Talk:Tax protester constitutional arguments

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Contents 1 "Not a tax case" 2 Original research 3 Deletion of article text and replacement with material apparently copied from tax protester web site 4 Copyright violation 5 Still too long!

[edit] "Not a tax case"

I'm seeing a lot of statements in this article like:

No issues of taxation were presented to or decided by the Court, and the word "tax" is not found in the text of the Court's decision.

While certainly interesting, I'm not sure that's sufficient refutation of most of these points. The quotes seem to usually be used because they define terms in ways that cast doubts on tax legality, not because those cases explicitly said that the taxes involved were illegal. IANAL, so maybe there's some legal principle that means that such definitions only apply to the area of law considered in the case (and if that's true, you may want to explicitly mention it), but to a layman it seems a little strange. —Brent Dax 06:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

That isn't strange at all, and it is really not all that different from ordinary conversation. If you tell your eight-year-old that he cannot stay up past ten, that is not a promise that you and your wife won't stay up past midnight. If the court tells an employer that he has no right to tell his employees how to spend their money, that has no relevance to whether the government has the power of taxation, or to a case of guardianship.

Congress routinely defines words like "person", "income" and "interstate commerce" differently in one law than in another. There are whole sections of the United States Code devoted to telling you what these meanings are in different places. This can be frustrating for us laymen who try to understand the law, because our intuition leads us astray. In most cases, the reason for this seemingly odd behavior is a good one: it makes the law simpler to write. It is easier to make plurals and possessives out of "income" than out of "corporate gross income after deduction of the costs of materials."

In many of the tax-protester materials, this fact about the law and how it is written and interpreted is ignored. When a judge is talking about a personal injury case, he will use definitions and principles that are relevant, and will not worry about ones that are not. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Brent Dax: From a legal standpoint, one of the most devastating things you can do to a tax protester is to say, about a particular case cited by a tax protester, that the case was not even a tax case. Under the U.S. legal system, we follow the rule of Stare decisis. See also Precedent and Ratio decidendi, and compare Obiter dictum. It is nonsensical, from a legal standpoint, for a tax protester to cite a particular court decision for a particular argument when that court decision did not even involve the subject matter at hand. To correctly point out that a particular case cited by the protester does not even mention the word "tax" is, from a legal standpoint, a complete refutation of the protester argument. Tax protester arguments suffer from a whole lot of other problems, but this is definitely one of the basic ones.

Another very devastating thing you can do to a tax protester is point out that, where the protester cites a particular case for a particular proposition, the case in question actually is a tax case and the ruling contradicts the protester's argument (you apparently saw some examples in the article).

The quotes in the cases do not "cast doubts on tax legality" from a legal standpoint -- and in law the legal standpoint is the only "standpoint" that counts. Taxation is a legal subject, and can be properly analyzed only by using principles of legal analysis.

We already have links to some of the relevant Wikipedia articles on proper legal analysis (see the discussion of the Stanton case). I'll take a look at the article and see if we can improve it. Yours, Famspear 20:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, now I see where editor Robert A West has beat me to the punch in the article (see the section on Stanton). Yours, Famspear 20:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to make two other points. First, although the information presented certainly does refute tax protester arguments, my view is that refutation or persuasion is not the purpose of this Wikipedia article. Questions about the legal validity of tax protester arguments cannot be decided in Wikipedia anyway. Legal questions are decided ultimately -- and only -- in court. Instead, the Wikipedia reader is (hopefully) provided with verifiable information on tax protester arguments both pro and con, and (hopefully) that information is presented with a neutral point of view -- and the reader is left to make his or her own conclusion, if desired. The reason the material in the article refutes tax protester arguments is that tax protester arguments are legally invalid; a learned person who elucubrates the matter properly is drawn inevitably to this conclusion. Second: The points about certain cases not even mentioning the word "tax" are simply icing on the cake. As mentioned above, lots of cases cited by protesters actually are tax cases -- it's just that the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory texts never really are what the protesters would like them to be, and the courts never rule on those texts the way the protesters would want them to rule. Yours, Famspear 02:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Brent Dax: Here is a quote from the begining of the article on Perl:

Perl is a dynamic programming language designed by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. Perl borrows features from a variety of other languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, sed and Lisp.

Structurally, Perl is based on the brace-delimited block style of AWK and C, and was widely adopted for its strengths in string processing, and lack of the arbitrary limitations of many scripting languages at the time.

Good grief. What in the world is a "brace-delimited block style"? What is "string processing"? What is a "scripting language"? And how are the other mentioned languages (such as "AWK" and "C") used? Why is Perl described as a "dynamic" language? Is there a language that's not dynamic? What does dynamic mean in this particular context? I use computers every day and I have no idea what these terms really mean. After reading the introduction, I (as a layman) still have little if any concept of what "Perl" is (beyond the fact that it's a programming language). My eyes glaze over, and I figure it's useless to even finish reading the article, if there's this much undefined computer-related jargon just in the first few lines.

