User talk:Georgeengr

Welcome to Wikipedia
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Regarding your recent addition to Tax protester constitutional arguments, as follows:


 * One argument that has never been answered, is ther[e] a law that mandates that you file and [sic] income tax form[s] and that you must pay as an individual. The IRS has been asked by several groups for the actual law number, but recieved [sic] to [sic] response. It should be noted as well that the supreme court rulled [sic] that the Sixteenth Amendment did not creat[e] any new taxes, just the ability to creat[e] new taxes.

This material was removed by another editor, as the claims are already covered in another article, Tax protester statutory arguments.

The IRS is under no legal obligation to give taxpayers the "actual law number" -- but the IRS does anyway! The "actual law numbers" are printed in the IRS instructions for Form 1040, and on the IRS web site. The tax protester "show me the law" rhetoric is designed to hide the fact that the IRS actually does "show the law."

Similarly, there is no legal requirement that the police first give people the "actual law number" for the statute that punishes murder. The state legislature has made murder a crime by enacting a statute published in the statute books, and someone who commits murder can be found guilty of murder, regardless of whether he was first "shown the law" by the police. It's not the responsibility of the police or the prosecutor or anybody else to respond to a demand that someone be "shown the law."

Tax protesters have argued for years that there is no law that mandates that individuals file income tax forms and pay taxes as individuals. The argument is legally frivolous. The tax protesters have lost every single court case on this point -- without exception.

The Supreme Court has never ruled, and the IRS has not argued, that the Sixteenth Amendment created new taxes. Also, neither the Court nor the IRS has really stated that the Amendment provides the ability to create new taxes, either. The Congress has always had the power to impose just about any kind of tax (except, for example, a tax on exports which is prohibited by the Constitution). What the Amendment did was remove the so-called Pollock requirement that income taxes on interest, dividends, and rents be apportioned among the states according to population. Nothing in the Pollock decision stated that Congress could not validly impose an income tax on individuals.

Nothing in the United States Constitution as original written (or as amended) prohibits any kind of tax whatsoever (except a tax on exports). The Constitutional restrictions regarding apportionment and geographic uniformity are not restrictions on the specific kinds of tax that may be imposed ("kind" of tax meaning things like income tax, gift tax, estate tax, sales tax, property tax, and so on).

Further, after the Sixteenth Amendment the apportionment requirement does not apply to income taxes at all (even income taxes on interest, dividends and rents that would otherwise be considered "direct taxes").

The geographic uniformity requirement for excises (indirect taxes) simply means that you can't impose the tax just in certain states, such as New York and Montana. Yours, Famspear (talk) 16:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


 * By the way, the argument that a person is not required to file a tax return or pay tax unless the Internal Revenue Service first shows the law or responds to the person's questions, etc., and variations of this argument, have been officially identified as legally frivolous tax return positions for purposes of the section 6702 frivolous tax return penalty. That means that if a taxpayer states in his Federal income tax return that he owes no tax because the IRS has not first shown him the law, the taxpayer can be penalized up to $5,000. Yours, Famspear (talk) 16:58, 3 January 2008 (UTC)