Are you sure his name wasn't Bob Benson? I worked with a guy in Denver in the '80s whose life was totally consumed by this kick. There was another tax dodger in Denver who ran a church... and got some ink and TV time for it. Everybody I ever heard about who tried something like this either ended up with nothing, in jail, or both. Even if they're correct in the "violation of the constitution" and "taxes are voluntary", the Gubmint couldn't allow such a movement to grow. They'd have to throw you in jail just to make an example of you... for the public good, you know.
Anybody seriously considering this, should check this out: http://www.quatloos.com/Tax_Protestors_Page.htm
Harry, my French Fried friend, you are mixing subjects and arguments. The thread was essentially about using the law/constitution to avoid taxes. I know nothing of French law, so I can't relate to whether parodies are actionable under French law. In any case, since I believe we are talking of US law here, my thoughts are: 1) Tax protestors demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding about both how the law and consitution work, as well as how it is interpreted. A lack of education is not a justification for a position which attempts to look at a microscopic portion of the law, and ignores the 99% which refutes their position. You cant say, "Aha, I found THIS law that seems to allow what I want to do. so I'll ignore everything else" It's not about one's ability to "trick" the system. They seem to want to claim they have some particular knowledge or intelligence nobody else has discovered. They don't . They are just blinded by their own position. Anyone who buys into their arguments suffers from a childish gullibilty. 2) Tax protestors are almost never educated in either tax law or accounting. Contrary to their claims, this education would not brainwash them or blind them to the "truth" of the system. I know a few great tax lawyers who do nothing but try to figure out LEGAL ways to avoid taxes. Don't you think they would use these protestors arguments if they had validity? 3) To your statement ," Prison does not change the HISTORY TRUTH" I submit that you or whomever takes this position has not read #2 above. The "TRUTH" of which you speak , at least as it relates to tax law, is quite a bit different than what these protestors think it is. So, go ahead and fight the system. I'm not fond of it, so I wish you luck. I'll let anyone who wants to blaze the trail in front of me. If you succeed, I won't be far behind. But the arguments I have seen are doomed to fail. Now, I'm down $12,000 today, so it's time to close out my positions and move on to something else.
I have yet to hear an idea of a way to avoid paying taxes that was anything other than crackpot, hair-brained nonsense. You'll notice that the smartest and most money-savvy guys don't try to get away with this stuff. The IRS is one of the last entities you want to mess with. One of the guys I work with decided to stop filing tax returns for a few years. His reasoning was that he had so little money left after automatic withholdings, child support garnishments, and credit/collection garnishments, that even if the IRS came after him, there wouldn't be enough left for them to take. As it turned out, the IRS swept aside all his other garnishments and took a "first place" position in line for repayment. In addition to the $6000 he owed in back taxes, they added on another $4000 in fees, interest and penalties, and by the time he pays all of it off it'll be even more than that. Plus, those other non-tax garnishments are all waiting in the wings, adding on interest and penalties, so when he's eventually free of the IRS liens he'll be so far underwater he'll never again in his working lifetime receive a paycheck without garnishments withheld. But go ahead and try it if you want to...
Law is not Justice. So they were foolish to believe they can fight the Maffia. Perharps the first person but if there are too many persons well. They change the law as they want. Take the most fundamental law of privacy which is constitutional. Well in Europe it isn't true any more : they have just voted that without any suspicion any citizen can be spyied on phone, email, etc. This is a great violation of liberty. They didn't debate it they just vote it (of course using the pretext of terrorism) ! And this will soon happen in United States although they faint to debate it. After that who's the fool who will say that it is unconstitutional ? I don't remember the name of a US President who said that law change is necessary sometimes but that citizens must be on alert that some people will try to change it not for more democracy but for more oppression or dictature.
This can in fact be connected with what I have posted elsewhere about Alan Greenspan quote: Quote from Alan Greenspan http://centre.telemanage.ca/quotes....525687a00761cb8 "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Let's take the phrase " Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth." What is deficit spending concretly ? It is bonds emission which for you and me means apparently more dollar in our purse. That is to say they "give" us dollar but the governement will have to accept for US more debts (so that it is not a "gift" in fact ), and debts implies financial interests to pay. Bonds can be bought, and it can be bought with credit. Now Who has the power to create credit. The same that have the power to create bonds. So they will give credit to themselves, buy the bonds, inflate them, sell them to the public, then deflate them to rebuy them at low cost when people can't stand the crash anymore because they need liquidity (which is rare during defaltion) and cycle after cycle the bonds in fact belongs to the same entity that has the power to create them that is to say the PRIVATE bank of the federal reserve. And if you don't believe me, Alan Greenspan said in January of last year that FED will buy everything from household to .... bonds. So to whom will go the financial interests ? to them. How financial interests are paid ? With taxes. And again an exemple if you don't believe it: under Reagan, governement reports show that some years 100% of the tax collected served to pay only financial interests so that there is nothing left in budget for example for building schools. So it means even more to borrow so it is an infinite process. Now you see why taxes are a necessary element of the whole scheme, because without taxes, they would have to take the interest directly from your pocket and this will be inacceptable for the people, but if it comes from governement they will be obliged. Now if you think that the super rich can't have claimed more taxes well you are naïve : "A national income tax was declared unconstitutional in 1895 by the Supreme Court, so a constitutional amendment was proposed in Congress by none other than ...Senator Nelson Aldrich. As presented to the American people it seemed reasonable enough: income tax on only one percent of income under $20,000, with the assurance that it would never increase. Since it was graduated, the tax would "soak the rich", ...but the rich had other plans, already devising a method of protecting wealth. As described by Gary Allen in his 1976 book The Rockefeller File, "By the time the (16th) Amendment had been approved by the states, the Rockefeller Foundation was in full operation...about the same time that Judge Kenesaw Landis was ordering the breakup of the Standard Oil monopoly...John D...not only avoided taxes by creating four great tax-exempt foundations; he used them as repositories for his 'divested' interests...made his assets non-taxable so that they might be passed down through generations without...estate and gift taxes...Each year the Rockefellers can dump up to half their incomes into their pet foundations and deduct the "donations" from their income tax."
Harry, You keep going back to the same quotes. I can start a charitable foundation, so can you. You can deduct uo to, I believe, 30% of your income in it and take a tax deduction. So what?
Well then you probably haven't yet heard of the USA Patriot Act (even though it was enacted in 2001). See, I'd bet that most of us on this forum don't care much about being "spied upon" because we're honest, law-abiding, tax-paying folk who aren't spending 98% of our time trying figure out ways to evade taxation, secrete money from creditors, ex-spouses, et al, fund terrorism, launder money, and the like. If you're in to any of those activities, then you should be concerned. Personally, I'm not concerned; I prefer to spend my time figuring out ways to make money legitimately (and then utilize legal methods to minimize taxation which, as it happens, abound). So, I really couldn't care less who reads my e-mails, listens to my phone calls, etc.......virtually guaranteed the person or persons doing so would be bored to tears.
Yes, I have not only heard of it, I know it well. USA PATRIOT= United And Strengthening America Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Problem is , they can use anything they get to prosecute any other crime. And with a lot of "crimes" the question becomes "who defines what is a crime?" There are a lot of acts that fit the definition of a crime, but the average person wouldn't know right away that it's a crime.
>You keep going back to the same quotes. I know but my brain is trained to put apparent unrelated pieces together As for the other thing well I'm not an Attorney so I can't answer exactly. I just begin to get interested in Law in general because more and more I saw in history that corruption of things begin with corruption of the law.