Monday, December 12, 2016

Tax Honesty Part 1. The beginning

These are my own thoughts and some information here may not be entirely accurate, so check this stuff out for yourself.

Somewhere, sometime, someone got tired of dealing with IRS people, or asked them selves a question. Why am I paying the government a fee to do that which is necessary for me to live as a human being? Or they wondered about why they were paying so many taxes. The fact is the percentage of ones resources that went to taxation has constantly increased since 1900. The tax burden on the American people currently is somewhere between 40 and 70 percent, depending on where you live, and what your circumstances are.  When government takes more than half, its socialism. And we are NOT that kind of country.

One of the reasons our founding fathers came to this land was to escape the drowning amount of taxation and debt being placed on the common people in Europe. Being a tax protester was a good thing there, and it was welcomed here.

So the founding fathers tried to give us a system of LIMITED government. But it had to be funded, and that meant TAXES. Now they thought they had good ideas as to how to limit that power.  Article 1 section 8 clause 1 of the nations Charter is the tax power, and there are 3 other limitation clauses as well.

But the big controversy is the Income tax. And I think the founders missed this. And this is what Tax Honesty is all about. The miss application of our nations tax laws when it comes to income taxes.

Congress didn't even use income tax until the civil war. President Lincoln was the first to implement it to pay for the war, and that started the avalanche of litigation that is still going on today.

Many famous cases resulted from this era. Cases challenged the law. Some claimed income tax was a direct tax others an indirect tax, and all kinds of things. Slowly the courts worked it all out.

An Income tax is an excise tax, which is a tax that does not require apportionment, is not a direct tax, and must be applied uniformly through out the several states.

Then they argued what is and what is not an excise tax. And what was the excise tax power limitations?  Some of this is still being argued in court rooms today.

Then we have the controversy of the 16th Amendment. The "do nothing amendment". In legal circles it is clearly understood that the 16th Amendment to the nations charter, really is an unnecessary amendment as it does nothing. What it did was settle a legal argument without a court judgement. It settled the fact that income taxes are excise taxes. Period.

Since then the courts have ruled that the 16th did not create any new power of taxation. Nor did it change any of the existing powers or limitations of taxation, which existed at the time of its adoption (which itself is in question).

And yet today there are still people who will argue that the 16th gave congress a new power it did not have before.

The ratification of the 16th is in question because of the states changing the proposed wording of the proposed amendment. Furthermore since the building were records were kept burned down in a fire, we have no proof that the state of Virginia actually passed the Amendment.  But the historical fact is that Secretary of State at the time, Philander Knox declared the 16th to have been ratified and so it became law of the land.

In the mean time, our country survived on trade taxes. Duty taxes, imposts and stuff like that.  We had roads, trains, post offices, An army and an Navy. We even had schools.

It was this period of time, the 1900's to 1941 that major changes were happening all over the USA. Technology was moving forward in leaps and bounds. We had the new Automobile that was replacing horse drawn buggies and wagons. Candle lighting and gas lighting was being replaced with electric lighting. Improvements in building construction and ship building, and  manufacturing were all taking place, changing the face of American life.

Then World War 1 hit us and that changed us forever. Still we had a limited income tax on corporations, most people did not pay income tax. Then they started the Victory tax which was an income tax on individuals. It was voluntary. Now it seems that it is mandatory. In a way it is, but its application for being mandatory is limited, and the Treasury department is not held to any standard. This is why we have the mess we have now.




Tax Honesty Movement is all but dead.

I spent a lot of my earlier life involved in the tax honesty movement doing research and being involved in meetings, court cases, IRS hearings, and that kind of thing.

A grass roots movement, which happened from about 1970 to 2010 more or less, gave us some interesting results.

But for the last 10 years I have been out of it, due to health reasons.  I recently found myself drawn back into it, and had some catching up to do. And I found out that this movement, is pretty much dead now.

What started with a few tax protesters writing books and sharing knowledge that they believed to be true, (and in most cases was, but was not applied properly), ended up in some major events that should (and some do) still effect us today.

President Ronald Reagan said that this country was 20 years over due for a major tax revolt, and he was right then, and we are still over due. And he served as President from 1980 to 1988.

Highlights of this movement include the week long IRS hearings held by Senator Roth, on Cspan in 1998. This series of hearings exposed a LOT of problems within the USTD and its subdivision the IRS.  Among them, the testimony of the 1st and only IRS historian Shelly Waxman's scathing testimony of the shear audacity attitude of the IRS workers and management. The conclusion of this series of hearings was best described by one IRS workers own words. " We do what we want, to whom we want, because we can".  And even today this same mentality prevails.

Shortly after that Charles Yantzee wrote a book, "Confessions of a Tax Collector" that pretty much echoed the testimony given during those hearings.

IRS workers and former workers became celebrities in the movement.  Sherri Jackson, an award winning, former Revenue agent joined the tax honesty movement AFTER she left service in the IRS to care for her elderly mother. She discovered the truth and joined the movement.

Joe Bannister an Enforcement agent joined the movement while still on the job! He did so because he filed an inquiry with his upper management, who responded in a way that made him pause to think.. They told him to shut up and do is job or leave the service. Joe was eventually forced to leave the IRS and was attacked via litigation for standing up for what he believed to be the truth.

Sherry Jackson also later was punished just like Bannister, with litigation and I believe ended up doing some jail time.

Such actions were standard procedure for the IRS. They punish those who leave or turn their backs on the IRS or who expose the IRS's wrong doings.

Mean while many American Citizens were busy with their own fights against the IRS. Many went to court, some ended in Jail, and a few ended up at the Supreme Court of the US.

Tax Guru's like Irwin Schiff, John Kotimer, Barry Konikov, Larkin Rose, were some of the names mentioned at the time. Arron Russo's movie "America, freedom to Facisim" was made to sound the alarm about what was going on.  Bob Shultz of the "we the people Congress" group, was part of Arron's support team, and it was his case that went to the Supreme court.

If I remember correctly, Bob had 2 cases. 1 was about the peoples right to petition the US government for grievances. This case got thrown out, i believe because it is the states that have that right, not people.  His case about 5th amendment rights when dealing with the USTD and its subdivision the IRS did go to the USSC and he won that case, if I remember correctly. His website is still on line but is no longer active, the last entries are from 2012.

The latest guru to stick his head up is one radio show host by the name of Dave Chumpian, who wrote a book and calls taxation, theft. I disagree. Taxation may be a necessary evil, but the way the USTD administers it is the theft, not the law itself.

Overall the movement as a whole has been a partial success. Mainly because the lack of the people involved to come together to go after common issues, and to seek litigation on those issues. Bob Shultz showed us what COULD be achieved if we all did that.

Ive decided to post more on this, so it will be a multi post comment. I want to go into more detail about what happened and why. I think its important for people who want to know who were not part of it, to know what happened.