http://www.sierratimes.com/03/03/17/arvs031703.htm
The Inconvenient Irwin Schiff - And Why the First Amendment is Considered a Weapon
By Vin Suprynowicz
Back on Feb. 11, fifteen armed Treasury agents executed a search warrant at Irwin Schiff's Freedom Books storefront on East Sahara Avenue in central Las Vegas, where they spent eight hours hauling out papers and files.
Chillingly, the warrant also gave agents permission to seize the names and addresses of customers.
Now, the government is in federal district court, seeking an injunction that would bar the colorful Mr. Schiff -- and associates Cynthia Neun and Larry Cohen -- from "advocating the false and frivolous position that paying federal income taxes is voluntary."
And that's the problem.
In a pragmatic sense, the course of action Mr. Schiff has followed -- and which the IRS asserts he is encouraging others to follow -- has not worked out real well for him. Mr. Schiff, now 74, served six months in prison on a 1980 conviction for failing to file income tax returns for the years 1974 and 1975. He was convicted again in 1985 on a charge of failing to pay taxes and of concealing income. He was released on parole after 20 months in stir but was subsequently sent back on a parole violation. Justice Department tax division attorneys still have questions about Mr. Schiff's tax liability for the years 1979 through 1985.
Irwin Schiff says he has not paid the federal income tax since 1973, because he is not obliged by any law to do so.
Nonetheless, Mr. Schiff -- author of the book "The Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes" -- is not currently charged with any criminal conspiracy. There is no evidence, nor even the faintest suspicion, that this fast-talking, well-educated and amiable old codger is recruiting demolition experts in hopes of launching some campaign of mayhem.
What Irwin Schiff does that has the government functionaries with their knickers in a knot is ... he talks.
Boy, does he ever talk.
The government agents have him in court on a civil complaint, see, and are now asking U.S. District Senior Judge Lloyd George to slap a gag order on the spunky gadfly. They want the judge to forbid Mr. Schiff from charging admission to seminars where tax matters are discussed (that is to say, from earning his living), "or otherwise inciting or assisting others to violate the internal revenue laws" -- and further to order him to stop advocating the "false and frivolous position that paying federal income taxes is voluntary."
They don't like what he's saying, and they find it inconvenient that because he keeps saying what he's been saying, other people then come to the IRS and make them -- hold on to your seats, now -- spend a lot of time answering questions they consider "frivolous."
Oh, the humanity.
What on earth is the First Amendment for, if not to allow folks to question government agents, and the appropriateness of the way government agencies enforce the law, and to "advocate" their beliefs, however crackpot they may seem?
Make no mistake: There are plenty of wackos and goofballs prowling the fringes of the "tax education" movement. Only the gullible would put their faith and their financial future in the hands of self-anointed gurus offering to sell a $139 cassette tape which purportedly contains the magic words or arguments which will set you forever free from taxation if you will only properly recite them upon entering a courtroom to explain why you claimed "99 dependents" on your form 1040, or signed it after declaring you had "zero taxable income," or whatever -- arguments often involving admiralty jurisdiction, the gold fringe on the courtroom flag, and whatever else the cat drug in.
We can certainly forgive honest folk for being confused about the tax code -- given that the taxmasters have been busy for 90 years making it as incomprehensible as possible, precisely so we'll "just trust them" on the question of what it really requires of whom.
That said, many of these colorful characters are either partially deluded or outright hucksters.
However, one of the stories which won David Cay Johnston the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for "beat reporting" two years ago is headlined "Defying the I.R.S., Anti-Tax Businesses Refuse to Withhold."
One of the main subjects of the story, California factory owner Al Thompson, strongly disagrees with reporter Johnston's characterization of him and the other businessmen therein mentioned as "defying" the tax laws, or trying to "cheat" the IRS.
An articulate spokesman for this growing group of "questioners" is Dick Simkanin, CEO of Arrow Plastics, a small Houston manufacturer mentioned in reporter Johnston's award-winning New York Times piece. Arrow Plastics stopped withholding from its workers' paychecks some years ago. The arguments cited by Mr. Simkanin are well summed up at www.ArrowPlastics.net. or www.wakeuptotruth.com/withhold.htm.
More of the relevant, underlying historical research is laid out in Gordon Phillips' book "Losing Your Illusions"
And even a former criminal enforcement officer from the IRS has now joined those who claim the IRS has misled Americans about just which sources of income generate a tax liability. Former IRS agent Joseph R. Banister's Web site includes his Feb. 25, 1999, resignation letter from the IRS, in which he cites many questions to which he could not get satisfactory answers, even as an armed IRS agent.
