Talk:Tax protester/Archive 07

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Behavior of Mpublius

Dear Mpublius: I see that you are engaging in the same behavior here as you are now doing on the article on Tom Cryer. Please do not engage in edit warring. Please discuss your proposed changes on the talk page for this article and the article on Tom Cryer and do not repeatedly revert edits of other Wikipedia editors without obtaining consensus. Yours, Famspear 16:39, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia rules require an assumption of good faith. Please discontinue your personal attacks. Mpublius 15:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Famspear's remarks are not a personal attack: they are a statement of the facts and a request for you to discuss whatever you feel is at issue in a civil manner. You did repeatedly revert other people's edits on this page, and you did do the same thing on Tom Cryer, as Famspear said. Please take your own admonition to heart: assume good faith. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 16:17, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Orwellian writing

This article is an Orwellian nightmare. Wikipedia does not exist to promote government propaganda. “Tax” and “protester” are perfectly serviceable words. The government that has mashed the two together to form a completely different meaning intended to mislead readers, but their duplicity should not be endorsed on Wikipedia. I urge all editors to read George Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language. Bad writing is not merely aesthetically unpleasant and disingenuous in its discussion of politics, it is morally wrong. As Orwell noted, there is a close association between bad prose and inhumane ideology. Endorsing government propaganda is endorsing totalitarianism.

Orwell's fifth rule of good writing is, Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Wikipedia editors should let the facts speak for itself, rather than endorse government jargon that deliberately destroys the English language. “Tax protester” means someone who protests a tax. It does not refer to someone who merely disagrees with the government about a tax issue. We need to resolve this neutrality dispute, and it does not seem as if that will happen quickly, so I have raised the neutrality flag. Mpublius 15:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear Mpublius: Since you have just this morning posted almost the same argument in the talk page for Tom Cryer, I am copying and pasting my response from that talk page to here as well:

"Intending to mislead readers"? "Morally wrong"? "Orwellian nightmare"? With all due respect, that sounds way over the top.

You don't seem to be denying that the cited sources stand for the propositions stated in the article. That is, you don't seem to be denying, for example, that Daniel Evans does indeed designate Tom Cryer as a tax protester. And you don't seem to be denying that Cryer has made legally frivolous arguments about the nature of the Federal income tax in the brief he filed with the court.

How are you coming to your conclusion that the very use of the legal term "tax protester" by attorney Daniel Evans, or the reporting of that use in the article, constitutes "destruction of the English language"?

My impression is that you have a very strong aversion to the use, in a Wikipedia article, of the legal term "tax protester" as applied the way the courts and legal scholars apply that term: to people who make legally frivolous arguments about the nature of the Federal income tax laws. My impression is that this aversion is expressed in the form of a feeling that a citation to Daniel Evans' very use of the term "tax protester" to describe Tom Cryer, the subject of this particular article, itself constitutes "non-neutral point of view." You cite Orwell, of all people, and you seem to labor under the mistaken impression that the article is fomenting "government propaganda."

What government propaganda?

How are you getting to the point that you feel that Daniel Evans' use of the term "tax protester" constitutes an endorsement of "government jargon that destroys the English language"?

Again, in my view this is a misunderstanding of what neutral point of view means. Neutral point of view does not mean we cannot report any biased points of view in the article. Neutral point of view does not require that the sources themselves be unbiased or that the cited material itself be unbiased.

Neutral point of view means presenting all significant competing points of view -- even biased points of view (if any) -- without Wikipedia taking a position that one particular view is correct.

Assuming arguendo that Daniel Evans is "biased", my question is: In what way does citing Daniel Evans' use of the legal term "tax protester" to describe Tom Cryer constitute "non-neutral point of view"?

Mpublius, you can take the comments above regarding the Tom Cryer article and generalize them in response to your comment about this article as well. Yours, Famspear 16:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear Mpublius: By the way, you are correct that the legal term tax protester "does not refer to someone who merely disagrees with the government about a tax issue." That is not how the term is being used by the courts, and that is not how the term is used here in Wikipedia.

