Michael Lorrey,
I'm still waiting to hear back from you on this subject. You've been
posting to other subjects on the list (including the "boundaries of
appropriate skepticism/gullibility" topic that the Mars topic has turned
into), so I imagine that you are not backlogged or taking a break from
reading the list.
Do you have a citation to support your assertion?
Or shall I relegate it (based on the personal and admittedly judgmental
filters I have developed over the years regarding tax freedom and tax
protest arguments) to the category of "gullible hearsay"? If so, I won't
be saying you're wrong -- just that (based on my experience with past tax
freedom claims) I choose not to assign any significant probability to the
likelihood that your claim is correct, until I am pointed to some
verifiable evidence of its correctness.
At 6:21 PM -0400 7/19/99, Mighty Xerxes wrote:
> At 2:24 PM -0400 7/17/99, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > Legally, only US Citizens who are one or more of the following:
> >
> > a) federal employees
> > b) federal benificiaries (loans, welfare, SSI, fed. retirement, etc)
> > c) officers of corporations
> > d) maintain accounts in federally insured financial institutions
> >
> > are actually mandated by the federal tax code to pay income tax. All
> > others are not liable for tax, but can volunteer to pay.
>
> Michael,
>
> This kind of positive statement requires a citation to the U.S. Code or the
> decision of an authoritative court.
>
> I would bet that most U.S. citizens would love it if it were true that only
> those four classes of citizens were required to file income tax returns
> and/or pay income tax, but, as a skeptic, I would also bet that if you
> tried to use this defense in a tax evasion case, you would get your butt
> thrown in jail (or at the very least, lose on the tax issues).
>
> Absent a citation to support the assertion that this is actually the law of
> the land, it seems like all you are doing is in fact, as the subject line
> suggests, "Encouraging (Illegal) Tax Evasion." The police power of the
> United States is very real if they can get their hands on you. People may
> want to take the risk of reaping the benefits of successful tax evasion,
> but the risks of criminal and civil punishment do exist. And as both a
> skeptic and a pessimist on the government's use of its coercive power, I
> doubt that the U.S. Government exempts everyone not in one of those four
> classes from the federal income tax.
>
> But I'd be very happy to be proven wrong....