At the very least, then, it can be said that a small but growing number of earnest, churchgoing Americans, who strongly declare that they believe every American should pay every cent of taxes he or she owes, nonetheless face an enormous, thousand-page tax code and a nearly impenetrable accompanying thicket of IRS manuals and ancillary and often contradictory court rulings, and complain they can't get the IRS to directly and substantively answer their questions about what "sources" of income are truly subject to the indirect excise commonly known as "the income tax," for a citizen living and working in one of the 50 states.
To say "everyone owes the U.S. income tax" is palpable nonsense. Millionaires living in Tashkent and earning their incomes entirely in Uzbekistan do not owe it. So questions of jurisdiction must apply. But what is it we must thus situate for purposes of determining jurisdiction: the wage-earner, the income, or the "source"? And what do the relevant statutes actually say, on the subject of what areas "The United States" shall include, "for purposes of this statute"?
If you live in Indiana, shouldn't you be allowed to demand that they open the law book and show you the word "Indiana" in that list of places which are "included in the United States, for purposes of this statute"? Can they? Does it name certain other places, but not Indiana? Why?
But the central question today is not whether all -- or even any -- of these arguments are correct. The first amendment means nothing if it means we are "free" to say only those things which have won the government's prior stamp of approval.
I have endeavored, in this brief space, only to indicate these are matters on which earnest people can) have questions, and differing views. In the end, no matter how flawed you may find Mr. Schiff's arguments and methods to be, no matter how goofy his theories may appear, his freedom of speech must be protected, lest the freedom of all of the rest of us to question and challenge this government and its bureaucrats, on any number of other matters, be silenced as well.
No matter how tedious it may seem, the correct way for government agents to answer Mr. Schiff's questions and assertions in a free society is to do just that -- to answer them, substantively, point by point, in public, in a free-wheeling debate.
The IRS has arrested and jailed this man, again and again, for asking his pesky questions and acting on his beliefs. He has peacefully and willingly paid that price for continuing to speak what he believes to be the truth. When that didn't work, they have attempted to run him out of business by seizing his books and files. But even that was not enough. The mosquito just kept on buzzing. So now, the G-men further seek to silence this gadfly by dragooning the courts into ordering a free American to just shut up. And surely that is where we must draw the line.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Inconvenient Irwin Schiff - And Why the First Amendment is Considered a Weapon
By Vin Suprynowicz
Back on Feb. 11, fifteen armed Treasury agents executed a search warrant at Irwin Schiff's Freedom Books storefront on East Sahara Avenue in central Las Vegas, where they spent eight hours hauling out papers and files.
Chillingly, the warrant also gave agents permission to seize the names and addresses of customers.
Now, the government is in federal district court, seeking an injunction that would bar the colorful Mr. Schiff -- and associates Cynthia Neun and Larry Cohen -- from "advocating the false and frivolous position that paying federal income taxes is voluntary."
And that's the problem.
In a pragmatic sense, the course of action Mr. Schiff has followed -- and which the IRS asserts he is encouraging others to follow -- has not worked out real well for him. Mr. Schiff, now 74, served six months in prison on a 1980 conviction for failing to file income tax returns for the years 1974 and 1975. He was convicted again in 1985 on a charge of failing to pay taxes and of concealing income. He was released on parole after 20 months in stir but was subsequently sent back on a parole violation. Justice Department tax division attorneys still have questions about Mr. Schiff's tax liability for the years 1979 through 1985.
Irwin Schiff says he has not paid the federal income tax since 1973, because he is not obliged by any law to do so.
Nonetheless, Mr. Schiff -- author of the book "The Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes" -- is not currently charged with any criminal conspiracy. There is no evidence, nor even the faintest suspicion, that this fast-talking, well-educated and amiable old codger is recruiting demolition experts in hopes of launching some campaign of mayhem.
What Irwin Schiff does that has the government functionaries with their knickers in a knot is ... he talks.
Boy, does he ever talk.
The government agents have him in court on a civil complaint, see, and are now asking U.S. District Senior Judge Lloyd George to slap a gag order on the spunky gadfly. They want the judge to forbid Mr. Schiff from charging admission to seminars where tax matters are discussed (that is to say, from earning his living), "or otherwise inciting or assisting others to violate the internal revenue laws" -- and further to order him to stop advocating the "false and frivolous position that paying federal income taxes is voluntary."
They don't like what he's saying, and they find it inconvenient that because he keeps saying what he's been saying, other people then come to the IRS and make them -- hold on to your seats, now -- spend a lot of time answering questions they consider "frivolous."