I occasionally have a client who takes a tax return position that disagrees with a government position about the tax law. The Internal Revenue Service even has a set of tax forms -- Form 8275 and Form 8275-R -- that can be used in this situation. Over many years, I have prepared hundreds of tax returns for clients using these forms -- and neither I nor any of my clients has ever been designated as a "tax protester."

Also, we have a system whereby a taxpayer can disagree with an official position of the Internal Revenue Service and can have the disagreement heard by a neutral third party, who then decides either in the taxpayer's favor or in favor of the IRS. It's called the court system -- the judicial system. Disagreements can be heard in the United States Tax Court, the United States District Court, the United States Bankruptcy Court, and the United States Court of Federal Claims. Decisions can be appealed, sometimes all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Less than 10% of these cases each year involve tax protesters.

Merely disagreeing with the government about the tax law does not result in someone being labeled a tax protester.

The term tax protester is a term used to describe people who make legally frivolous arguments. A frivolous argument is one that is much worse than one merely being legally incorrect. A legally frivolous argument is the legal equivalent of an argument, among a group of astronomers, that the Moon is made of green cheese.

You are quite incorrect. This article is neither "endorsing government propaganda" nor "endorsing totalitarianism." And none of the tax protester articles in Wikipedia use the term "tax protester" to describe someone who merely disagrees with the government about what the tax law is.

In my opinion, your arguments are wildly over the top. Famspear 16:50, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

A little history on the technical use of the term "protest" in tax law may be in order here. The use of the term "tax protester" to describe someone who contests the legality of a tax is not "Orwellian." Indeed, that's the original legal meaning.

As explained in another article, the term “protest” as applied to a tax generally means “a declaration by a payer, esp. of a tax, that he does not concede the legality of a claim he is paying” [Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, p. 1142 (World Publishing Company, 2d Coll. Ed. 1970)], or “a declaration made esp. before or while paying that a tax is illegal and that payment is not voluntary” [Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 926 (G & C. Merriam Co., 8th Coll. Ed. 1976)], or “a formal declaration made by a taxpayer stating that the tax demanded is illegal or excessive and reserving the right to contest it” [American Heritage Dictionary, p.996 (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2d Coll. Ed. 1985)]. Similarly, Black’s Law Dictionary defines a tax protest as:

The formal statement, usually in writing, made by a person who is called upon by public authority to pay a sum of money, in which he declares that he does not concede the legality of justice of the claim or his duty to pay it, or that he disputes the amount demanded; the object being to save his right to recover or reclaim the amount, which right would be lost by his acquiescence. Thus, taxes may be paid under "protest.” Black’s Law Dictionary, p. 1101 (5th Ed. 1979).

Beginning in the mid-1970s, U.S. Federal courts began using the term “tax protester” in a more narrow sense -- to describe persons who raised frivolous arguments about the legality of Federal taxes, particularly income taxes. The first two federal cases to use the term in this manner were Gilbert v. Miriami, 75-2 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) paragr. 9603 (N.D. Ill. 1975), and United States v. Scott, 521 F.2d 1188 (9th Cir. 1975), coincidentally decided only two days apart.

The term "protest" is also still used in ordinary Federal income tax practice to describe a written response to the IRS contesting the legality of a tax (but in this sense, not necessarily a frivolous response) prior to the issuance, by the IRS, of a statutory notice of deficiency.

The term "protest" as used to describe a taxpayer's position that a tax is illegal is quite old, quite proper, and there is nothing "Orwellian" about it. Simiarly, the more narrow use of the term by the courts to describe frivolous arguments that the Federal income tax is "illegal" (or "misapplied" or whatever other words tax protesters choose to use) is well established in the case law. Yours, Famspear 19:22, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Tax protest

Would it be approriate to separate out the "tax protest" information (which is now almost enough for a stand-alone article) from the original "tax protester" article, which is not really a related concept. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I would respectfully argue that they are "related" concepts. They're different but related concepts. My purpose in adding the introductory material on the various definitions is to show both the common thread between the concepts, and the differences between the concepts.

