Is it true that paying personal income tax is completely voluntary?

Question

I've read articles that the personal income tax is completely unconstitutional, the 16hth amendment was never ratified, and that some people actually got away with not filing personal income tax in state supreme courts of law, based on these and other facts, not known to the general public.

Also, income tax paid goes directly to pay off the automatic debt incurred from printing every dollar in the United States. This is because the Federal Reserve Bank is a private enterprise, and it charges interest to the goverment of the United States for every dollar it prints out.

Is this true?

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56855

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l5Of8M1MZJQ

Joe Banister, a former IRS special agent who also beat the IRS on many levels.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44956

Answer 1

1. The income tax is constitutional.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes,..."
16th amendment states, "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

2. The 16th amendment was ratified and has been upheld in court many times. The following court case probably says it best. U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986) "Although Thomas urges us to take the view of several state courts that only agreement on the literal text may make a legal document effective, the Supreme Court follows the “enrolled bill rule.” If a legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the appropriate officials, the court treats that document as properly adopted. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 36 L.Ed. 294, 12 S.Ct. 495 (1892). The principle is equally applicable to constitutional amendments. See Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 66 L.Ed. 505, 42 S.Ct. 217 (1922), which treats as conclusive the declaration of the Secretary of State that the nineteenth amendment had been adopted. In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6 (7th Cir. 1986), we relied on Leser, as well as the inconsequential nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to Thomas’. See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385, 59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary’ decision is not transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox’ decision is now beyond review."

3. Federal income tax cases (civil or criminal) are never tried in state courts. They are always tried in federal district courts or tax court. There have been a few people who have beaten criminal charges of willful failure to file or similar. However, NO ONE has ever proven that they didn't need to pay an income tax. As an example, Vernice Kuglin was acquitted of tax evasion and willful failure to file charges, however, she ended up paying about $520,000 on the $960,000 in income she had originally not paid taxes on. The amount of taxes she would have paid was probably close to $250,000. So, in the end, she paid close to twice as much.

4. The income tax does not go directly to pay interest on the debt or to some mystical interest on Federal Reserve notes. That is conspiracy theory nonsense. First, in 2006, the IRS collected $1.04 trillion in individual income taxes. The government paid $405 billion in interest on all of the debt. However, the Federal Reserve only has about $800 billion of the debt. The government paid $36.5 billion in interest to the Federal Reserve. A fact the conspiracy theorists ignore is the Federal Reserve is REQUIRED BY LAW to return excess income to the U.S. Treasury. In 2006, the Federal Reserve paid $29.1 billion to the U.S. Treasury. This can be seen on the INDEPENDENTLY AUDITED financial statements of the Federal Reserve.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?DocID=203&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=21
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/annual06/pdf/audits.pdf
Page 21 has the audit report. Page 23 shows the $36.5 billion the Federal Reserve collected on the $784 billion of U.S. debt that it holds. Farther down the page under "Distribution of net income", you can see the $29.05 billion payment to the U.S. Treasury.

5. The rest of your question about the Federal Reserve is also conspiracy theory nonsense, but I don't have enough space here to give a class on the Federal Reserve.

6. As to your original question, is the income tax voluntary? Here are a few court cases for you.
In United States v. Gerads, 999 F.2d 1255 (8th Cir. 1993), cert. den. 510 U.S. 1193 (1994), the court said, "Appellants’ claim that payment of federal income tax is voluntary clearly lacks substance."
In Schiff v. United States, 919 F.2d 830, 834 (2nd Cir. 1990), "The payment of income taxes is not optional ... and the average citizen knows that payment of income taxes is legally required."
In Harris v. Irene Kinahan, et al., 87 AFTR2d Par. 2001-984, No. 00-5258 (3rd Cir. 18 May 2001), "His [Harris’s] claims that the payment of federal income taxes is voluntary, and that the IRS fraudulently induced him to pay his taxes by withholding that fact, are clearly without merit."

If you are interested, many tax protester arguments are refuted at http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html

Little78, you are misrepresenting why some people have been acquitted of criminal charges. It is not because the IRS couldn't prove there is a law, it is because the government has to prove "WILLFULNESS". Many criminal charges are "Willful failure to file" and "Willful tax evasion". The burden is on the prosecution to prove the defendant willfully broke the law. If the defendant's claim that they truly believed they didn't owe a tax or didn't need to file, and the prosecution can't prove otherwise, they might get acquitted. BTW, this is called the Cheek defense for the first person to successfully try it. However, as mentioned in one of the links you provided (if only you had read that far), "Not Guilty" doesn't mean "not taxable". Also, you said, "there's enough to fill pages of people who used that arguement[sic] and won". I guarantee that there are five times as many people who have used that argument and lost.