Oh, the humanity.
What on earth is the First Amendment for, if not to allow folks to question government agents, and the appropriateness of the way government agencies enforce the law, and to "advocate" their beliefs, however crackpot they may seem?
Make no mistake: There are plenty of wackos and goofballs prowling the fringes of the "tax education" movement. Only the gullible would put their faith and their financial future in the hands of self-anointed gurus offering to sell a $139 cassette tape which purportedly contains the magic words or arguments which will set you forever free from taxation if you will only properly recite them upon entering a courtroom to explain why you claimed "99 dependents" on your form 1040, or signed it after declaring you had "zero taxable income," or whatever -- arguments often involving admiralty jurisdiction, the gold fringe on the courtroom flag, and whatever else the cat drug in.
We can certainly forgive honest folk for being confused about the tax code -- given that the taxmasters have been busy for 90 years making it as incomprehensible as possible, precisely so we'll "just trust them" on the question of what it really requires of whom.
That said, many of these colorful characters are either partially deluded or outright hucksters.
However, one of the stories which won David Cay Johnston the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for "beat reporting" two years ago is headlined "Defying the I.R.S., Anti-Tax Businesses Refuse to Withhold."
One of the main subjects of the story, California factory owner Al Thompson, strongly disagrees with reporter Johnston's characterization of him and the other businessmen therein mentioned as "defying" the tax laws, or trying to "cheat" the IRS.
An articulate spokesman for this growing group of "questioners" is Dick Simkanin, CEO of Arrow Plastics, a small Houston manufacturer mentioned in reporter Johnston's award-winning New York Times piece. Arrow Plastics stopped withholding from its workers' paychecks some years ago. The arguments cited by Mr. Simkanin are well summed up at www.ArrowPlastics.net. or www.wakeuptotruth.com/withhold.htm.
More of the relevant, underlying historical research is laid out in Gordon Phillips' book "Losing Your Illusions"
And even a former criminal enforcement officer from the IRS has now joined those who claim the IRS has misled Americans about just which sources of income generate a tax liability. Former IRS agent Joseph R. Banister's Web site includes his Feb. 25, 1999, resignation letter from the IRS, in which he cites many questions to which he could not get satisfactory answers, even as an armed IRS agent.
At the very least, then, it can be said that a small but growing number of earnest, churchgoing Americans, who strongly declare that they believe every American should pay every cent of taxes he or she owes, nonetheless face an enormous, thousand-page tax code and a nearly impenetrable accompanying thicket of IRS manuals and ancillary and often contradictory court rulings, and complain they can't get the IRS to directly and substantively answer their questions about what "sources" of income are truly subject to the indirect excise commonly known as "the income tax," for a citizen living and working in one of the 50 states.
To say "everyone owes the U.S. income tax" is palpable nonsense. Millionaires living in Tashkent and earning their incomes entirely in Uzbekistan do not owe it. So questions of jurisdiction must apply. But what is it we must thus situate for purposes of determining jurisdiction: the wage-earner, the income, or the "source"? And what do the relevant statutes actually say, on the subject of what areas "The United States" shall include, "for purposes of this statute"?
If you live in Indiana, shouldn't you be allowed to demand that they open the law book and show you the word "Indiana" in that list of places which are "included in the United States, for purposes of this statute"? Can they? Does it name certain other places, but not Indiana? Why?
But the central question today is not whether all -- or even any -- of these arguments are correct. The first amendment means nothing if it means we are "free" to say only those things which have won the government's prior stamp of approval.
I have endeavored, in this brief space, only to indicate these are matters on which earnest people can) have questions, and differing views. In the end, no matter how flawed you may find Mr. Schiff's arguments and methods to be, no matter how goofy his theories may appear, his freedom of speech must be protected, lest the freedom of all of the rest of us to question and challenge this government and its bureaucrats, on any number of other matters, be silenced as well.
No matter how tedious it may seem, the correct way for government agents to answer Mr. Schiff's questions and assertions in a free society is to do just that -- to answer them, substantively, point by point, in public, in a free-wheeling debate.
The IRS has arrested and jailed this man, again and again, for asking his pesky questions and acting on his beliefs. He has peacefully and willingly paid that price for continuing to speak what he believes to be the truth. When that didn't work, they have attempted to run him out of business by seizing his books and files. But even that was not enough. The mosquito just kept on buzzing. So now, the G-men further seek to silence this gadfly by dragooning the courts into ordering a free American to just shut up. And surely that is where we must draw the line.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------