The common thread consists of the following: (1) the term tax "protest" is indeed a formal legal term, and (2) all tax protests (whether they have legal merit, or have no legal merit) relate to a contention by a taxpayer that a tax is illegal in some way.

The difference is that the first listed definitions (such as those found in the 1970 dictionary I cited, and in Black's Law Dictionary) relate to the more general, more non-pejorative use of the term (which, for lack of a better term I'll call "tax protester sense #1"). Sense 1 can apply regardless of the kind of tax (Federal or state, income tax or property tax, etc.)

Yhe latter definitions relate specifically to outlandish, bizzare, frivolous contentions by taxpayers that the U.S. Federal income tax (in particular) is illegal (which I'll call "tax protester sense #2").

I would suggest that the discussions of sense #1 and sense #2 should stay here -- even though the main purposes of this article (and of the articles Tax protester arguments, Tax protester history, Tax protester constitutional arguments, Tax protester statutory arguments, and Tax protester conspiracy arguments) are to explain the term as used in sense #2. Based on prior experience with other editors, I believe the introductory material on sense #1 is very helpful in this particular article. Over the past year and a half, some new editors tend to object to the very use of the term "tax protester" in Wikipedia -- apparently without being aware:

(A) that the term "tax protester" is a formal legal term with a legal history that predates its "sense #2 use" to describe today's frivolous U.S. Federal income tax litigation;

(B) that the term was not just "made up" by Wikipedia editors or by those bad, bad ol' gov'ment people;

(C) that the term tax "protest" is still used in the "sense #1" way -- to describe such things as non-frivolous submissions to the IRS after issuance of an IRS thirty-day letter after an audit, and to describe appeals by homeowners in local property tax disputes, and so on; and

(D) that neutral point of view does not necessarily mean that Wikipedia is prohibited from using "pejorative" terms -- especially terms such as "Nazi" or "tax protester" that are formal terms, and not merely or exclusively "epithets" or name-calling.

Maybe the definitional material needs some more editing to clarify why the different definitions -- both sense #1 and sense #2 -- are there??? Famspear 01:43, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but (when I wrote that comment) there didn't seem to be much left of definition #2. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 04:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it is reasonable to include a brief summary of the etymology of the term "tax protester". But I don't think we should let the prejudices of those with extremist viewpoints shape this article. As it stands now, this article begins with a long discourse on the history of the term "tax protester", before finally getting to the discussion of the tax protester "movement". In my opinion, this article should be primarily about the phenomenon of tax protesters—i.e., those who claim the income tax doesn't exist, etc.—with a brief disambiguating discussion of other uses of the terms "tax protest" and "tax protester". We have an article on Tax protester arguments, but as it stands now, very little describing the tax protester movement as a social phenomenon. Whether the term "tax protester" is the best way label to use for that movement is only tangentially relevant: we still need an article that describes the movement/phenomenon itself. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 15:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I would think then perhaps we need an article called Tax protester movement or perhaps Tax protester movement in the United States. Morphh ^(talk) 17:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, so the proposals are: (1) in this article, to shorten the description of the etymology or history of the term, and its different meanings, and (2) start thinking about a separate article devoted to the tax protester movement as a phenomenon (perhaps with some published, third party reliable sources on theories as to why the movement sprang up in the late 20th Century)?

On the proposal for a new, separate article on the movement, I like the idea. I'm thinking it might be a struggle to find enough published third party sources for a full-length article. I haven't seen much on the internet that really analyzes the "movement" or the people in the movement, either politically, psychologically (that kind of research would be quite interesting, I bet), or as a social phenomenon. Some of the best avenues for finding scholarly articles might be Westlaw or Lexis, but I don't personally have direct access to those online services right now.

On Mateo SA's suggestion about shortening the etymology, I kinda like the etymology description as it is, but I'm biased because it's my baby, so to speak. So, I think I can go ahead and shorten it a bit, by eliminating some of the more or less duplicate definitions. Anybody else who wants to hack at it, be my guest (but, uh, hack gennnttlllyyy, please). Famspear 20:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Definition of "tax protester"

Moved the RFCxxx template below from the above section into this section, template should be in the section of the discussion page identified by the section param in the template. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 04:59, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The question here is whether we accept the definitions of Webster's and Black's dictionaries, or reject them in favor of blogger Daniel Evans and editors of this article pushing a biased point of view advocating expansion of IRS powers.

