Talk:Tax protester statutory arguments

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Contents 1 Neutral Point of View 2 Text removed 3 Wesley Snipes 4 Income tax and Federal Reserve System

[edit] Neutral Point of View

Some of the language in this article seems biased so I've flagged it.

In an apparent attempt to persuade others that there is no law imposing Federal income taxes, some tax protesters argue that the Internal Revenue Service refuses to disclose -- or is unable to find -- any laws that impose the legal obligation to file Federal income tax returns or pay Federal income taxes.

A somewhat incidental claim of tax protesters is that because the IRS itself was not created by statute or because the IRS has no legal capacity to "sue or be sued," the IRS must somehow not really be a federal government agency.

Much of the article text seems like it's been taken from an IRS handbook on how to deal with tax protestors.Pixelface 19:36, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The quoted language refers to arguments by tax protesters. The article, however, also provides information that counters these arguments. The article discloses both viewpoints, so where is the bias? Yours, Famspear 01:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Footnote: For those persons new to this area of Wikipedia, a historical note may be of some benefit. The articles on Tax protester, Tax protester arguments, Tax protester history, Tax protester constitutional arguments, Tax protester statutory arguments and Tax protester conspiracy arguments came about because, as of 2005 at the latest, large amounts of unverifiable and non-neutral point of view materials were being copied, pasted and dumped en masse in various tax related articles in Wikipedia in apparent attempts by various persons to push various tax protester arguments. Gradually this material was concentrated in the aforementioned articles. However, the rules of Wikipedia require neutral point of view. Obviously in articles that state tax protester positions, neutral point of view requires that Wikipedia also show opposing views. Obviously the article text will to some extent therefore seem "like it's been taken from an IRS handbook on how to deal with tax protestors" -- since the tax protesters and the IRS have diametrically opposed views about what the law is. The articles in question, however, were not prepared to any large degree by IRS employees (a fact to which I can personally attest). The citations in the articles are to statutes, case law, regs, etc. It just so happens that the IRS position coincides to a very great degree with what the Primary authority materials show the law to be. That should come as no surprise to anyone; it's not the result of some massive conspiracy. The IRS has a huge check on its ability to interpret the law just any old way it wants to. That "check" is an army of lawyers, CPAs and other professionals who are paid big bucks to make sure the IRS is treating clients fairly. And that's just part of the picture.

If the article looks "like it's been taken from an IRS handbook on how to deal with tax protestors" there's a good reason for it. For every tax protester argument there is a counter-argument shown in Wikipedia. Both sides should be presented. Yours, Famspear 19:18, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I think he is talking about wording. I'm not sure I would call it POV as it presents both sides but sometimes the wording is not presented in a neutral tone.

• I just picked this one sentence since I was looking at 861. - "The actual text of section 861 itself contains no language to the effect that any portion of the income of U.S. citizens and resident aliens (whether the income is from sources within the United States or not) is somehow "excluded" from taxation."
• Rewritten in a Neutral Tone - "The text of section 861 does not contain language that the income of U.S. citizens and resident aliens (obtained inside or outside the United States) is excluded from taxation."

Words like "somehow 'excluded'" in scare quotes... I'm not debating either side - I have no clue in regard to this topic so perhaps I'm way off... this is just the impression that I get. However, I thought the three preceding sentences were fine as well as the quote following. It probably just needs a tweak here and there. :-) Morphh 20:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The original wording is mine, and I think I fellow editor Morphh is right; his/her version of the wording appears more neutral, so I'm gonna change it. Yours, Famspear 20:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I feel that statements such as "In an apparent attempt to persuade others that there is no law imposing Federal income taxes," and "A somewhat incidental claim of tax protesters" and the frequent use of "somehow" are all biased and leaving them out would make the article more neutral.

Perhaps those two quotes above can be restated as:

Some tax protestors claim that the Internal Revenue Service refuses to disclose -- or is unable to find -- any laws that impose the legal obligation to file Federal income tax returns or pay Federal incomes taxes and consequently declare that there is no law imposing Federal income taxes.

