by Jacob G. Hornberger

While Americans are celebrating pre-revolutionary efforts by the English colonists to avoid taxes imposed by their government (e.g., the Sugar Act, Stamp Acts, Townshend Acts, and Tea Act), the IRS is celebrating a federal court victory forcing a Swiss bank, UBS, to disclose the identities of U.S. customers who may have used secret accounts at the bank to avoid taxes. It’s a classic case of where one bad intervention — income taxation — inevitably leads to another bad intervention — invasion of financial privacy.

Historically, the Swiss have taken the right position with respect to financial privacy — fiercely protecting the identity and financial information of their bank customers, including from government officials. Unfortunately, the Swiss position on financial privacy is contrary to the position taken by the U.S. government, which is why the U.S. feds are now attacking UBS.

Over the years U.S. bankers have succumbed to the control of the federal authorities, especially with respect to the “war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism.” There is hardly a banker in the country that doesn’t quiver and quake at the thought that a bank examiner or IRS agent is paying a visit to his bank. Even worse, bankers have effectively been converted into spies and informants of the government, required by law to report any “suspicious” financial transaction to the feds.

For their part, the American people have become as sheep-like with respect to financial privacy as they have with civil liberties in general. The fact that their personal financial information must be reported to the government is considered “the price to be paid for living in a free society.”

Of course, never mind that those English colonists in 1776 were rebelling against these sorts of things in order to achieve a free society. After all, is it really just a coincidence that American lived without taxation on their income for more than 125 years?

People have the fundamental right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and decide what to do with it. How much they earn and what they do with it is none of the government’s business. A restoration of liberty to our land not only requires a repeal of all infringements on financial privacy, it also entails a repeal of the income tax, the drug war, and all other excuses for infringing the financial privacy of the people.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

breadcrumbs sent me this.

How to spend your IRS Rebate Check

      As you may have heard, the Bush Administration said each of us would get a rebate check to stimulate the economy.

      If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China. If we spend it on gasoline it will go to the Arabs, if we purchase a computer it will go to India, if we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, if we purchase a good car it will go to Japan, if we purchase useless stuff it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

      We need to keep that money here in America. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it at yard sales, since those are the only businesses still in the U.S.

IRS fixed the mix-up and we don't owe anything!  H&R Block didn't help at all and in fact they were rude, never got back to me, and we extremely worthless. 

DON"T BELIEVE THAT THEY WILL PROVIDE AUDIT SUPPORT. 

I was told that they would get back to me in four business days and that never happened.  When explaining my situation on the phone the lady would put me on hold and I could hear her laughing with other people in the background.  Whenever I asked her what I was holding for she would snap, "for me to process your request."  There was no conclusion, no help, no support, they did absolutly nothing for me.   

However, my old company knew what was wrong and sent me the information that I needed to fix it.  So after waiting a week for H&R Block the whole situation ended up taking two phone calls: one to my old company and one to the IRS and everything was cleared.  The IRS was much more helpfull than H&R Block (after you got through all of the automated messages in order to talk to a real person).  Good luck to you all with your last minute taxes! 

Gold and Silver Coins Used to Pay Wages


161 Federal Tax Charges, 0 Convictions

Around noon on Monday, September 17th, a Las Vegas federal jury returned its verdict refusing to convict nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with.  The charges included income tax evasion, willful failure to file and conspiracy to evade taxes.

The four-month trial centered around the family businesses of Robert Kahre who paid numerous workers for their labor with circulating gold and silver U.S. coins, and did not report the wages. The payments took place over several years, allegedly totaling at least $114 million dollars.
 
On September 20, 2007, three days after the federal trial's dramatic conclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal, reportedly under a degree of public pressure, ran its first (and last) story about the outcome of the trial. To this day, with exception of the single article by the Review Journal, no major media entity has published a news story regarding the outcome of this important federal criminal tax case.     