This article is a repeat of the phenomenon identified by former IRS historian Shelley Davis, who testified at the Senate Finance Committee Oversight Hearing on the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday, September 23, 1997:

A tax protester, in my definition, is not someone who may oppose our system of taxation, but pays his taxes nonetheless. A tax protester is not someone who says that our tax system is broken and must be dismantled, but still files a Form 1040. A tax protester is not someone who merely criticizes the IRS. A tax protester is not someone who challenges an IRS assessment. But in the mind of the IRS, all of the above ideas fit the unofficial IRS profile of a tax protester. In the cloistered environment of the IRS, criticism of the IRS, or the income tax, equals tax protester.

Anyone who has the misfortune of bearing that title is most likely going to witness first hand just what "taxpayer abuse" really means. Don't get me wrong. I am not in any way condoning the actions of those who, by one manner or another, attempt to cheat or not live up to their financial responsibilities as a U.S. citizen. But I do recognize the use of the label of "Illegal Tax Protester" as another powerful weapon of the most powerful agency in America.

Congress responded to this problem by enacting a law forbidding the IRS from branding taxpayers as “tax protesters”, but the IRS has ignored the law and continues to brand as “tax protesters” those who oppose them in court. Even worse, one court violated Irwin Schiff's First Amendment rights by banning his book, “The Federal Mafia”, because he argued that the government misapplies the tax laws and the income tax should be abolished. Another court did something similar when it ordered the We the People Foundation to shut down their web site because the foundation believes employers are not required to withhold taxes from their employees. Southern whites allowed Martin Luther King to publish “Letter From Birmingham Jail” in the 1950's, but political prisoners enjoy no such rights today.

Wikipedia should respect the spirit of the law enacted by Congress by only allowing articles that conform to the definition of "tax protester" in Black's and Webster's dictionaries, and reject the biased agenda of the IRS, Daniel Evans, and some of the editors of this article.

According to WikiScanner, over 1000 articles have been edited from IP addresses that can be traced to the IRS. There are probably many thousands more articles edited by IRS employees from other addresses, and thousands of other articles have been edited by other government employees. Wikipedia should not be used as a platform to push the biased viewpoints of government employees and others who earn their living from government spending. Mpublius 16:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm not sure about any IRS conspiricy to write the article or the view advocating expansion of IRS powers, but I do think we should allow for the broad definitions applied to the term "tax protestor". Which as defined by Shelley Davis, includes all of the above ideas. I think we should state that the term has been used to describe ... behavior. In the U.S. legal system, tax protestor refers ... Morphh ^(talk) 17:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

You are ignoring the fact that the United States courts have, over at least the past 70 years, exclusively used the term "tax protester" to refer to someone who uses frivolous or otherwise clearly improper arguments to protest a tax. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:49, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a separate article tax protester (classical) could be created for the traditional definition, if it were possible to expand it beyond a stub. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It should be further noted that, even if, as Mpublius asserts, the IRS is forbidden from referring to such idiots as tax protestors, the Department of Justice is not so forbidden, and the courts cannot be so forbidden. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

No need to insult anyone - please be civil (regarding "idiots" comment). I'm not ignoring the U.S. courts and last I checked the article was not named Tax protester in the United States (although perhaps it should be). While the U.S. courts may have a specific definition, popular culture and the media tend to use the term loosely.[www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1674560/posts][1] I'm not suggesting we swap one definition for another. I'm just suggesting we need to inform the reader of the broad use of the term tax protestor. Not doing so may create issues with regard to NPOV policy in presenting other points of view and applying appropriate weight to such. Morphh ^(talk) 18:19, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

