Posted on 04/30/2004 7:39:02 PM PDT by Central Scrutiniser
Defiant tax protester gets seven-year sentence
By Toni Heinzl
FORT WORTH - He calls himself a "Christian patriot" and a "political prisoner."
Convicted in January on 29 counts of violating U.S. income tax laws, Bedford businessman Richard Simkanin remained defiant in his anti-government stance at his sentencing Friday.
Simkanin, 59, told U.S. District Judge John McBryde that after spending thousands of hours studying federal tax laws, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, he concluded that he did not agree with the tax laws.
But McBryde had heard enough. Going beyond federal sentencing guidelines, McBryde sentenced Simkanin to seven years in prison and ordered him to pay $302,000 in restitution to the government.
In explaining the tough sentence, McBryde cited Simkanin's history of radical anti-government beliefs and his "contempt and disrespect" for the federal government and the federal courts.
"He and those who share his views have a cultlike belief that laws that are generally accepted by citizens of the United States are not applicable to them," McBryde said. "The defendant has entrenched himself in anti-government groups."
McBryde said Simkanin would continue to violate income tax laws. The judge recalled that Simkanin threatened to kill federal judges and that he surrendered his Texas driver's license but continued to drive with a home-made ID card.
On Jan. 7, a federal jury convicted Simkanin on 10 felony counts of failing to withhold about $139,000 in taxes from employees' wages at his company, Arrow Custom Plastics, and 15 felony counts of filing false tax refund claims for about $235,000.
He was also found guilty of four misdemeanor counts for failing to file individual income tax returns from 1998 to 2001. Simkanin had an estimated gross income of about $410,000 during these years, prosecutors said.
Arch McColl, the Dallas lawyer representing Simkanin, said he would appeal. McColl had asked for a sentence of 41 months at the low end of the federal guidelines. He described Simkanin as a non-conformist American in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau.
"He has a sincere, well thought-out position that is at odds with the government position," McColl said. "Reasonable people disagree about the tax laws. My client is an American citizen who, like Thoreau, walked to the beat of a different drummer."
But prosecutors pointed to Simkanin's long history of law-breaking, saying the last time he filed complete individual and corporate federal income tax returns dates back to the mid-1990s.
"We're going to have chaos in this country if individual citizens are allowed to decide unilaterally which laws are constitutional and which aren't," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jarvis said. "The sentence for Mr. Simkanin was quite severe and appropriate."
Jarvis noted that Simkanin's defiance of the federal courts continued even after his conviction in January.
In a court judgment entered March 11, Simkanin and Arrow Custom Plastics' new owner, James Keffer, to whom he sold the business Feb. 17, agreed to file employment tax returns for the years 2000 through 2003 within 30 days. The judgment was issued by McBryde in a civil action filed by tax attorneys for the Justice Department in December to force Simkanin to comply with tax laws.
But the requested tax documents were not filed by the deadline, government lawyers said in a motion on April 21, asking McBryde to hold Simkanin and Keffer in contempt.
Simkanin rose to fame in tax protester circles -- and gained the attention of the IRS -- in March 2001 when he appeared in a full-page ad in USA Today with a group of like-minded citizens who announced their opposition to the federal income taxes. Later that year, prosecutors sent Simkanin a target letter notifying him that he was under investigation.
The group behind the ad, We the People, soon portrayed Simkanin as a martyr for the cause of freedom from IRS tyranny.
While under investigation, Simkanin posted a warning on his Web site that spoke of the "fury of a fire" that would consume his adversaries. He wrote to the Treasury secretary that he had repatriated himself from the United States to the "Republic of Texas." He vowed to ignore the laws of the United States.
While tax protesters from the We the People group crowded McBryde's courtroom during the trial, hardly a handful of supporters showed up for his sentencing.
Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and a blue jacket, Simkanin invoked Scripture, James 5:4. In his view, the passage means that a laborer's wages are withheld through fraud.
His face showed an expression of defiance and sadness. He expressed no remorse for his actions but regretted the effect of his prison sentence on his severely ill wife, Carole.
"I do apologize to my wife for what she will go through in my absence," Simkanin said.
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papatom: Mr. Richard Simkanin has sacificed greatly to provide an opportunity for US ciizens to throw off the chains of Federal tyranny.
natewill: Am I the only one who has heard, seen, and participated in shoving it to the IRS?
Now that he has lost at the jury level, he has the opportunity to appeal and argue the law, in the courts that can actually void law for ambiguity or unconstitutionality, provided he can prove his case.
A win at the jury level does nothing to change law, otherwise the statutes against murder would be dead in California as a result of the O.J. trial.
Of course there is the little problem that the track record is against him in being successful. The courts have held repeatedly from the time of the very first national income taxes, it is up to Congress and the people of the United States to change the law.
It should be apparent that it is not for the courts to be legislating from the bench, we have too much of that sort of thing already.
Seems to me that perhaps people like Mr. Simkanin, are butting their heads against a brick wall to no effect, and missing the real target totally, Congress.
