IRS vs. KUGLIN "Pay No Taxes"

[HershOstropoler]

I love this thread.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The IRS violates the 5th Amendment by requiring Americans to incriminate themselves by filing.

Since when is declaring the amount of income you make, pursuant to the enabling legislation authority granted by the 16th Amendment "incrimination."

How much money I make isn't a crime, except to some of our little commie friends here.

If you want to see something that does involve a Fifth Amendment issue regarding taxation, look up the marijuana tax case Leary v. United States.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by The Templar


Sounds like jury nullification to me. Especially given that it occured in TN. 9 out of 12 of the jurors is probably hiding a still from those revenuers!

You don't hide from revenuers, you shoots 'em.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Velociryx
The Supreme Court has looked at the 16th amendment which supposedly authorizes the IRS to impose its tax on citizens....according to the high court, the 16th does not increase or extend the government's ability to tax (meaning that the only legal taxation is that which is done via apportionment....which the personal income tax fails).

Further, as I understand it, the Supreme Court has defined the word "income" in the 16th to mean "corporate profits"

IRS Tax CODE =! Law, does it? I mean, that's why it's called a code and not a law, right?

-=Vel=-

A "code" is simply an indexed collection of laws. WTF do you think the the United States Code is? And I'd love to see an actual cite to a SCOTUS case where an amendment authorizing Congress to impose a tax on income means anything other than that.

[Velociryx]

Article I, Section 8 reads (US Constitution)
"The Congress shall have rite power to lay" and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common Defense, and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States..."

Take note that the word "Taxes" is not included with "Duties, Imposts, and Excises" when uniformity throughout the United States is mentioned. Was this an accident? For very good reason, No. The laying and collecting of taxes had been set out previously in the Constitution.

Article I, Section 2 (US Constitution) states,
"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective members..." Webster defines "apportion" this way: "to divide and assign in proportion; allot". Specifically, to assign...among the States in proportion to population, as provided in the U. S. Constitution.

In simple terms, if income is to be taxed directly (as it is today), it must be apportioned according to the population of each state. Upholding that point of the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled a previous attempt at an income tax by Congress (in 1894) unconstitutional specifically on this point. In 1895's Pollock v. Fanner's Loan and Trust, 158 U.S. 601, the high court ruled that a direct tax not based on apportionment is not legal. (But our tax system today includes the same unconstitutional element!)

Supreme Court’s ruling on the case above:
"First. We adhere to the opinion already announced, that, taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally direct taxes.
"Second. We are of opinion that taxes on personal property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.
"Third. The tax imposed by sections twenty-seven to thirty-seven, inclusive, of the act of 1894, so far as it falls on the income of real estate and of personal property, being a direct tax within the meaning of the Constitution, and, therefore, unconstitutional and void because not apportioned according to representation, all those sections, constituting one entire scheme of taxation, are necessarily invalid. "

The 16th Amendment to the Constitution reads,

"The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. "

At first, it seems obvious that the 16th amendment legalizes the tax on our salaries, wages, earnings and dividends, despite its clear conflict with the "direct taxes shall be apportioned" clause in Article I, Section 2. It is an amendment, right? It must be correct and proper. (or, is it not?) Fortunately, this proposition has been questioned and duly challenged.

The Supreme Court has ruled that this 16th "Amendment" does not amend the Constitution, and, it does not provide Congress any new authority to tax! How can it be an amendment? To understand how this amendment came to exist, let's look at what was passed by Congress and then ratified by the states. Then at what the Supreme Court has ruled this "amendment" really means.

Upon reading the debate on the income tax bill in the Congressional Record of the 1st Session of the 63rd Congress it quickly becomes apparent that the senators had no agreement (or determination) on what "income" is, the very thing they had set out to tax. There was no decision, for instance, whether it meant "receipts of every sort" or "profits or gains".

Senator Cummins of Iowa, an ally in the move to pass the amendment:

"It is not for Congress to interpret what it (income) means; it is for the courts of the country to say... If it were within the power of Congress to enlarge the meaning of the word "income." it could, as I suggested a moment ago, obliterate all difference between income and principal, and obviously the people did not intend to give to Congress the power to levy a direct tax upon all the property of this country without apportionment. "

In this statement, the Senator recognizes the authority of the court to decide issues of constitutionality, regardless of what Congress might decide. And, recognizes that the authority of the people is given to the government only through the Constitution. Yet the IRS today claims to have power and authority beyond and outside the Constitution.
When Senator Cummins was asked by Senator Williams of Mississippi, "Does the Senator think it is useless in a tax bill to try to define the thing you propose to tax?" Cummins replied, "I do think in this instance that it is worse than useless; I think it is dangerous. " The rest of Congress seems to have agreed,--they never did define what would be meant by the word "income".