No insult intended, except to tax protesters, who clearly are idiots or insane. Isn't one of the "traditional" (i.e., we can't find who said it first) definitions of insanity "doing the same thing, but expecting a different result"? Returning to improvements in the article, is there any use of what I'm calling the "traditional" definition of "tax protester" outside of tax protester literature in the past 50 years? If not, the MPublius definition should be relegated to an "historical" section. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The two references I provide above were from last year, where the media called a gathering of FairTax supporters "Tax protesters". This is the use in what Shelley Davis described. Normally when I hear the term (and I'm not in the field of law), it is the "historical" meaning or those described by Davis as the unofficial IRS profile of tax protester. Morphh ^(talk) 18:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be using yet another definition, that one believes that the (income) tax is a bad idea -- not that one believes it is "illegal" or that one is not subject to it. It doesn't match the "traditional" definition at all. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I find myself forced to question Davis's credentials, because what he is saying is absolutely incorrect, and was incorrect at the time. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Dear Mpublius: The question should not be whether we "accept the definitions of Webster's and Black's dictionaries, or reject them in favor of blogger Daniel Evans and editors of this article pushing a biased point of view advocating expansion of IRS powers." Each definition listed is a valid legal definition, and each is properly sourced.

The courts of law that use the term to describe legally frivolous arguments are not "pushing a biased viewpoint." Bruce Hochman and the other authors of the book "Tax Crimes" who accurately report that fact are not pushing a biased viewpoint. Daniel Evans is not pushing a biased viewpoint.

More importantly, even if all those sources were pushing a biased viewpoint, that would not invalidate them as sources in Wikipedia. For the umpteenth time, Wikipedia rules do not require that the sources cited in Wikipedia not push a biased viewpoint! It does not matter, in this regard, whether those sources be the tax protesters, the courts, Daniel Evans, or Hochman. (Regarding the editors of Wikipedia, see below.) Neutral point of view does not require that the sources themselves be neutral!

As we have explained over and over, the term "tax protester" is a legal term which has been used by Federal courts for over thirty years to denote people who make legally frivolous arguments about the validity, application, etc., etc., of Federal income tax law. Wikipedia is not in the business of banning a reference to a legal term -- even one that has a negative connotation. Legal commentator Bruce Hochman (and his co-authors) did not make this up. Legal commentator Daniel Evans did not make all this up. The Internal Revenue Service did not make this up. Neither I nor other Wikipedia editors made this up.

In the legal sense in which the courts (and the Wikipedia articles) use the term "tax protester," the "debate" (such as it is) is not about honest taxpayers with an honest disagreement with the law, and it is not about honest taxpayers who honestly question the validity of a law or an IRS interpretation. (I and other tax practitioners question IRS interpretations all the time, and we are not labeled "tax protesters.") Instead, the articles focus on repeated efforts by a relatively small group of people to avoid paying taxes -- with the use of nonsense and gibberish with no legal validity, with arguments that has been rejected by the Federal courts, without a single exception in over 90 years.

As I previously pointed out, the separate Black's Law Dictionary definition, the Webster's definition, and the other definitions were added by me -- in response to your own objections that the use of the term "tax protester" was merely "libel" of Tom Cryer. Your commentary at the talk page for that article is there for all to read. The Black's and other earlier definitions -- which are DIFFERENT from the definition used by the courts and by Hochman and by Evans and by the Wikipedia articles in general -- show that the term is not merely "libel." The Black's and Websters sources show how the term was used as a legal term prior to 1975, and they illustrate that the term is not just some term cooked up by employees of the Internal Revenue Service.

The references to the actual court cases, and to the definition from attorney Daniel B. Evans (whom you describe as a "blogger"), and to the Bureau of National Affairs (Tax Management) publication by Bruce Hochman entitled Tax Crimes (an authoritative secondary source written by eminent tax lawyers, and used by tax lawyers and CPAs all the time) show that the term "tax protester" is indeed used to describe people who make legally frivolous arguments.

By the way, those earlier definitions from Black's and Websters are also still used, in appropriate circumstances, of course, to describe people who question a particular tax in a NON-FRIVOLOUS way. So, it is not a question of using one definition or another. All the definitions cited are valid legal definitions, but each definition describes a different concept. As used in the bulk of the Wikipedia tax protester articles, the correct definition to apply is not the Black's definition or the Webster's definition. Instead, the correct definitions are the ones cited by Evans, by Hochman, and by the courts themselves. This is clearly explained in the article.