Many tax protesters claim that the IRS was not created by statute and that the IRS has no legal capacity to "sue or be sued" and have therefore assumed that the IRS must not be an actual federal government agency.

Just some suggestions.Pixelface 17:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Pixelface: Yeah, I agree.

Or, on the the second one, how about:

Many tax protesters claim that because the IRS itself was not created by statute and because the IRS has no legal capacity to sue or be sued, the IRS is not a federal government agency.

I think this language may make it clearer that the protesters' point about "not created by statute" and the protesters' point about no "sue or be sued" capacity for IRS are both actually legally correct -- to distinguish the correct points the protesters are making from the conclusion the protesters draw from those points. (As a lawyer, I can tell you the conclusion the tax protesters draw is legally incorrect -- but it's the job of Wikipedia to point out the arguments of both sides, citing the applicable support, etc.)

Just as background info: Apparently almost nobody is actually debating over whether the IRS has the capacity to sue or be sued. In fact, when the taxpayer sues, it's usually the government (not the taxpayer) that points out that the IRS has no such capacity to be sued (although at least one case has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court with the government lawyers not even bothering to get the IRS removed and replaced by the USA as the defendant). On the other side of it, the "Internal Revenue Service" basically does not file lawsuits. The government lawsuits against taxpayers in tax matters are filed by the "United States of America" -- by lawyers in the Department of Justice. Similarly, the question of whether the IRS was "created by statute" is a legal tempest in a teapot -- actually, in a teapot with no tea in it! Both of these protester arguments are examples of the kinds of things people come up with because they do not understand the intricacies of our legal system, especially intricacies that have to do with law in general, not just tax law by itself. Lawyers see this from time to time: non-lawyers trying to construct what they believe are cool-sounding "technical" arguments about the law, based on ideas they pick up on the internet, etc., and from reading legal materials without having the proper training to interpret the texts. The law can indeed be very technical. Many tax protester efforts are obviously constructed with a view to creating an argument that appears facially valid because it somehow appears technical to the protester, who has no legal expertise. Indeed, one problem for the protesters is that 99.9% of them simply do not have the expertise to construct technically correct technical arguments.

Getting back to the edits, I like the direction you're headed. Any other thoughts? Yours, Famspear 18:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I think your wording on that 2nd quote is an improvement over the current version so I've included it in the article.

On those two quote suggestions, I worded them as such because I'm not a lawyer and I really don't know if the premises are true. I just tried to state the basis of their claim and their conclusions.

On that first quote, how about:

Some tax protesters argue that the Internal Revenue Service refuses to disclose, or is unable to find, any laws that impose the legal obligation to file Federal income tax returns or pay Federal income taxes -- and conclude that there must be no law imposing Federal income taxes.

That background info is interesting. Maybe some of it can be worked into the article.

I've appreciated your input.Pixelface 12:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks good to me - I went ahead and changed the article to reflect your wording on the first quote. Thanks, yours, Famspear 14:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I've looked at the article again and the language seems more NPOV.

I notice there is no section focused on "definitions." Milton William Cooper in his paper BATF/IRS -- Criminal Fraud discusses obfuscated language and Appendix G from The Federal Zone written by Paul Andrew Mitchell discusses the definitions of "income", "person", "taxpayer", "shall", and "must" used by the IRS. Although I suppose much of this is covered in the The "income taxes are voluntary" argument section. Perhaps there should be a Definitions used by the IRS section and mention claims made by Mitchell and Cooper.

Also, in the Tax protestor articles, I have seen no mention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Milton William Cooper claimed that the BATF and the IRS are the same organization. I've written about it in the Milton William Cooper article. According to the BATF article on Wikipedia, the Bureau of Internal Revenue was renamed the Internal Revenue Service in the early 1950s, and the ATTU division within the IRS was the forerunner of the ATF. It also says Nixon created a separate BATF in 1972. Cooper claimed that taxpayers are being taxed on income derived from "importing narcotics, alcohol, tobacco, or firearms into the United States, or one of its territories or possessions, from a foreign country, or from Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or into the Virgin Islands from the Cayman Islands."