EDIT: You can add another tax protester, Sherry Peel Jackson to the convicted list. Her criminal trial on "willful failure to file" charges started on Oct. 29th and she was found guilty on Oct. 30th. Sentencing will be sometime in early 2008 and she most likely will be facing prison time.

Answer 2

No matter whether you decide to file returns or not the government can disagree with your choice of strategy.

The vast majority of people who are harassed by the IRS are those who have attempted to comply but get audited. One of the particularly obnoxious practices of the IRS is that they randomly choose people for their most excruciatingly detailed audits as a way to give their computers better statistical analysis data. The victims of this practice are not suspected of any wrong doing at all.

If you choose not to file then there are two crimes that they can charge you with "Failure to file" and "Failure to pay." Of course, if they can't prove you were required to file then they can't prove you were required to pay.

The gamble is whether the system will challenge you and what can you do to minimize the impact. Are you going to be able to convincingly argue for your position (or afford lawyers and accountants to argue for you)? If you come off sounding like either like an ignorant fool or a paranoid conspiracy theorist then your odds seem pretty slim. On the other hand if you can make some solid arguments and work the system, then your odds seem better. The gamble is the same whether you file returns or not.

The link below is to a blog that lays out the case against liability to income taxes from publicly available resources. That means you can verify every single claim yourself. There are also resource links to various sides of the issue, war tax protesters, patriotic paranoids, and critics of the patriots.

There is an interesting section about a pamphlet that the IRS put out countering some of the arguments you mentioned. The weird thing is that they stated an absolutely absurd argument about the imposition of income taxes that has not apparently been made by anyone, but they do not address the liability issue. This sort of goofy stuff from the IRS is great fodder for the paranoid conspiracy folks.

In any case you have to make a choice and you are responsible for investigating your legal obligations, so be careful.

Answer 3

Someone lied to you. As the guy above said, ask Willie Nelson, or that fat Survivor guy, or Wesley Snipes. You fail to pay your income tax..you go to jail.

The federal tax laws are contained in the Internal Revenue Code, also known as Title 26 of the United States Code, which is the compilation of laws passed by the Congress (“Title” basically means “Volume” when applied to the U.S. Code as a whole, so Title 26 is what might more casually be called Volume 26).

The Internal Revenue Code is the law that requires people to pay taxes (and yes, the Internal Revenue Code is a law).

The most important statutory provision with regard to income taxes is section one of the tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 1. This is the section that actually imposes the income tax. It’s very simply written. You fail to pay...you go to jail or get your wages garnished (with interest).

Answer 4

In 2001 I lived I New Hampshire for most of the year (there is no state income tax in NH) I moved back to Maine with only three months left in the year and earned like maybe $200.00. I did not file my income tax for Maine because I was getting back $20.00!!! Yes, I said $20.00. Last year, I got a notice that I did not file a return in 2001 and I needed to file or pay penalties. So I filed the return and then I got a notice saying that I wouldnt get the $20.00 because it was so minimal. WTF!!!! Why did I need to bother?

Answer 5

Yes but if you don't pay taxes you will go to jail (Only of course if you live/visit the USA or any country that has treaties with the USA) (Unless of course you made no $$ then you don;'t have to file)

Answer 6

Yeah, it's voluntary... until you stop paying it. Then the government gets to use coersion to get you back on track (prison, property siezure etc.). NOTE: There are people who say it is'nt legal to charge you income tax on personal labor.
WRONG! It was "legitimized by the Supreme Court" in 1909.
Anyhow...right or wrong, they carry the bigger stick. Just ask Irwin Schiff and his wife (GOD bless their souls)

Answer 7

Another unknown fact, about the IRS; it has NEVER applied for a business license. The IRS is a business and NOT connected to any of our federal or state departments.

Answer 8

No one has ever produced a single documented court case where the court bought that line of argument.

If you can cite a case where that happened, let me know.

Answer 9

here you go citicop

http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20030815.htm

http://www.lvrj.com/news/9893062.html

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/07/lawyertax-prote.html

and there's enough to fill pages of people who used that arguement and won because for some reason the irs couldn't prove that there is a law REQUIRING us to pay Federal income taxes

Answer 10

There is no amendment in the constitution that says we "have to" -- however our corrupt government will come after you if you don't pay it, so you will end up spending just as much in court to fight it, so you might as well just pay it to avoid all the hassle. But there's ways around paying as much if you're clever.