that says that you have to pay taxes just because everyone else is. I have no problem with Title 26 being the defacto law and I will abide by any tax therein that I am liable for. Thus far, I have seen no activity that I am engaged in that would make me liable IN THAT SECTION OF THE US CODE (for example, Social Security lies elsewhere, in Title 42).

I wasn't trying to say anything against you. I understand that you are very well informed as opposed to those who aren't.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus I haven't read this, but look at: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/friv_tax.pdf

This is the equivalent of when southern preachers had sermons on why slaves had to obey masters according to God's will.

quote:

Originally posted by shaolin_Z Holy crap occ. That's probably the longest post I've ever seen.

Yes, I'm obnoxious like that heh.

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