Perhaps the BATF/IRS--Criminal Fraud link should be a subsection in the Milton William Cooper article, or maybe a new article should be created for it. The link by Paul Andrew Mitchell (31 Questions & Answers about the IRS which comes after "Some claim it is a Puerto Rican trust.") is only referred to once in the Tax protestor statutory arguments article. If the tax protestor statutory arguments article is to be NPOV, then I think it should include more claims by Milton William Cooper and Paul Andrew Mitchell. Or maybe those should be put in subsections of the author pages, or placed on their own page, I don't know.

Perhaps a section on Puerto Rico should be included, since both Cooper and Mitchell discuss it. In The Federal Zone, Mitchell claims that federal municipal law governs U.S. Territories like Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands, but federal municipal law does not extend into any of the 50 States of the Union. And he claims that the income tax statutes in the Internal Revenue Code are federal municipal law. There's more info here [1].

In short, I suggest we add 3 new sections to the article:

• Definitions used by the IRS
• BATF
• Puerto Rico (or perhaps 'The Federal Zone')

I really don't know what the IRS or the courts have said about the above topics. Perhaps those topics are irrelevant.

I think the views of Paul Mitchell and Milton William Cooper should be represented on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure if they should be included in this article, or in subsections of their bio pages, or turned into their own articles. Paul Andrew Mitchell doesn't have a bio page on Wikipedia yet; I'm not sure how notable he is, but he did write the book The Federal Zone and founded http://www.supremelaw.org/. I'll have to search for news about him. Cooper is deceased, but Mitchell has a Yahoo and Gmail email address.

Just some thoughts. Pixelface 00:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Upon looking at the Tax protestor history article, it looks like Paul Andrew Mitchell redirects to Mitch Modeleski. Pixelface 01:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Dear Pixelface: Thanks for the ideas! I am going to think about how your comments can be used to expand the articles on either the individuals or in the articles on tax protest arguments, etc.

On your idea about the three new sections, off the top of my head I would say maybe the "definitions" and the "Puerto Rico" and "Federal Zone" stuff could be added or expanded somewhere (I know there is already some discussion of "Federal Zone" in the articles). Based on my study over the years, I would argue the BATF material is a bit more secondary in the world of tax protester arguments (meaning that there are just a lot more arguments like the "Puerto Rico" and Federal Zone contentions that pop up a lot more often, or at least used to). -- Which brings me to an idea you have given me.

The idea is that all these articles have basically slowly grown, evolved, without a comprehensive analysis of which protester arguments are the most "important" for inclusion in an encyclopedia article (whatever "important" would mean). Maybe I and other editors need to sit down and come up with a list of possible criteria for what additional KINDS of materials can be put in the articles.

One possible criterion would be: How many times has this particular protest argument actually been litigated and ruled on, in a reported court decision? Or, how often has that particular argument been litigated and ruled on recently - in the last five years, etc. (with the idea being, is it something that tax protesters used to try, but finally gave up on). Are there any old arguments from the 1970s and early '80s that are still being tried?

Another criterion might be: What are some of the most recently developed arguments?

Another question that might be interesting is: Are there materials out there (that could be sources for Wikipedia articles) that explain why tax protester arguments started coming out when they apparently did, in the 1970s (noting as is done at Tax protester history that there were a hand full of cases from the 1950s).

Regarding specific individuals, like the ones you mentioned, what would be the criteria for mentioning them in the articles, or for creating bio articles for other protesters? Would you use, say, the number of reported court decisions in which that person was involved? For example, Irwin Schiff would clearly be a leader on that one -- he was in court so many times over the years. Mitch Modeleski/Paul Andrew Mitchell would score very "low" in relation to Schiff on that, but maybe higher on some other criterion.

It would be easy for me to run internet searches on specific protesters' names and obtain the texts of the Federal court decisions where their names are mentioned. I would then have to study the texts for the details.

In short, I contend that your comments seem to relate more to expanding the scope of the article(s), and not so much to neutral point of view (NPOV). I think NPOV deals more with how the material found in each article is presented, so that Wikipedia is simply showing a representative sample of the tax protest arguments and also describing how the courts have analyzed those arguments and ruled on them, with citations to the statutes, court decisions, etc.