So even with this huge hole and the obvious contradiction to the existing Constitution this amendment passed through Congress and was ratified by enough states to be added. What we must understand about our system of government is that our founding fathers knew that our elected representatives might not always act in the best interest of the citizenry. So, they designed the system in a way that true and ultimate authority could remain in the hands of "We the people" through the Constitution. But, it is up to us to exercise our right and authority by challenging any contradictory or nonsensical laws our Congress may pass.

So now, with the addition of the 16th amendment, income (whatever that is) could be taxed by the federal government. Although the framers of the "law" failed to define its key word, certainly the IRS could come up with one; after all, that's what they deal with every day. They couldn't collect an income tax if they didn't know what "income" was, right? Yet nowhere in the IRS Code is there a definition of this concept!

Of course that hasn't kept them from defining "gross income" as "all income from whatever source derived. " Neat trick, defining a word by substituting a term that includes it, then using the same undefined word to define the first undefined term. Using the word to define itself, they make it seem to be defined since they have built upon it. Yet it is only air, just like their agency is "90% bluff" by their own admission. Since defining a word sets limits on it, their leaving it undefined keeps it unlimited---to their great advantage, if left unchallenged.

The Supreme Court, hasn't been fooled by such "double talk". Its ruling is,

...that the citizen is exempt from taxation, unless the same is imposed by clear and unequivocal language, and that where the construction of a tax is doubtful, the doubt is to be resolved in favor upon whom the tax is sought to be laid." (Spreckles Sugar Refining Co. v. McClain, 192 U.S. 397 at page 416)

Right here the Court pronounced the tax illegal. Blowing another hole in the 16th amendment with the undefined "income". And, the IRS Code of 9,602 sections that is built on the 16th amendment is anything but "clear and unequivocal"!

So, since Congress failed to define what the 16th amendment supposedly created a tax on, it has fallen to the court to define the word. Actually the Supreme Court has done so repeatedly and very clearly since the adoption of the "amendment" in 1913, for example in Merchants' Loan and Trust Co. v. Smietanka, 255 U.S. 509(March, 1921):

"...there would seem to be no room to doubt that the word must be given the same meaning in all of the Income Tax Acts of Congress that was given to it in the Corporation Excise Tax Act and that what that meaning is has now become definitely settled by the decisions of this court."

And what was that meaning? "A corporate profit." In other words, if you have no "corporate profit", you have no taxable income! And, as if that is not enough, the supreme court has ruled that the 16th Amendment did not amend the Constitution, and without amendment to the Constitution there is no legal foundation for a tax on our income. Meaning that the IRS has no basis in law for collecting tax on income. If this notion makes you skeptical, read this excerpt from the decision in Brushaber v, Union Pacific RR, 240 U.S. 1, Jan, 1916:

"...the proposition and the contentions under it [the Sixteenth "Amendment"] ...would cause one provision of the Constitution to destroy another; that is, they would result in bringing the provisions of the Amendment exempting a direct tax from apportionment into irreconcilable conflict with the general requirement that all direct taxes be apportioned... This result instead of simplifying the situation and making clear the limitations on the taxing power, which obviously the Amendment must have intended to accomplish(,) would create radical and destructive changes in our constitutional system and multiply confusion."

In other words, by passing the "amendment" into "law," Congress had to violate the fundamental principles of taxation contained in the articles of the Constitution itself. The Brushaber Court also stated:
"...the two great subdivisions embracing the complete and perfect delegation of the power to tax and the two correlated limitations as to such power were thus aptly stated by Mr. Chief Justice Fuller in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, ... "In the matter of taxation, the Constitution recognizes the two great classes of direct and indirect taxes, and lays down two rules by which their imposition must be governed, namely: The rule of apportionment as to direct taxes, and the rule of uniformity as to duties, imposts and excises. "... In the whole history of the Government down to the time of the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment...no question has been anywhere made as to the correctness of these propositions. "

By contradicting the Constitution, Congress had cut the new "amendment" off from its real source of legality for application to individual Sovereign citizens. This principle is stated in Sixteenth American Jurisprudence (Second Edition, Sect. 256):
"The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, whether federal or state, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose, since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it... No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it."

As if that were not enough, one of the pillars of Constitutional law, the famous Marbury v. Madison verdict of 1803 speaks very clearly and strong:
"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution (before and after its 1787 ratification) are null and void... The Constitution is superior to any ordinary Act of the Legislature; the Constitution, and not such ordinary Act, must govern the case to which they both apply...

