WASHINGTON -- What should you do when your government oppresses you
with illegal laws, illegally confiscates your money and property, and
refuses to even justify its actions to you?
That was the dilemma facing the Founding Fathers, of course, and it
was the dilemma facing a roomful of income tax protesters meeting last
week in the nation's capital. The symposium
was called by the We the People Foundation
for Constitutional Education Inc., to discuss the topic "Are the Income
and Social Security Taxes Legal?"
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Friday's article
in WorldNetDaily featured William J. Benson's research on the
ratification -- "fraudulent," he says -- of the 16th Amendment, which
established the income tax. Other speakers at the symposium included
Joseph R. Banister, the former
investigator and gunslinger for the Criminal Investigation Division
of the IRS who
looked into the arguments of income tax protesters and decided they
were right.
Originally the foundation had hoped to have an academic-type format,
with arguments and counter-arguments presented on both sides of the
issue. "The foundation itself has not taken a position on the legality
of the income tax," explained We the People's Robert L. Schulz.
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There was just one problem: Nobody in the federal government would
send an authority to present the government's case -- if it has one --
for the legality of the income tax. Not the IRS, not President Clinton,
not Senate President Pro Tempore Trent Lott, not House Speaker Dennis
Hastert. They all refused even to respond to their certified,
registered and very respectful invitations to send representatives to
the symposium.
"I consider this very newsworthy that they (the IRS) didn't show up,"
Banister said to the audience. "I somehow found my way from California
to this meeting. They're two blocks away and couldn't spare one
prosecutor. Is it that the IRS and the Treasury Department still don't
have enough people to spare one for a couple of hours?"
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"They're one short," shouted a member of the audience.
But Banister could not have been too surprised by the IRS' refusal
to talk. The IRS treated him the same way when it was his employer. He
had respectfully written to his superiors, explaining that he was
concerned about some of the arguments and documentation he had received
from opponents of the income tax, and might have to resign if he could
not answer those arguments to his satisfaction. He asked for a
meeting. Instead his firearm was taken from him, he was placed on
administrative leave, and he received a written reply stating that
"there is no reason to have a meeting. This will be the last time we
will reply to your request." Then he learned from an office memo that
his "voluntary resignation" had been accepted.
"Voluntary" -- there was that word again.
The IRS-maintained fiction that the income tax is "voluntary" was
raised by a number of the speakers. Banister quoted former FBI Director
William H. Webster's April 1999 review of the IRS' Criminal
Investigation Division: "CID is staffed with approximately three
thousand special agents for the purpose of influencing millions
of taxpayers to voluntarily comply with their taxpaying
obligations" [emphasis added].
"An IRS special agent," said Banister, who had been one, "is given
firearms, pepper spray, and handcuffs. Why would that be necessary if
payment is voluntary? Yet three IRS commissioners have stated that the
tax system is based on 'voluntary compliance.'"
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"One can plainly see there is more to the repeated use of the word
'voluntary' than the IRS wants to admit," Banister added.
"What we've got on our hands here," said Denver-based tax consultant
William T. Conklin, "is an Orwellian
situation where they say this is voluntary, but we'll prosecute you if
you don't volunteer."
He received his first IRS audit notice, Conklin told the audience,
three days after he wrote an anti-IRS article for a Denver newspaper.
"I realized right then there was a huge problem," he said, "and that
became my passion and my life's work."
So, back to the original question: What to do? Benson suggests
widespread use of "jury nullification" to defeat tax prosecutions, while
Conklin specializes in a Fifth Amendment defense against the income tax.
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Variations of "write your congressman" would seem to be hopeless when
only one member of Congress (Ohio's maverick Democratic, Rep. James
Traficant) even responded to the seminar's sponsors. Still, We the
People's Bob Schulz favors starting with that approach.
"I will recommend that our foundation's board urge Congress to hold
hearings on this issue," Schulz told WorldNetDaily. "Congress could
subpoena the IRS commissioner. After all, they are the people's
representatives and that's the way the system is designed to work."
Assuming that doesn't work, though, Schulz feels the anti-IRS
movement "should also try to get relief through the legal process. We
could try the approach Vietnam veterans took with the Agent Orange
issue. Hundreds of them filed individual lawsuits, which were then
consolidated and heard by the D.C. circuit court. They eventually won
in the Supreme Court."
"We should also consider taking a page out of Mahatma Gandhi's book,"
Schulz continued, referring to the Hindu nationalist leader in India.
"He said it was necessary to have a militant, non-violent, mass
movement -- and if any of those three elements are missing, you will
fail. Martin Luther King wrote about that formula and employed it as
well. Hopefully it will never come to this, but we too may have to
consider some civil disobedience of this sort."
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For Part 1 of this report, click here.
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