Do we really have the choice to not pay any Taxes??

[jonanthans]

http://www.truthattack.org/


I have seen this site being posted on billboards around Shreveport/Bossier City. I finally checked it out. Interesting stuff, I have always heard that Taxes are supposed to be voluntary, seen where people have fought it for years, some successfully. I pay out the hinnie on Taxes every year , I am definelty going to check into this.

[David in FL]

http://www.truthattack.org/

Good luck on that. Let us know how those federal prison courses play. I hear getting a tee time can be a little tough......

[RocketSauce]

from what i understand (and i may be wrong), i think you dont have to pay taxes if you dont have a social security #, or if you go thru the process (dont know what this entails) of getting rid of your social security #.... but then if/when you do that, all sorts of other problems arise....

[iacas]

Uh, yeah, my dad tried this stuff for four years or so. Eventually he had to pay back all his taxes plus a little penalty. Could have been much greater if he had wanted to fight it more.

Better not to waste your time, I suggest.

[Fraser]

Depends how committed you are but it is certainly possible in some means.

I know someone who is doing it and avoids paying federal taxes (only state taxes) just this but it means making quite a few sacrifices. A few off the top of my head:
-Relinquishing US citizenship. He/she does have a US passport but it is worded slightly differently on the frontpage.
-No social security which means no bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages etc. He/she earns quite a bit of cash so bought property outright and keeps money offshore which can be withdrawn by debit card from an ATM.
-Receives no mail! - sent to a PO Box and collected.

In some senses he/she is above the law. They can't get any parking tickets or done for speeding as the car doesn't 'exist' in computer records. It is all quite bizarre and something that would be very hard to achieve and work through unless you were single (from what I've seen) but he/she has seen and sought reputable legal advice and it is all kosher. The people who get thrown in jail are the ones who don't fully read up on it, try to take shortcuts or advantage of their 'status'.

[Shindig]

http://www.truthattack.org/

(Note: I did not check the link and I'm not going to check the link) I'm not used to seeing people talking about this in December. Usually these groups start up closer to April. Check into it all you want. My suggestion: pay your taxes as normal. There are plenty of tax protesters who spend quite a bit of time in prison, only to get out and claim they got some small detail wrong, so they're going to try it again. And very few people get to play golf in prison. Rather than debate details of this guy's plan , whatever it is, think of it this way: suppose he's right. Suppose the law really did, unambiguously, give you the option of paying taxes and it just so happened that only a small group of people figured this out. And you decide to try this out. Now, either the IRS catches you trying this or they don't. * If they don't catch you, it's the same whether he's right or not. But that's not the likely scenario. The likely scenario is that they catch you. * If they do catch you trying this, what recourse would you have when they came after you? Would you challenge it in court? Would any judge ever rule against the government's ability to collect taxes? How would you challenge it out of court? Do you really think the bank is going to side with you when the IRS asks them to freeze your accounts? Do you think the police are going to let you back into your house if the IRS takes that? How many people do you think were arrested - for various acts - while asserting that what they were doing was legal. Oh, and even if it turned out to really be optional, you'd think Congress would fix that mistake pretty quickly. You'd think someone in Congress would have seen the billboards or gotten the pamphlets and emails that come in every year around tax time. Even beyond that scenario, the whole tax protest movement is bogus. Go to FindLaw or something and look for "Internal Revenue Code." I'm sure there's a section in there about who must pay taxes. And I'm pretty sure the answer isn't "whoever feels like paying taxes." In summary: * Each of these "income taxes are voluntary" arguments is bogus. It doesn't matter which one you've found. * I'm going to file my taxes well before the end of February. I suggest that if you haven't filed for an extension, you file your taxes by the appropriate date. * Income Taxes are one of the easiest laws to comply with. I understand people getting traffic tickets and misdemeanors. Willful and deliberate non-compliance with a law that has been around your whole life is just a waste.

[glebert]

If you earn money in the US you have to pay income tax on it. I believe you can get out of the payroll tax (Social Security) by relinquishing your citizenship. Oh, but then don't try to collect social security.

One of my favorite adages: No one ever went broke paying taxes.

[jonanthans]

Well, there is a way to do it, but apparently not by the websites methods. My grandfather, a retired accountant, told me how to do it is via offshore accounts from an overseas business, in a tax haven country such as Austria, Hong Kong, Ireland, and the Cayman Islands just to name a small few. He sent me this snippet (not sure what site its from):



The only legal way to avoid taxes, without giving up US citizenship , is to have a business that can be operated from any where in the world. If you, as a United States citizen, move to a foreign country and become a legal resident you can then operate your business out of that country and have up to $160,000 of your income could be taken from the business tax free. That means you will not have to prove it, nor do you have to pay taxes on it. This is the foreign earned income tax code, and the one that is the most frequently used. What is great about this method is that if your business is organized as a foreign corporation and there is no investment income earned by that corporation, you can actually have more profits then the stated $160,000 without being subject to taxes. However if you have a large estate then your estate itself would be subject to taxes. This is what is taking place when you hear about “offshore accounts.” It really is not something that just takes place in the movies. It is relatively easy to do and can net you a lot of tax free profits without ever getting caught.


