How much does one legally have to answer?
I don’t see why they need my phone number or any of the other details they ask for. I don’t recall having been asked for that before, but maybe I just ignored it and have forgotten.
1. The actual number of people living at the address printed on the form, excluding untaxed Native Americans;
2. Age of each person in accordance with US Const. Amendment XIV, Section 2.
3. Sex of each person, in accordance with US Const. Amendment XIV, Section 2.
I have been contemplating how to fill out the form and what the rules are. I found the following:
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_cens.html
The current penalty is $100 for failure to fill out the census forms.
The authority of the Congress to conduct the census in whatever way it wishes, and thus to require that the forms be filled out is found in the Constitution itself, which notes:
[The Census] shall be made ... in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct.
The Congress is also authorized to ask various questions in the census aside from the basic headcount by virtue of this clause and by virtue of the Necessary and Proper Clause.
Advice to leave the form blank or to fail to fill it in may actually bring more of the government into your life than you want — as noted above, unfiled and incomplete forms will be followed-up upon by actual census workers, either in person or by telephone.
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End of excerpt. Earlier on it talked about the history of the Census and the laws made. For the first census, the names and ages of the people living in the house were recorded - that’s what I think I might do.
Still pondering it. (One other poster on another thread talked about “pick your battles”. Heck, a google search of my name would probably bring up most of the census form information anyway. Or they can look at my tax records. But, that’s not the point.