Tax Protestor Myths   This Page is Under Construction

This page will be divided into two parts.  The first part will give short answers to many of the common tax myths floating around the Internet.  For greater detail on these questions, please see Dan Evans' Tax Protestor FAQ; for further information, you can also take a look at Joe Adams' Tax Protestor Hall of Fame.  The second part will flesh out a few areas where the Dan's FAQ is wanting.

Part I: Short Answers to Common Myths

Note to the Reader: Remember, this part is not intended to give exhaustive analysis of these issues; for that type of analysis, you'll need to refer to Dan Evans' Tax Protestor FAQ.  This part is only intended to give a "quick answer" to common myths.
 

There's no section of the code that makes me liable.

False.  §1 of the Internal Revenue Code (a.k.a. Title 26 of the U.S. Code) makes one liable. (26 U.S.C. §1).
 

The IRS and courts say the income tax is based on voluntary compliance, so I'm not liable.

True and false, respectively.  The income tax is based on voluntary compliance.  That only means that the taxman doesn't show up at your door on April 15 to collect; each individual taxpayer is responsible for assessing his or her own tax liability according to the tax law.  It doesn't mean that a taxpayer can ignore the rules without penalty.

To put it more simply: stop signs are based on voluntary compliance, too.  There's nothing in your car that automatically forces you to stop at a stop sign.  Each driver is entrusted with following the rules of the road on his own.  That doesn't mean that if a driver is caught running a stop sign that there aren't legal penalties attached to that conduct.
 

The Supreme Court says the income tax is unconstitutional.

False.  Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust (158 U.S. 601 (1895)) is often cited for this proposition.  That case was premised on the idea that a tax on income from property (i.e., rents, etc.) was a "direct tax" and must therefore be apportioned in order to be Constitutional (U.S. Const., art. I, §9 , cl.4.).

The 16th Amendment removed the apportionment requirement for income taxes of this type.  (U.S. Const., amend. XVI.). Therefore, the income tax is perfectly constitutional, even on income from property.
 

The 16th amendment gave Congress no new powers of taxation.

True, but irrelevant.  This claim comes from language in Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co (240 U.S. 1 (1916)) and Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co. (240 U.S. 103 (1916)).  Remember, Congress had the power to tax incomes prior to the 16th amendment; it just had to apportion the taxes from income which fell into the category of "direct taxes" (i.e., taxes from property).  Thus, the passage of the 16th amendment didn't give Congress any new powers -- it just removed the apportionment requirement.  None of which affects the legal validity of the income tax system.
 

The 16th amendment was never properly ratified.

False.  This claim is premised on the fact that there were minor differences in punctuation, spelling, and word use in each of the ratified versions of the amendment.  The fact is that Secretary of State Knox took all this into account when determining if the amendment had passed, and decided the discrepancies were not material enough to deny ratification.  More importantly, none of the amendments to the Constitution prior to the age of Xerox machines were passed with such word-for-word perfection.  Does that mean the Bill of Rights isn't the law of the land?  The 16th amendment was passed in 1913, well before the age of perfect digital transmissions and easy photocopying.  As such, it's not surprising that there were minor discrepancies between the states.

Furthermore, the passage of the amendment was a matter of public record.  If a state passed a materially different version of the amendment, why didn't it complain when the version it passed wasn't the version formally incorporated into the Constitution?
 

The income tax doesn't apply to me because X IRS form says so.

Generally False.  This is usually the result of "garbage in, garbage out."  The tax protestor sends the IRS a notice that he's a non-resident alien with no U.S. income, and the IRS sends back a notice that the protestor isn't liable.  Well, if the protestor hadn't committed fraud, the IRS would have said he was liable for the tax.  (Of course, if you really are a nonresident alien with no U.S. income, you aren't liable -- but that's another issue; the "sovereign citizenship" espoused by tax protestors doesn't make one a non-resident alien).  The important thing to remember here is that the Internal Revenue Code, and not an IRS form, is what makes one liable for the income tax.
 

Part II: Longer Answers to Other Myths
 

Under Construction -- More to Come 



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