Still too much dang trouble to go through...

[zeg]

You do have the choice not to pay taxes, in the same way that you have the choice not to follow any other law. I've read a few of these theories, and they're all bunk. Remember, even Thoreau, perhaps the most famous tax protester, only got out of jail when his buddy Emerson paid his back taxes for him. Some protest!

I think Shindig nailed it. Regardless of whether there's some loophole that in theory makes it optional, if (or better, when ) you do get picked up for evasion, you'll get to spend some time in the clink, and the rest of your life fighting in the courts. I don't think that's a very good bargain.

Finally, this is a bit of a tangent, but a few mentioned relinquishing your citizenship as a way out. An interesting fact I came across a few years ago is that if you do manage to successfully give up your citizenship, if you earned more than a certain amount per year (something just over $100k, IIRC), the IRS deems that your reason for renunciation was to avoid paying taxes. As a result, you are on the hook for taxes for the next 7 years as a penalty, and there's no avenue for review of this decision. This is ridiculous, and I couldn't believe it was the case, but it seems to be.

Anyway, I don't think you are going to have any luck ditching taxes. It'll feel like it's working for a while, but like so many things, it's going to catch up with you. If you *do* decide to go that route, I'd advise finding a good reputable lawyer and accountant who'll support your route (and I can all but guarantee you're not going to find either of those).

[Surefire]

The only legal way to avoid taxes,

This probably wouldn't work very well anyway, unless you made a seriously big amount of money. You won't pay US taxes, but instead you'll pay business tax rates for the country you are set up in, incorporation fees, mandatory accounting that you have to do to run the business, commission on changing the currency to and from $s etc... If you make enough that these costs are a smaller % than the US tax rate you'll be fine, but otherwise you'd be better off just paying tax normally.

[jonanthans]

.

Lol, the ironic part of that is the lawyers fees would likely be more than the taxes!

My grandfather told me that he has been approached with this so many times he lost count, and that it is not worth the hassle, so it wont be me trying it. It is interesting to watch the battles that some few wage against it however.

[ganjagolfer]

I think there is this lawyer who didn't pay income taxes and was sent to court. He defended himself in court and he won. He uses the constitution to prove that paying income taxes is not mandatory under the constitution. . .

can you source this or is this just something you think?

[jonanthans]

For ships and giggles, I emailed the person listed on those billboards I referenced. Here is his response:


Re: tax info billboards‏
From: CryerLaw@aol.com Sent:Tue 12/09/08 5:40 AMTo: -----------@hotmail.com
[FONT=Times New Roman] Thanks for your note. And thanks for posting our web site. That is how people find out things and people need to find out what the IRS has been doing to them.

To answer your questions, people who take the beast on alone, trying to slay the dragon by themselves, are generally UNsuccessful, but people who follow the TA approach by fighting the lies and myths instead of the beast itself have enjoyed great success. TA was formed to give patriots a means to fight in numbers, to fight the beast where it is vulnerable and cannot fight back. It cannot deny any of the TA message and it can't do anything to those spreading that message.

Second, TA cannot offer legal assistance itself, but it has a number of organizations in the TA coalition of tax honesty groups who offer administrative assistance and we have a network of attorneys who can and do provide legal assistance.

Thanks,

Tom Cryer
TA HQ
[/FONT]

[Shindig]

I think there is this lawyer who didn't pay income taxes and was sent to court. He defended himself in court and he won. He uses the constitution to prove that paying income taxes is not mandatory under the constitution. . .

can you source this or is this just something you think?

Seeing as how the Constitution doesn't say that it isn't mandatory, but rather says:

The Congress shall have 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.

I suspect this is an urban legend or wishful thinking.

[smith5606]

It's a shame that C*** like this refuses to die. Unfortunately, like other urban legends, it refuses to go away inspite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. While you have to be careful in attributing too much veracity to Wikipedia, in this case it is pretty accurate. I would direct your attention to the following Wikipedia entry about the 16th Amendment and other case law regarding the income tax. Make no mistake, there is no magic way to avoid the income tax. If you try, you are subject to the full weight of law. You can go to jail, you can be fined, and your life can be radically and negatively affected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen...s_Constitution

[Eeryck]

Wesley Snipes thought he could get away without paying taxes. He has a lot of money too and it caught up with him:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/24/snipes.sentencing/

Regardless of what any company claims they are just scamming you out of your money. Consider what you pay them "Stupid tax" and then go pay your normal taxes so you don't go to jail.

-E

[Uber$winG]

Death and Taxes... The two cosmological constants.

[zeg]

The Congress shall have 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.

I recall reading about one of these theories based on a (as far as I am concerned) fallacious interpretation of the word "income." The claim was that money you are paid for a service (such as work) is "compensation," and that income specifically means money you earn without doing anything in return (such as interest income or other money derived from investments). Good luck with that one in the courts!