Anyway, I'm gonna keep thinking about all this. Stay tuned. Yours, Famspear 17:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Text removed

I have removed the following from the OMB control number section of the article:

In May, 2006, however, it appears that a taxpayer won his case,¹ based on this argument. In Peoria, Illinois, attorneys for the US Department of Justice petitioned the court to dismiss -- with prejudice -- the case against Robert Lawrence, who had been indicted on charges of tax evasion two months earlier.²

1. U.S. v. Lawrence, Case No. 06-cr-10019, U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois (Peoria) http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTP2/PRA/PRA-Misc/LawrenceDocket5-18-06.pdf
2. Motion to Dismiss with Prejudice http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTP2/PRA/Pleadings/27_MtnDismissWPrejudice.pdf

The links cited in the references point to .pdf files, one being the court calender, and the other being the government's motion to dismiss. Nothing in either document suggests that this defense was even raised, much less that it was the basis for the dismissal. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur with the removal of the material by BD2412. This was just more false information, and has already been covered in the talk pages here in Wikipedia. A few months ago a Wikipedia reader posted the statement that Lawrence's attorney "sabotaged the DOJ with an eleventh-hour motion for dismissal based on the fact that the 1040 did not bear an illegal [sic; he probably meant "legal"] OMB control number". This statement was apparently based on stuff in tax protester web sites or other tax protest literature. The statement is incorrect, as the OMB control number argument was not why the case was dismissed.

As I have previously explained in talk pages here in Wikipedia, the IRS agents who had calculated Mr. Lawrence's tax liability discovered errors they themselves had made -- based on information obtained from Lawrence's own tax returns, regarding the taxpayer's tax basis in certain property Lawrence had sold. (Tax basis is basically the amount that you paid for something, subject to certain adjustments. The amount realized on a sale less your tax basis amount equals your gain. If the tax basis amount exceeds the amount realized, then you have a loss.) With respect to certain properties the taxpayer had sold, the IRS agents discovered that he had more tax basis than they had originally calculated -- therefore, lower gains or even losses, and thus lower taxes. The IRS agents themselves brought their errors to the attention of the government lawyers, who then asked that the charges be dropped (and they were). The IRS employees recognized that their calculations had incorrectly stated Lawrence's tax liability. Neither the Lawrence court nor any other Federal court has upheld the phony "OMB control number argument." Yours, Famspear 16:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

PS: Lawrence's attorney actually did raise the OMB number argument in the case -- it's just that the case was dismissed for an entirely different reason, as noted above. Also, Lawrence would have had no chance to win, had his only defense been an "OMB number" argument. Yours, Famspear 16:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wesley Snipes

For anyone who is interested, actor Wesley Snipes has been indicted and is alleged to have been caught up in scheme involving the frivolous "861 argument" -- to the tune of some very big bucks. I have begun adding some technical detail to the article on Mr. Snipes, who is innocent until proven guilty. Yours, Famspear 21:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Income tax and Federal Reserve System

Could there maybe be some additions as to the beginnings of the Federal Reserve and income taxes in relation to this article? I have heard ([2]) arguments saying that there was no federal reserve or income tax until 1913, when the IRS was formed without constitutional merit. If this is true, could anyone show it and please include it in the article? -Comment added 12 November 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Crazy coyote (talk • contribs) .

Yes, I have seen similar arguments on tax protester and conspiracy theory web sites, so it might be possible to find some sort of arguments to that effect. Neutral point of view would require that such material be balanced by pointing out that: (1) Although the Federal Reserve System did come about in 1913, the Federal income tax was first instituted in the 1860s, not in 1913; (2) The Internal Revenue Service was formed within the Department of the Treasury in the 1860s as the Bureau of Internal Revenue (with the name being changed to "Internal Revenue Service" in the early 1950s), not in 1913; (3) The phrase "when the IRS was formed without constitutional merit" is, from a U.S. constitutional law standpoint, meaningless. Yours, Famspear 01:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)