Some in this forum have suggested not to pay the federal income tax, so I must ask any comments about state income tax and social security? Also if a persons chooses to not pay income taxes,can the goverments garnish Your wages at a later date ? Thanks for any comments on this subject. Count My vote as a doomer holding on to Prep for at least six months for a delayed Y2K timebomb or when the stock market busts apart at the seems or both. Ken G

-- Ken G (black300@yahoo.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

Ken...don't know the full story...I know it's possible but I also know that you cut yourself off from benefits [whatever THOSE are] later in life.

-- Satanta (EventHoriz@n.com), January 04, 2000.

Hi Ken,

Yep....heard the story also about how.., if you really look at the how the tax code is set up, that it is a "Voluntery" constribution that you are making to the Feds...... I have not delved deeper into this yet to authenticate this as fact. And if it is true, then how to you make a reasonable transition from paying to not paying. ie, via a lawyer..!! If you find credible information on how to do this, can you personally email me. I would jump on it so quickly. The heck with potential SSN benefits that I won't see for 30 or so years anyway. I'd love to keep it and do as I see fit.

Sincerely Yours Tom

-- thomas saul (thomasaul@peoplepc.com), January 04, 2000.

People go to prison all the time for not voluntarily paying their income taxes. If you decide to take that chance and not pay, the LAST thing that you should do is tell someone about it.

-- A.P. (grim2k@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.

Ken,

There's alot of folks trying to make a buck by selling "How To" books on this topic. I question their agendas. Greed is an obvious component, but also disabling our government may be a component, so I would be careful whose camp I joined. Clearly there are ethical mechanisms in place to approach Congress on taxes. I think that if people just want to lazily opt out of this social respnsibility then they can legally apply for alternate citizenship.

"What, and give up all the other benefits of being American?"

NO PAY, NO PLAY!

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.

If the IRS has your number and you refuse to pay they simply lien your bank accounts. Due to a lack of funds this happened to me 3-4 times over the years. Had paid one tax debt off and they still took the money. Only took them about 3-4 months to find the mistake before they sent me a refund on the last one.

The banks report any amount of interest paid to you to the IRS via your social insecurity number.

I dislike the IRS as much as anyone but the facts are they are powerful and they will take your money.

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), January 04, 2000.

One can (and I do) dislike the current structure of taxation in the US, but the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, is the law of the land.

For more information on the claims described above (e.g., that tax payments are "voluntary"), you may wish to check out the following site:

http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html

It is a compilation of case law (i.e., court decisions), statutes, and regulations governing the Internal Revenue Code, and addresses mistaken beliefs held by some about taxation in the US.

-- J Donohue (jpdonohue@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.

Here is the best advice:

Pay the tax owed. Period

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), January 04, 2000.

Just a postulate: if irs has 61 mainframes each with over 60 million lines of code (they do) and the irs has cancelled their y2k replacement due to failure (they did), and the irs has over 40 thousand computer programs (including spreadsheets, et cetera) on pc's and mini's (they do), and they will be through the INVENTORY of their systems sometime near end of June of 2000, and they depend on these systems and the ability to receive data from banks, employers, et cetera, and these are breaking as we speak, then the postulate is that without computing clarity, they cannot see (you, the individual taxpayer).

And an additional corollary (sp?), the IRS runs sooooo close to operation failure in computing under the best of circumstances, that even a feather's of weight additional computing problems are critical....

-- not counted (by irs) amazing! (amazing@grace.com), January 04, 2000.

Snooze button: That's pretty much what the site indicates!

It debunks a lot of tax protestors' myths.

-- J. Donohue (Jpdonohue@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.

don't wanna pay your taxes??? well, we shouldn't have to.

the 16th amendment wasn't ever ratified legally...among other things.

but just relax. they're not gonna be able to collect anyway this year. the irs is screwed.

go here:

http://www.16thamendment.com/

-- taxfreeman (no@tax.com), January 04, 2000.

The statement "the XVI Amendment was never ratified" is simply bunk. It is a case of wishful thinking.

Although the Constitution describes how to ratify amendments, it doesn't say how we know when an amendment has been ratified. After some confusion about the status of some amendments (including the infamous "Titles of Nobility" amendment that fell at least one state short of ratification, but appeared in numerous copies of the Constitution in the early and middle 1800's), Congress decided that the Secretary of State should certify what amendments have been ratified.