Mpublius, now that your false arguments have been exposed, you continue with yet another iteration of your apparently endless crusade to try to remove, from Wikipedia, the use of the term "tax protester" in its current day legal sense as used by Evans, by Hochman, and by courts of law in formal, published decisions, many of which are specifically quoted here in Wikipedia, with full citations.

The Wikipedia articles on tax protesters are not about people who merely question the validity of the Federal income tax. The articles in question are about arguments that have absolutely no legal merit whatsoever -- arguments that have been repeatedly rejected in every single Federal court case on point, without a single exception. As noted in one of the articles, an individual can be fined for raising these kinds of nonsense theories in Federal court, or on a Federal tax return.

No, it's not against the law to believe or even argue that the tax laws are invalid. The law, does however, impose civil penalties for making frivolous arguments on tax returns, or in a court of law -- just as the law imposes similar penalties for raising frivolous arguments in court in other legal contexts. Frivolous litigation on Federal income taxation is not some imaginary concept that the IRS made up, and it's not something that Daniel Evans made up, and it's not something Bruce Hochman made up, and it's not something Wikipedia made up, and it's not something I made up.

The statement that "the IRS has ignored the law and continues to brand as 'tax protesters' those who oppose them in court" is -- to the best of my knowledge after 1998 as a general proposition -- blatantly false. Since the passage of the 1998 Act, I have not seen a single case where an IRS employee has violated the Act. (Of course it has probably happened somewhere, but the instances are probably rare.)

More to the point: the prohibition on the use of the term "tax protester" does not apply to any other government employee, whether that employee is the Department of Justice person who prosecutes tax protesters, or to the judge who decides a case. The use of the term "tax protester" in the Wikipedia articles refers to its formal use by courts of law, and by people other than IRS employees.

The vast majority of Federal court cases in the tax arena do not involve tax protester arguments (tax protesters apparently take up approximately less than 10% of the officially reported Federal court cases on Federal taxation).

You don't see the IRS or other government people branding the taxpayers in the other 90% of the cases as "tax protesters." Your implication that taxpayers who oppose the IRS in court are generally labeled as "tax protesters" -- without regard to the nature of the legal arguments raised by those taxpayers -- is blatantly false nonsense. It mischaracterizes the nature of the debate, and betrays a lack of knowledge of what happens in every day Federal tax cases. That false implication also betrays a misunderstanding of the role of the courts in tax cases; sometimes the government wins, and sometimes the taxpayer wins.

It is ironic that you, Mpublius, continue to attack the Wikipedia articles on tax protesters on this basis. The very reason these articles are here in Wikipedia is because of the ongoing effort by tax protesters over several years to infuse their own frivolous nonsense into tax law-related articles in Wikipedia, in the guise of pushing what they supposedly believe to be "the truth" about Federal income taxes and (to use your term) the "police state" that the USA supposedly now is.

Regarding your statement that "Wikipedia should not be used as a platform to push the biased viewpoints of government employees and others who earn their living from government spending": Sorry, but Wikipedia is not being used in the tax protester-related articles as a platform to push the "government viewpoint." This is a common charge by tax protesters here in Wikipedia, and the fact that someone believes that this or related articles pushes the government viewpoint exposes the motivation behind the comment -- which is essentially anti-government.

Honestly reporting on the state of the law with respect to frivolous litigation in the Federal income tax arena does not constitute "pushing" a "government" viewpoint. This article is not about being pro-government or anti-government. This is an article about the law, not about a "government viewpoint" -- a key distinction that many tax protesters seem unable to make.

And the argument that the mere fact that a Wikipedia editor works in the tax law area somehow disqualifies that editor is another tax protester argument that has been rightly exposed for what it is: self-serving tripe. The argument is, essentially, that if a person has a bias, that person should not be editing an article on the topic that is the subject of that bias. Under that specious argument, no one opposed to Federal income taxation could be allowed to edit the related tax articles in Wikipedia, either. Scientists who are experts on physics -- and who have a bias about one particular physics theory -- would not be able to edit articles on that topic. Historians who have a bias about one particular historical theory would not be able to edit historical articles dealing with that topic.