The censorship of this important news story is, unfortunately, not unexpected given the continuing, worldwide onslaught against the U.S. "dollar" -- specifically the Federal Reserve variety, and the ever growing numbers of Federal Reserve Notes required to trade for an actual ounce of silver, gold, oil, or for that matter, anything. 

In short, this failed prosecution has coalesced and exposed truths our Government desperately needs to hide from the People: the truth about our money, the truth about our (privately-owned) central bank, and the truth about the fraudulent nature of the operation and enforcement of the federal income tax system. 

Click here to read the April, 2005 DOJ press release announcing the prosecution.
Click here to read the 9/20 story by the Review Journal about the trial.   

According to defense attorney Joel Hansen, who represented co-defendant Alex Loglia, the primary "willfulness" defense was that the defendants believed they had no legal obligation to withhold, pay income taxes or report anything to the government because, in part, the nominal (i.e., face value) of the gold and silver coins is so small as to fall beneath the reporting thresholds set by the Internal Revenue Code.

The Defendants also argued that regardless of the valuation of the coins for internal revenue purposes, there is no law that requires average American workers to file or pay direct, un-apportioned taxes on the fruits of their labor.

The Government argued that the payments in solid gold and silver U.S. coins must be considered at their bullion (i.e., intrinsic full-market) value when considering the worth of the wages for purposes of the internal revenue code.

Attorney Hansen cited two Supreme Court cases bolstering Defendant's monetary argument at the heart of the defendants "willfulness" defense.

The essence of the argument is that under the Constitution Congress is obligated by law to mint and circulate such coins as demand requires, and must establish the value of coins as they are used as legal tender, but the coins' market value, arising as valuable personal "property," is a distinct, separate attribute of such coins, and is of no legal consequence if the coins are used as legal tender.

In other words, if a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable "income" (if any) can only be the face value indicated upon the coin money paid -- i.e., $1.00 for a circulating silver dollar or $50 for a circulating gold U.S. coin. Not surprisingly, the IRS has never issued any public guidance regarding this significant issue.

The first case, Ling Su Fan v. U.S., 218 US 302 (1910) establishes the legal distinction of a coin bearing the "impress" of the sovereign:

"These limitations are due to the fact that public law gives to such coinage a value which does not attach as a mere consequence of intrinsic value. Their quality as a legal tender is an attribute of law aside from their bullion value. They bear, therefore, the impress of sovereign power which fixes value and authorizes their use in exchange."  

The second case, Thompson v. Butler, 95 US 694 (1877), establishes that the law makes no legal distinction between the values of coin and paper money used as legal tender: 

"A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value any more than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, that is to say, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them."

Defense attorney Hansen confirmed that members of the jury were able to actually hold and inspect the gold and silver U.S. coins paid to the workers.

After almost four months of testimony and three and a half days of deliberation, the jury did not convict any of the defendants of any of the 161 crimes alleged.  Although some defendants were acquitted of multiple counts, and several were acquitted completely, others may have to stand for a retrial if the Government brings charges a second time.

The Review Journal reported the jury foreman claimed DOJ prosecutors admitted they were "shocked" by the outcome.  

In March 2007, the primary defendant, Bob Kahre, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutor and IRS agents who had conducted what he alleges to be an unlawful search and seizure raid. In 2005, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to overturn a previous District Court ruling holding that the federal prosecutor is not entitled to absolute immunity for the unlawful raid. Read more.

Click here to execute a Google News search to attempt to locate recent news stories about the Kahre tax trial. 

The media suppression of this story is similar to the widespread mainstream media suppression of the July 11, 2007 acquittal of Louisiana attorney Tommy Cryer who was also charged with multiple federal income tax crimes and relied upon numerous Supreme Court precedents and U.S. tax laws to establish his "willfulness" defense. Click here for a previous WTP update containing a link to Cryer's 100-page Motion to Dismiss which details his legal arguments. 

Click here to execute a Google News archive search to attempt to locate news stories about Tommy Cryer's tax trial.