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"Well, there was until the 16th Amendment was enacted in the early part of the last century. The Constitution specifically prohibited the federal government from taxing individuals directly. The 16th Amendment amended that. And it was challenged several times in two cases right after it was enacted. And those cases have been called intellectually dishonest. But no one seriously, successfully, has challenged the power of the federal government since then to tax individual income."

No one that they are willing to talk about, and/or haven't killed or driven to suicide, that is.

Larken Rose, at TaxableIncome.Net is one in the former category, as is Joe Banister, a former IRS agent who was forced to resign when he asked his superiors for chapter and verse after trying in vain to debunk the anti-income-tax arguments himself. Banister's calculated income taxes are going into a irrevocable trust until the IRS can prove a claim on them or until his son goes to college, and he's been waiting for years.

The only surprise in this case is not the outcome, but that the judge wasn't colluding with the IRS to suppress the testimony of the defendant and her witnesses, as is usually done.

The Sixteenth Amendment did not expand Congress' taxing powers one iota, and the fact is, they can legally tax only those things that fall under their jurisdiction among the delegated powers in Article I, Section 8. They can not legally take power over something that is outside of that realm simply by calling it a tax, direct or indirect, and payment from an employer in a state to the employee in the same state for services rendered to the employer is not "in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce."

It'll be interesting to see what happens if and when the IRS issues a notice of levy and attempts to collect from this woman. They probably don't want to just kick her door in and gun her down now that she's gotten national media attention, and they can't truthfully answer some very specific, fundamental questions about the structure of Title 26 without their whole racket crashing down. They're in quite a bind.

and payment from an employer in a state to the employee in the same state for services rendered to the employer is not "in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce."

I agree with you, but we know the feds rule that anything and everything affects interstate commerce when they want their way. The current interpretation give the feds absolute power, but people claiming to be "conservatives" seem to embrace it when they want government to control something they don't like.

You're missing the point on an amendment. Art. 1 Sec. 8, limited the government's actions on collection of taxes (Clause 1). The 16th Amendment changed that restriction. In order to presever the document, ammendment to the Constitution do not go back and strike or insert words in the original text. When there is a conflict, the most recent Amendment wins. Looks at 18 and 21, or any of the voting rigths and elections issues.

Sorry guys, the income tax is legit., and the IRS has a training manual for it's agents that spells out the legal basis for the manditory payment/collection of taxes. They don't audit everyone every year and they don't send you a letter telling you how much you owe, hence the voluntary compliance wording. You still have to pay.

The jury decided that the government hadn't proven this woman's guilt beyond a resonable doubt. Criminal evasion of taxes has to be willfull (a simple mathmatical error on you 1040 won't land you in you in jail, assuming you pay what you owe when they correct it). The fact that they didn't answer her letters may have saved her from jail. She still owes the taxes.