Posted on 08/11/2003 7:12:43 AM PDT by ninenot
Forget the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and our excellent adventure in Liberia. Forget about Kobe, Arnold, Arriana, Scott and Laci. The biggest news of the entire week is that on August 8, 2003, the IRS was unable to convince a jury in Memphis, Tennessee that the Federal Tax Code requires the citizens to pay individual income taxes. I kid you not.
I watched as many Sunday news programs as I could possibly stand, and I didn't hear a single mention of the IRS' debacle in Memphis. If you ever had doubts about the mainstream media being controlled by the federal government, doubt no more.
For those not already aware, FedEx Pilot Vernice Kuglin began studying the IRS Code some years ago, and was simply unable to find anywhere in the code that she was required to pay federal income taxes.
And here's the most remarkable part: Back in 1995, Kuglin wrote letters in good faith to the IRS, asking them to show her where the Tax Code requires individual citizens to pay federal income taxes. Incredibly, the IRS never answered a single one of her letters!
As she studied the facts, laws and related documents more, Kuglin became convinced that, regardless of the IRS' failure to respond one way or the other, she was exempt from paying federal income taxes. So, Kuglin filled out W-4 forms showing 99 exemptions, and turned them in to her employer. Doing that meant Kuglin got to take home almost all of her paycheck each payday, instead of what was left after the feds ravaged it.
The IRS went after Kuglin for six counts of tax evasion on $920,000.00 income, and for filing "false" W-4 forms, charges that could have put the 58 year-old Kuglin in federal prison for up to 30 years and cost her 1.5 million in fines.
Apparently, things didn't go quite the slam-dunk way federal prosecutor Joe Murphy thought they would. My money says the IRS wishes they had never gone after Kuglin at all. In fact, after the jury returned not guilty verdicts on all counts, Murphy is reported to have demanded that the judge order Kuglin to file her forms, pay her taxes and "obey the law". The judge reportedly replied, "Sir, I don't work for the IRS."
Now pinch yourself and review this astonishing turn of events: A highly trained and educated federal prosecutor in Memphis was unable to convince 12 American citizens that Vernice Kuglin was required to pay federal income taxes. He was clearly unable to produce a single section of the Tax Code to that end, and the jury was unanimous in clearing Kuglin of all charges against her. If the foregoing was not so, Kuglin would have been convicted.
Jurors tend not to be very sympathetic with tax scofflaws, since each one of them is also a taxpayer and they understandably feel resentment towards anyone not paying "their fair share". So in order for this federal jury to completely vindicate Kuglin, the government's failure to prove their case against her had to have been clear and unequivocal!
I haven't read the trial transcript yet, but I must assume the federal prosecutor at least tried to twist some vague and ambiguous section of the Tax Code to make it look like it applied to Kuglin. I don't know that, but I'll bet he tried. What else could he use to prosecute her with?
Thanks to the IRS' arrogance and stupidity, and Kuglin's refusal to plead to lesser charges, Kuglin accomplished what Bob Schultz and the other "tax protesters" had been denied all along: To force the IRS into a public debate and to answer the question of whether or not the Tax Code requires an individual to pay personal income taxes. Kuglin and her two attorneys, Larry Becraft and Robert Bernhoft, have unequivocally forced the IRS to show its hand, and 12 judges hearing that debate ruled the answer to be "NO".
I think it's time for everyone reading this to send a very polite letter to the IRS, telling them they read about the case in Memphis, and is it true that there is no section in the U.S. Tax Code that requires an individual citizen to pay federal income taxes?
Don't be threatening in any way, or announce that you plan to stop paying federal income taxes. This request is for your personal edification, and you just simply want to know the truth.
Like Kuglin, you probably won't get an answer back, but just to prove you sent the letter and that they received it, be certain to send the letter via certified U.S. Mail, with a return receipt requested. When you get that receipt back, staple it to a copy of the letter you sent the IRS, and put it somewhere real secure, like a personal safe or bank deposit box.
I don't have to explain why, now do I?