The argument that the 16th Amendment was not ratified is best explained (and refuted) by this quotation from U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986):

"Thomas is a tax protester, and one of his arguments is that he did not need to file tax returns because the sixteenth amendment is not part of the constitution. It was not properly ratified, Thomas insists, repeating the argument of W. Benson & M. Beckman, The Law That Never Was (1985). Benson and Beckman review the documents concerning the states' ratification of the sixteenth amendment and conclude that only four states ratified the sixteenth amendment; they insist that the official promulgation of that amendment by Secretary of State Knox in 1913 is therefore void.

"Benson and Beckman did not discover anything; they rediscovered something that Secretary Knox considered in 1913. Thirty-eight states ratified the sixteenth amendment, and thirty-seven sent formal instruments of ratification to the Secretary of State. (Minnesota notified the Secretary orally, and additional states ratified later; we consider only those Secretary Knox considered.) Only four instruments repeat the language of the sixteenth amendment exactly as Congress approved it. The others contain errors of diction, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. The text Congress transmitted to the states was: "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." Many of the instruments neglected to capitalize "States," and some capitalized other words instead. The instrument from Illinois had "remuneration" in place of "enumeration"; the instrument from Missouri substituted "levy" for "lay"; the instrument from Washington had "income" not "incomes"; others made similar blunders.

"Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and--taking into account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial problems-- advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.

"Although Thomas urges us to take the view of several state courts that only agreement on the literal text may make a legal document effective, the Supreme Court follows the "enrolled bill rule." If a legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the appropriate officials, the court treats that document as properly adopted. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 36 L.Ed. 294, 12 S.Ct. 495 (1892). The principle is equally applicable to constitutional amendments. See Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 66 L.Ed. 505, 42 S.Ct. 217 (1922), which treats as conclusive the declaration of the Secretary of State that the nineteenth amendment had been adopted. In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6 (7th Cir. 1986), we relied on Leser, as well as the inconsequential nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to Thomas's. See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385, 59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary's decision is not transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox's decision is now beyond review."

It has also been claimed that the votes of Georgia legislature were recorded incorrectly and that Georgia actually rejected the amendment, contrary to Knox's report. However, no Congressman or other official from Georgia has ever complained about the "error" and, even if there was an error and Georgia did not ratify the amendment, there would still have been thirty-seven ratifications, one more than the thirty-six required. (Article V of the Constitution requires that amendments to the Constitution be approved by the legislatures of three fourths of the states, and there were forty- eight states in 1913.)

As noted by the 7th Circuit in Thomas, the argument that the 16th Amendment is invalid is not only factually deficient, but it is an argument that federal courts are unwilling to consider. This is because the federal courts have always recognized limits upon their powers, and one of those limits is that the courts should not get involved in issues that the Constitution has entrusted to other branches of the government. The Constitution says that Congress may propose amendments, and the states may ratify them. Whether an amendment has been properly ratified is considered to be a "political question" to be resolved by Congress and the states, and not in court. In this case, no state has ever claimed that the 16th Amendment was not ratified.

For other decisions upholding the validity of the 16th Amendment, see United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d 457 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 273; Pollard v. Commissioner, 816 F.2d 603 (11th Cir. 1987); United States v. Benson, 941 F.2d 598 (7th Cir. 1991); Socia v. Commissioner, 23 F.3d 941 (5th Cir. 1994), reh. den. 1994 U.S. App. LEXIS 22014; United States v. Stahl, 792 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 888; United State v. Sitka, 845 F.2d 43 (2nd Cir. 1988).

Miller v. United States, 868 F.2d 236, 239-41 (7th Cir. 1989).

Biermann v. Commissioner, 769 F.2d 707 (11th Cir. 1985).

Buckner, 830 F.2d at 102.

United States v. Dube, 820 F.2d 886, 891 (7th Cir. 1986).

Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68, 70-71 (7th Cir. 1986).

Moore, 627 F.2d at 833.

Knoblauch v. Commissioner, 749 F.2d 200 (1984), cert. den. 474 U.S. 830 (1985).

"Despite plaintiff's and numerous other tax protesters' conention that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified, courts have long recognized the Sixteenth Amendment's ratification and validity." Betz v. United States, 40 Fed.Cl. 286, 295 (1998)

-- J Donohue (Jpdonohue@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.