Posted on 04/13/2005 10:45:43 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952
Austinite earned $2 million, said he owed zero, indictment says.
By Steven Kreytak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Steven D. Shanklin of Austin earned $876,398 in 1998 and filed a tax return claiming he owed none of it to Uncle Sam, according to a federal indictment.
The Cisco Systems Sales and Services Inc. employee made $770,504 in 1999 and $681,955 in 2000 and didn't file a federal tax return in either year, the indictment says.
Shanklin, 48, wrote in a letter attached to his 1998 return that he knew of "no section of the Internal Revenue Code that . . . establishes an income tax 'liability,' " according to the indictment, handed up by a federal grand jury in Austin last week.
Internal Revenue Service agents and federal prosecutors disagreed, and Shanklin now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of three counts of tax evasion.
At his 3,000-square-foot home in Southwest Austin last week, Shanklin said he has "quite a story" to tell but can't do it until his case is resolved. He declined to comment further.
Shanklin is among the 300 or so people each year who fail to file tax returns or cite frivolous arguments in their returns and are subsequently prosecuted in federal court, according to the IRS. About 180 are convicted and sentenced to prison.
The IRS tries to draw attention to those cases to deter others from buying into bogus tax-avoidance techniques pitched in seminars, in books and on the Internet, said Harlan Carter, the special agent in charge of the San Antonio field office of the IRS criminal investigations division.
"Throughout the United States, there are constantly different types of claims that are being made" to avoid taxes, he said. "One thing that we can stress is the courts have consistently . . . held that there are no legal grounds for their failure to file and their failure to pay."
For example, some might argue that the income tax is unconstitutional or that protesters of specific government programs or actions may withhold taxes. Not true, officials say.
One argument that has circulated in Texas in recent years is that the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was not ratified properly, IRS officials said. It explicitly states that Congress may directly tax citizens and came in the late 19th century after the Supreme Court disallowed the federal income tax.
It is unclear what specific argument Shanklin cited.
The indictment says that after failing to file a return in 1999, he said in a letter to the IRS that "federal income tax laws do not exist." In 1999 and 2000, he gave his employer a tax form claiming he was exempt from withholding, the indictment says.
Shanklin is free on bail pending trial. After his arrest, he asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Pitman to appoint a lawyer for him, a right reserved for indigent defendants. But Tuesday at a hearing, Shanklin arrived with his own lawyers.
Pitman asked the lawyers, "I assume you'll withdraw his motion for a court-appointed, taxpayer-funded attorney?"
They did.
Shaking my head ping....
Meanwhile, the IRS tries to distract attention from the fact that people and organizations have demanded certain answers from the IRS about tax liabilities and questions of Constitutionality, and that the IRS refuses to answer them.
By the time they get him on interest and penalties, he'll wish that he'd just went ahead and paid them.
Wow. Tax avoidance is one thing.
Tax evasion is quite another.This guy is goin' to prison, I bet. :)
>>Meanwhile, the IRS tries to distract attention from the fact that people and organizations have demanded certain answers from the IRS about tax liabilities and questions of Constitutionality, and that the IRS refuses to answer them.<<
And one female airline pilot a year or two ago won against the IRS on just such an issue. She said she would be happy to pay once someone from the IRS showed her where in the tax code it said she had to. They refused and took her to court. She won.
And the article said that 300 people try to get away with it, but only 180 are jailed or fined. What of that other 120?
I have an a aquainence that is part of the Larkin Rose group. Hasn't filled out a return in over 12 years and makes really good six figure income. For them the key to protecting yourself is not entering into a contractual agreement with the irs - IOW do not sign a tax return.
Since it's tax time again, I remember some years ago talking with my neighbor across the back fence. He was in Arizona hiding out from his creditors in Colorado after his construction and real estate business had collapsed in the Colorado Springs bubble of the early '90's.
I was talking about doing my taxes. He paused for a bit and then asked "What if you don't do your taxes?" I stared at him blankly and asked "How long has it been since you did your taxes?" He replied "Four or five years." (I told him to get a tax lawyer quick.)
I wonder what ever happenned to my former neighbor. Haven't heard from him for years.
The courts have repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of the tax laws. As a libertarian, I don't like our tax system, but as a lawyer, who often litigates against the IRS, I recognize the reality that those laws exist-- they were passed by Congress, they are enforced by the executive and they are upheld by the courts.
his lawyer will cost more than taxes :)
Yhis guy will be sweating bullets soon. The IRS will take him through the washer, and at the end of the ride he'll have paid so much (or lost so much) that he will wish he had just paid them in the first place.
Sounds like it's time we look into a new government then, isn't it? Who are these parasites, anyway?
It was probably the gold fringe around the flag in the courtroom that stopped him from paying taxes.
I'd bet he is in hiding or in a crowbar hotel somewhere.
lol
You are thinking of Vernice Kuglin. She was acquitted of criminal tax fraud, because she convinced a jury that she didn't intentionally violate the tax laws, but she lost to the IRS in her civil case and they took her house and garnished her paycheck to cover the taxes and civil penalties.
Missed that part... 8^>
My grandfather and his two brothers never paid state or federal income taxes or property taxes or SS withholdings. But then, they never paid – it’s not like they used to pay and then suddenly got wise and quit. They were born between 1891 and 1900 and never paid from day one.
They’d always file returns but not sign them. They had some s-house lawyer draw up a letter saying that disclosing their income violated their fifth amendment rights and that if whatever-agent thought otherwise, they had limited power of attorney to sign on their behalf.
Had someone signed it on their behalf or had the government pursued them, that’s supposedly when the lawyer was going to jump into the middle of it.
I doubt it would have worked out particularly well, knowing some of the dopes involved.
At any rate, a few things to also keep in mind – they all had modest little homes on a little plot of land out in the sticks. “Regular” houses – nothing nice. They were all self-employed, none had mortgages or bank accounts or checking accounts or credit cards or safety deposit boxes.
Everything(!) they did was on a cash/barter basis – they wouldn’t even accept a check. So from that standpoint they didn’t really have anything worthwhile to seize, no accounts to grab, and it’d probably be hard to determine what their “income” actually was. They weren’t rolling in dough, but weren’t wanting for anything.
Nobody ever messed with them. My grandfather died last in 1982 and once the family cleaned out the house, the BLM grabbed the land. The land had been purchased in the 40’s in a handshake deal so no deed was ever transferred (if there ever was one) and it was never properly filed or recorded so it was the BLM’s position that it was BLM land all along anyway.
He's probably sneaking back into the country on the Arizona border.
On a positive note,hey guys,there's one hell of a good paying job open now(after he goes to prison) and it's pretty apparent you don't have to be "that" intelligent to get it.
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