Flailing at the IRS, and committing legal hari-kari in the courts is merely the bull chancing the red cape and missing the matador.
Congress is where the responsibility lay for enacting the tax laws in the first place and under the Constitution only Congress holds the exclusive authority to modify or repeal laws enacted by that institution.
Is the Judge saying that tax law is based on the principle that "Acquiescence is acceptance"?
Is the Judge saying that tax law is based on the principle that "Acquiescence is acceptance"?
Something to think about:
| I discussed the importance of abolishing the income tax because of its tendency to form a habit of servility in the souls of a people that accepts it. Servility of soul is bad not only in itself, it is also an open door through which will soon walk the abuses of ambitious government power. Leaders who find themselves with governmental power over a servile people will be quick to conclude that such a people exist to serve them. |
I could go into lengthy discusions on why this is different but Instead I will Make my point thusly:
Do you need a professional to help you buy a loaf of bread?
Do you need a profesional to help you pay your gas bill?
Do you need a professional to help you buy gas for your car?
Do you need a professional to help you pay salse tax when you purchase something at a store?
The reason Government taxes it's citizens is to proivde money to run the government; ask yourself why it has to be so complicated.
Depends on the amount of money. If I were spending 20-30% of my annual income on loaves of bread I would consult a purchasing expert with experience in bread. Likewise the other things you mentioned, including sales tax. If I were spending 30% of my money on sales tax, I'd be using planners like crazy on large purchases to both avoid incurring the tax and to look at methods to lower the taxable consideration.
The reason experts are hired is simple cost vs. benefits.
If I were spending 30% of my money on sales tax, I'd be using planners like crazy on large purchases to both avoid incurring the tax and to look at methods to lower the taxable consideration.
What do you do now to avoid the 20-25% embedded taxation costs in the price of say a large ticket item like a car today? Thw way I see it, sometimes the cost of avoiding a tax is greater than any benefit one might derive from avoiding it.
An example under the NRST, one may buy a new car, and pay 23% of the total payment in taxes, one could avoid the NRST by
1) building one yourself for own use (not a very cost effective thing to do);
2) buying a used one;
4) not buying a new car and investing instead;
5) start a company building new cars, creating jobs and income for oneself so you can pay both the tax and the principle plus gain on the new business you own; or
5) buying a new one on the black market with attendant risks;
All the tax planning it the world in a broad based efficient retail tax does not necessarily achieve an end result of a longterm gain without high risk. Any large potential gains will be arbitraged to nil, by the consumption markets involved, just as they are today.
The complexity of the income tax on the otherhand has created a system that rewards avoidance behavior through its specialized systems of deductions credits and depreciations that define what is left to be taxed. Tax planning can work there for a price, because the rules can actually decrease the basis of the tax. Not so easily done on retail products for personal use.
Experts will be available to provide methods to reduce both the existance of a taxable transfer or at least lower the taxable amounts.
FWIW, if investing is exempt from the tax then there are huge loopholes.
You thinking inside the income tax box again. Income feeds investment and consumption. However it is consumption that all dollars must pass through to keep the economic engine running in that big financial/production loop.
- It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.
Invest all you will, you cannot eat investment, sleep on it, keep the rain off your head ... Investment provides the capital that creates all the things the foregoing require and are obtained through consumption spending.
The NRST is a consumption tax, investing is not taxed and not supposed to be under a consumption tax. Investing increases the means of production and productivity fostering economic growth.
That is the whole idea, as soon as you start taxing the production side of the ledger you are right back with hidden and counter productive taxes.
Not taxing investment is not a "loophole" it is simply not in the tax base to begin with.
Investment feeds the infrastructure of production which feeds into retail sales which spins the economic wheel.
Meanwhile, all the investment in the world does not benefit you until you take a gain or receive a return for your personal consumption spending. Consumption, which is taxed.
Experts will be available to provide methods to reduce both the existance of a taxable transfer or at least lower the taxable amounts.
Experts to inform you of the best way to invest as opposed to consume, certainly. That is what they should be doing. Just under the NRST there are few tax issues to effect the choices made as regards investments, just financial and business considerations.
One of the basic tenants and anticipated advantages of a tax on consumption comes from supplyside economics. Investment provides the environment that fosters increasing productivity and thereby contributes to economic growth from which revenue for government is more easily extracted.
Under any tax system the individual tax rate can be minimized, that does not necessarily mean less available revenue for the legitimate purposes of government from the economy as a whole. For out of economic growth there is more wealth generated in the economy raising standard of living as well as funding the necessary expenditures of government.
Your beef is with Congress. And Congressmen.
Indeed. The bureaucrats do as they are told. If congress told them to lay off of the taxpayer they would do it.
It is congress that must be brought under control.
That needed to be said again. CINO thrive here on FR [Constitutionalists in Name Only] Welcome to the police state.
In explaining the tough sentence, McBryde cited Simkanin's history of radical anti-government beliefs and his "contempt and disrespect" for the federal government and the federal courts.
I guess a history of beliefs now qualifies as a hate crime!
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