Since the basic tax principles ("propositions") in the articles of the Constitution had never been questioned as to correctness, Congress had created no amendment, legitimizing this legislation would have required altering the articles of the Constitution itself.

We can take note that neither Brushaber nor Pollock has ever been overturned...or even challenged! Instead they were affirmed by the ruling in Evans v. Gore (1920): "The Sixteenth...does not justify the taxation of persons (Citizens) or things (their property) previously immune...it does not extend taxing power to new or excepted (Citizens)...

In the year of the Brushaber decision, the same court handed down another ruling which clarified the issue of the "amendment" further, bolstering its usefulness if not, its legitimacy. In Stanton v. Baltic Mining, 240 U.S. 103, the court stated,
"by the previous ruling (Brushaber) it was settled that the provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation but simply prohibited the...power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation' to which it inherently belonged..."

[Sava]

The IRS violates the 5th Amendment by requiring Americans to incriminate themselves by filing.

crackpot quote of the week

[HershOstropoler]

I think

"IRS Tax CODE =! Law, does it? I mean, that's why it's called a code and not a law, right?"

puts some tough competition to that.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Velociryx
A bunch of dated legal cites to SCOTUS cases that dealt with a tax code that hasn't existed for more than half a century.

Love the dates on those cases, brother Vel. Do you know when the current Internal Revenue Code was enacted? Do you know it was enacted specifically to address, or get around, (whichever you prefer) past court rulings related to the antecedent tax codes? Do you know how legally relevant these cases are to the current tax code? (a very simple answer)

[GePap]

Given all the people who hate gov and have money, if any of the notions floating around here were even halfway true, why hasn't some rich conservative with deep pockets and libertarian principles resisted paying income taxes and then aged a legal battle vs thegovernment to show it has no constitutional mandate to collect income taxes? I mean, if the law is so much in their favor, no?

[HershOstropoler]

Vel: "And, as if that is not enough, the supreme court has ruled that the 16th Amendment did not amend the Constitution, and without amendment to the Constitution there is no legal foundation for a tax on our income.... Brushaber v, Union Pacific RR, 240 U.S. 1, Jan, 1916"

Hmm...

It is clear on the face of this text [16th amendment] that it does not purport to confer power to levy income taxes in a generic sense, - an authority already possessed and never questioned, - or to limit and distinguish between one kind of income taxes and another, but that the whole purpose of the Amendment was to relieve all income taxes when imposed from apportionment from a consideration of the source whence the income was derived.... there is no escape from the conclusion that the Amendment was drawn for the purpose of doing away for the future with the principle upon which the Pollock Case was decided; that is, of determining whether a tax on income was direct not by a consideration of the burden placed on the taxed income upon which it directly operated, but by taking into view the burden which resulted on the property from which the income was derived, since in express terms the Amendment provides that income taxes, from whatever source the income may be derived, shall not be subject to the regulation of apportionment.

BRUSHABER v. UNION PACIFIC R. CO., 240 U.S. 1 (1916)

So how you arrive at the SC saying that the constitution has not been amended, and there is no legal foundation for a tax on income, is quite amazing. How did it work? Well, the "propositions and contentions" that the SC rejected were those of the claimant in construing the 16th amendment, not of the 16th amendment.

[Velociryx]

The constitution states pretty simply that taxes levied against her citizens are only legal if they are implemented via apportionment.

The 16th amendment, as utilized by the IRS is an attempt to short-circuit the US Constitution.

Care to check the date on the US Constitution? Does its relative old age make it less relevant somehow? If so, that is very interesting to me.

It's old, let's chuck it, right?

-=Vel=-

[GePap]

How can an ammendment to the constitution, approved by 2/3rd of the senate and the states ever be seen as a "short-curcuit" of the constitution? I simply do not get that idea.

Good work with that quote hersh

[Velociryx]

Quite simply, GePap:

"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution (before and after its 1787 ratification) are null and void... The Constitution is superior to any ordinary Act of the Legislature; the Constitution, and not such ordinary Act, must govern the case to which they both apply... "

-=Vel=-

[HershOstropoler]

Another hopeless error: "All laws" means all laws of underconstitutional rank, and does NOT extend to amendments. Amendments can change and repeal Art I-VII.

[Velociryx]

Quite so, but the SC has already ruled that "income" = Corporate profits.

As I am not a corporate entity, then under the definition, I cannot have income to tax, true? Which would seem to put the "laws" governing my taxation on soggy ground.

-=Vel=-