I'd take it to the tax auditor's office and invite some Interior Department folks with me to instantly arrest the agent for "possession".
If the IRS can do this, they could also conceivably hit you with a tax bill of what they think your lifetime income will probably be and charge you accordingly.
So who was it that said the Rich don’t pay enough in taxes?
There is an option E: Fight it in court.
Donate it to a museum at the IRS’s assessed value, and take the tax deduction.
The IRS will become the new Gestapo. Perhaps Obama should get them black uniforms.
Or - have some catastrophe destroy the sculpture and claim a loss of the IRS’s assessed value.
They could leave it in the back of a truck in a parking lot and allow it to be stolen.
The federal government has mutated into a grotesque spoiled child that sits on a huge pile of candy while pointing at another child holding a small candy bar while screaming “you’re greedy, you have to share!”
At least that’s what I think of when I see Nancy Pelosi.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin:
Accuse others of what you do.
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
John Maynard Keynes:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. . . . (It) does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. . .
Keep in mind that when the government passed the income tax, they said it would only be levied on “the Rich” and would not exceed 3%.
Then the media wonders why sensible citizens don’t believe anything the government tells them.
The other thing to consider is this: What would happen if the IRS accepted the $0 estimated value, then the Federal law changed a week from now so that the piece could legally be bought, sold and transported? Hmmm ...
Abolish the S.O.B,s
Is there any way that the inheritors could refuse to accept the eagle? If possessing eagle parts is illegal, one would think that this item should be refused by the inheritors. Perhaps it could remain with the deceased’s estate and then be confiscated by the government.
It all depends. If they are Demoncrats and submit a very large contribution to the Obeyme super pac, then their troubles will abate. If they are R’s, then they can expect the hungry pigs treatment like in Hannibal.
Simple, really.
I would also call a Gov or Senator for backing in this case. That kind of money
would and could unseat a politician.
All that for such a grotesque ‘sculpture’. If the IRS says it’s worth umpty-bajillion, perhaps they just just give it to the federal government, c/o IRS, in lieu of other payments and demand a receipt.
If IVORY which is older can be possessed, why cannot this artwork be in the same category? A person cannot possess ivory which is more current.
How old is this piece of artwork??
When was the law about the eagles passed??
Something doesn’t add up here.