Now, how many calls to FOX' Bill O'Reilly will it take to convince him we know he's doing a spin in the No-Spin Zone by sitting on this story? Start e-mailing O'Reilly at oreilly@foxnews.com, and be sure to give him your city and state. He's gonna love me.
Carl F. Worden
The school yard bully makes the rounds each morning to collect other's milk money.
Some easily surrender their dollar, others begrudgingly do so as well. Some stand up & refuse, and risk taking a beating instead.
Would you believe that some victims actually blame those who refuse to pay, rather than finding fault with the school yard bully?
The world is full of sheeple, isn't it?
We can see one of the major hurdles to prosecuting tax evasion in this case, too. As in many such cases, in this Memphis case the defendant has a long history of correspondence with the IRS. The correspondence has the defendant on the record over a long period of time saying she will pay any taxes the IRS can demonstrate she owes. The letters also provide evidence that defendant reasonably and sincerely believed she didn't owe any income tax, in part because the dispute as articulated in the letters will have been complicated and will have made reference to many arcance sections of the tax law. When faced with a long chain of letters like these, juries often are willing to believe that the defendant sincerely and non-crazily believed she did not owe any income tax.
As the article only suggests, but doesn't say, this person will certainly have to pay her taxes. The IRS will get the money, or as much of it as she's got, one way or the other. What the trial determined was only that this woman won't be convicted of a crime for her non-payment of tax.
I think this is the point that all the "this lady isn't paying her fair share" and "it will hurt the military" folks are missing.
The federal government was never intended to become what it has become. Perhaps the 16th Amendement (taxes) and 19th Amendemnt (direct election of Senators) are the two most damaging amendments to what the Founders originally intended (not to mention the drastic effects of the withholding tax).
The 16th amendment was ratified in 1913. Apparently, we went 124 years without having a federal income tax. It has been 90 years since its institution and resultant escalation. Are we more free now?
The manistream media is liberal. That's why they won't mention that the IRS lost. The IRS is their God.
Note: THIS IS NOT A VAT. Please go to the above site and read.
"T. Coleman Andrews served as commissioner of IRS for nearly 3 years during the early 1950s. Following his resignation, he made the following statement:Source: History of the 16th Amendment by W. Cleon Skousen (from the National Retail Sales Tax Alliance)
"Congress [in implementing the Sixteenth Amendment] went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion."
"The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds."
"The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men."
"The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die."
"The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men."
"I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."
That dog won't hunt. If she drives she pays Federal gas taxes. If she owns a car, the Feds got a hefty chunk of the retail price of that car.
That was my thought as well. Perhaps this desision would "make" the IRS show this woman where she is required to pay. As a result, the IRS would then be able to tell her how much she should pay.
Of course, this seems to be the crux of the whole argument she has made: that the IRS can't show/prove their authority to tax her. In light of the documentation she has and the IRS's failure to instruct her what to do and how much to pay, she seems to have proven that point well.
Assuming that they can show her where they have the authority, then I guess she would pay...though, methinks, that she would fight that as well.
He already is; at least for the State governments. Every quarter he pushes an extra button on his POS system and it tells him to write a check in X amount which he then mails to the State treasury. Simple huh? No spending months, and for some $$$ for accountants, collecting & filling out forms and reading instructions that would make Rube Goldberg a simpleton.
This is why, to me, the national sales tax is appealing. You are absolutely correct. I don't have a problem with consumption taxes. If I want the privilege of driving, I should (rightly) assume that I would need to contribute to the group of people who own automobiles and want (need?) to drive on public highways.
This is markedly different from making money and having the tax man show up at my door saying, "Pay up what I tell you to pay up. Or, go to jail". The U.S. Federal Tax code is supposedly the largest ever created. If that it is true (or even a slight exaggration), it is hard to dispute what they are telling you. How could you know?
It seems this woman's case possess the question: ok, show me?
It seems that, in this case at least, the government failed to be able to answer this question.
I guess so except I worry that it would be a "hidden" tax. Perhaps if there were a requrement that the register receipt print the Fedral tax line in BOLD RED type so people would see what government costs them.
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