I'll bet there are technical definitions somewhere for all those terms. (In fairness I should point out that some of the technical terms are linked to related Wikipedia articles.) As Wikipedia is used by the general public, the Perl article probably should define these technical terms (if the definitions are found further down in the article, I don't even know, as "mine eyes" are still in too much of a deep state of "glaze" and I stopped reading). So, your point about explictly mentioning a bit of the underlying legal principles in the article on Tax protester constitutional arguments is well taken. Just as computer tekkies may occasionally forget that non-computer people aren't familiar with lots of computer terms, lawyers can forget or lose sight of the fact that non-lawyers cannot know the underlying legal principles. Thanks, Famspear 16:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original research

I believe this article should have more secondary sources. Right now, it is nearly all primary. --Benn Newman 00:24, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear editor Benn Newman: Regarding your point about secondary sources, the article is the result of many months of attacks on Wikipedia by tax protesters who have been inserting original research, non-neutral POV, unverified statements in tax-related articles. A decision apparently was made to concentrate the tax protester arguments, which are by definition legally frivolous and held by a small minority of people, into an article on tax protesters. That article gradually became too large and unwieldy, and was broken up earlier this year in to what is now: Tax protester; Tax protester arguments; Tax protester history; Tax protester constitutional arguments; Tax protester statutory arguments; and Tax protester conspiracy arguments.

I note the following Wikipedia rule regarding original research (with some bolding added by me):

Although most articles should rely predominantly on secondary sources, there are rare occasions when they may rely entirely on primary sources (for example, current events or Braunfeld v. Brown). An article or section of an article that relies on primary source should (1) only make descriptive claims the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable adult without specialist knowledge, and (2) make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims. Contributors drawing on entirely primary sources should be careful to comply with both conditions.[1]

Thus, I would argue that the Wikipedia rules on original research expressly recognize the example of Primary authority (which, I argue, is roughly analogous to Wikipedia's "primary source" concept) -- in the example given, an article on a court decision (Braunfeld v. Brown')-- as a way of providing the main support for an article on legal matters. Of course, we are always looking for additional Secondary authority materials -- sources roughly analogous to the Wikipedia concept of "secondary sources."

Much of the tax protester material that has appeared in Wikipedia has been copied and pasted from personal web sites, blogs, and so on -- hardly qualifying as proper sourcing for purposes of Wikipedia. Much of these materials cite actual court cases (primary authority). The problem is that the tax protesters nearly always misrepresent what the courts actually rule in the cited cases and, in some instances, actually include false "quotations" from the material. It would be virtually impossible to find secondary authority or secondary sources to illuminate the truth about every false entry or quotation. A better source, in this particlar kind of situation, is the actual Primary authority that is being falsely cited by the tax protesters. Yours, Famspear 18:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I see what you are saying. But that doesn't mean that they (the tax protesters) weren't right, right? *grin* More seriously: Taking what the court says and saying it is the "truth" (which it may be) is still not a neutral point of view. See also Wikipedia:Describing points of view. I think we can represent what the tax protesters' points of view(s) is(/are) and the courts' views are. --Benn Newman 21:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear editor Benn Newman: Well, if Einstein's theory of relativity is a correct statement of how the laws of physics work, then it is "true" for that reason -- and not because Einstein and 99% of all present-day scientists contend it's true, or believe it's true, or say it's true.

Secular law (made made law) of the USA is a bit different. Under the rules of the U.S. legal system, the law literally is what courts rule that it is in an actual case or controversy. Some of the key concepts are Stare decisis and Ratio decidendi. Further, under our legal system, it is emphatically the province and duty of the courts to say what the law is, to paraphrase a famous Supreme Court case. To study the ontology of U.S. law, to understand what law really is, you study statutes, regs, treaties, and other sources as well -- but it's primarily a study of court decisions. Court decisions are where the rubber meets the road under our legal system.

I believe these articles do represent what the tax protesters' points of views are, and the courts' "views" as well. Further, the articles strive for neutral point of view, as they do not say "the courts are right" or "the protesters are right." There is a difference between saying "the court ruled in this case that the income tax was not unconstitutional, and this ruling contradicts the tax protester argument" (which is both verifiable and neutral) and saying "the court ruling in this case is correct." There is a nuance here. I don't think the articles say that "the courts are correct" (even though, by definition, the courts are correct).

The court's Ratio decidendi in any particular case must be determined using certain rules of legal analysis. The holding or holdings of each case can be broadly or narrowly stated, but under the rules of legal analysis there is simply no room for the tax protester argument (for example) that Merchants' Loan somehow stands for the legally frivolous idea that non-corporate income is not taxable as "income," as the Court in that case ruled that the income of a decedent's estate -- which is an example of non-corporate income -- IS taxable as income.