The implication that IRS employees are engaged in a concerted effort to write the Wikipedia tax protester articles to push a government viewpoint is laughable nonsense. I know it to be nonsense -- for the simple reason that, over time, a large portion of the Wikipedia tax protester articles represent (for better or for worse) my own work as an editor here -- and I do not now work (nor have I ever worked) for the IRS or any other government agency. If the IRS were engaged in a massive effort to skew these particular articles, I suspect I would have noticed it by now.

I don't care a whit about what the IRS thinks the tax law is -- except as it affects my clients. And if I simply followed the IRS view about what the law is, my clients would not need me and I would be out of a job -- which I am not.

Most people -- maybe all people -- have a "bias." The point is to put the bias aside when editing Wikipedia. This is not about Wikipedia taking sides in favor of the IRS, or in favor of the tax protesters. This is about Wikipedia editors following the rules of Verifiability, NPOV, and No Original Research. Yours, Famspear 19:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Can we come up with some examples or thoughts on how we should lay out the definition(s)? I'm not quite sure what is being proposed and what is being rejected, if anything. :-) Morphh ^(talk) 13:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The main point in my opinion is that the main definition used in this article should correspond to the actual topic of all the related articles: Tax protester, Tax protester history, Tax protester arguments, Tax protester constitutional arguments, Tax protester statutory arguments, and Tax protester conspiracy arguments. In other words, the Bruce Hochman - Daniel Evans definitions are the applicable definitions, because they describe what the Wikipedia articles are talking about; namely, how Federal courts use the term "tax protester" to describe people who make legally frivolous arguments (either on tax returns or in court).

I had added the Black's and Webster's definitions a while back, but only to show that the term tax "protest" was indeed a formal legal term even before 1975, when the Hochman - Evans "frivolous position" concept began to be used by the courts. This was done in response to Mpublius, who had been trying to delete the term in Wikipedia under a spurious argument that the term "tax protester" was merely "libel" or something made up by the IRS or whatever. It's not. It's a legal term -- but a term with more than one meaning. Now Mpublius has presumably changed his/her tactic from trying to delete the term itself to the tactic of trying to substitute the earlier, more innocuous Blacks/Websters definitions and perhaps trying to delete the contextually correct Hochman-Evans definitions that describe how the courts actually use the term as described in the cases covered by the Wikipedia articles.

The Blacks/Websters definitions relate to the kind of "protest" that reputable tax practitioners file all the time for honest taxpayers (for example, filing a document called a "protest" after an IRS audit where the taxpayer is honestly contesting whether a particular expense is deductible, or filing a "protest" on a county's appraisal district property valuation for property tax purposes). But that's simply not the kind of tax "protest" the articles are talking about.

Once you get past the main introduction, the articles are about people who file frivolous positions that have never, ever succeeded in court, and which have been ruled to be without merit over and over -- like "the Sixteenth Amendment was never properly ratified" or "income means only corporate profit," or "if you spell my name in all capital letters I'm not subject to court jurisdiction," or "only government workers can be taxed," or "I don't have to pay taxes because of some rule about OMB control numbers," and so on. The Hochman-Evans definitions correctly apply to the term "tax protester" as used by the courts in these cases and described in the Wikipedia articles to describe these frivolous arguments.

Regarding editor Arthur Rubin's comments about relegating the Blacks/Websters defintions to a historical section, I think that's where I originally had them, but I moved them to where they are now. I don't really have a strong view on placement or moving them again.

I just want the Wikipedia reader to be able to understand how the term "tax protester" developed, and how the term is currently used in formal court decisions as described in the Wikipedia "tax protester" articles, all of which articles deal with frivolous tax litigation, etc.

I would argue that there's nothing really wrong with also retaining the Blacks/Websters definitions in the main article (indeed, I put them there myself) -- but only as background material, to show that the term "tax protest", like many terms, has more than one meaning. Famspear 15:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)