Any article on tax protester arguments that follows the Wikipedia rules (verifiability, neutral point of view, and no original research) will by definition leave most normally intelligent people with the correct impression that the tax protesters are incorrect -- because that is the actual state of the law. Tax protester arguments are a legal equivalent to the argument that the moon is made of green cheese. Wikipedia would do its readers a disservice if Wikipedia were to strain to try to provide equal weight to the tax protester argument. Indeed, by including tax protester arguments in Wikipedia, I would argue we are actually giving undue weight to them. Imagine Encyclopedia Brittanica giving substantial article space to the argument that the moon is made of green cheese -- comparing and contrasting scientific theories about the moon with the green cheese argument. Here you will have a good idea of the situation.

Please give us any suggestions you can on improving neutral POV, etc., on any of these related articles. Yours, Famspear 22:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the point on OR, since the article contains no claims not in the sources cited and makes no evaluative claims of its own. In a democracy, everyone is entitled to an equal opinion about what the law should be, but once the courts have spoken, that is the law. I am reminded of a story where a lawyer, arguing before the Supreme Court, was interrupted by the Chief Justice: "Young man, your argument is fascinating, but it is not the law." To this, the lawyer replied, "Well, it was until Your Honor spoke." Courts do change their minds, and higher courts overrule lower ones, but Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and in any event there is no overruling the Supreme Court.

Famspear has replied convincingly to the OR point, and the rejoinder discussed NPOV, not NOR. Accordingly, I consider the OR claim dropped and have removed the tag. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of article text and replacement with material apparently copied from tax protester web site

On 16 November 2006, a new user called Bobbyppp deleted essentially the entire article and replaced it with material apparently copied almost verbatim from a page at the "We the People" tax protester web site at http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTPLawsuit/Update04-May-10.htm. Obviously, this violates copyright and numerous Wikipedia policies including Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research. Also, tax protester web sites are not suitable authoritative sources for "what the law is."

The material was also blatantly false, with phony descriptions of what the Supreme Court ruled in cases like Brushaber. For example, the following statement was included in the text dump: "However, in 1916, the Supreme Court brought the devilish action of Congress and the Executive branch to a screeching halt. The Supreme Court ruled in Brushaber (and the cases bundled with it), that wages are NOT income within the meaning of the 16th Amendment."

That statement is totally false.

The Court in Brushaber ruled that the Sixteenth Amendment removes the requirement that income taxes (whether considered to be direct taxes or indirect taxes) be apportioned among the states according to population. The Court also ruled that the Revenue Act of 1913, imposing unapportioned income taxes, is not unconstitutional. The Court further ruled that the Federal income tax statute does not violate the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the government taking property without due process of law. The Court also ruled that the Federal income tax statute does not violate the uniformity clause of Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Neither in Brushaber nor in any other Federal court case has any Federal court ever ruled that "wages are NOT income within the meaning of the 16th Amendment."

Not only that, but the issue of whether wages are income was not even decided by the Court in Brushaber. That issue was not even presented to the Court in Brushaber. The terms "wage," "wages," "salary," and "salaries" do not even appear in the text of Brushaber. The material was twice reverted by Wikipedia editors. Yours, Famspear 12:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violation

I've deleted a set of bullet points from the section Arguments that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified (see my deletion here). Much of the text is a verbatim copy of arguments from the page http://www.givemeliberty.org/features/taxes/usatoday.htm and so is a copyright violation. It might be a good idea to include some of these claims in the article, but we need to describe them in our own words. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 19:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Still too long!

Geez, even this page is getting too long - any thoughts on a logical split? bd2412 T 05:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm. This is just a preliminary idea, but maybe sections 11 and 12 (on the "labor" and "corporate profits" arguments) are similar enough to each other (and different enough from the rest of the "constitutional" material) that they could go in a separate article. I don't know. I gotta get to sleep, though. Maybe I can come up with an idea in my sleep. Catch you later! Yours, Famspear 06:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking that the arguments about the Sixteenth Amendment itself (whether it was ratified, whether it is effective, what it permits to be taxed) are distinct from the arguments stemming from other constitutional rights, and the Federal Zone argument. Whichever way it goes, we should aim for something that splits the material up fairly evenly, and is amenable to a reasonable title. bd2412 T 18:36, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I've reorganized this article into what I think are logical divisions:

1. Sixteenth Amendment ratification arguments
2. Sixteenth Amendment effectiveness arguments
3. Arguments using other constitutional amendments
4. Federal government authority arguments
5. Definition of "income" arguments
6. Taxing labor or income from labor

Maybe we could create a new series of article based on that structure. They might be as follows:

• Tax protester Sixteenth Amendment arguments or Tax protester Sixteenth Amendment ratification arguments
• Tax protester arguments about the meaning of "income" or Tax protester arguments about the definition of "income"
• Tax protester arguments about taxing wages

I'm note sure if there's enough material in the Federal government authority and Arguments using other constitutional amendments to warrant separate articles. The article about the Sixteenth Amendment arguments could either focus on the ratification arguments or include both ratification and effectiveness arguments; again, I don't think the effectiveness argument section by itself is significant enough to warrant a separate article. Any thoughts? — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 16:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)