At 08:21 PM 3/9/97 -0500, Mark M. wrote:

http://www.iac.net/~solution/notax/ actually says that the tax law excludes U.S. citizens who do not live in Washington D.C. or are not federal employees.

Yes, the web page says that, but it is incorrect.

I'm not about to read all 7,000 pages of the tax code to see if they are correct, but the definitions section of the code do indicate that their interpretation is correct.

It's not even necessary to look at the tax code (which is not 7,000 pages long, although it is complex) to see that their argument is wrong. Their argument is that 26 USC 7701(a)(9) defines "United States" to mean "States" and "the District of Columbia", and that 26 USC 7701(a)(10) defines "States" as "District of Columbia". Leaving aside their (incorrect) interpretation of "includes" as "is", their interpretation of 7701(a)(10) suggests that 7701(a)(9) really says "United States" means "District of Columbia and District of Columbia" which makes no sense at all. "States" cannot mean "District of Columbia" if, in the same subsection, another definition uses the phrase "the States and the District of Columbia". Clearly Congress did not intend "States" to mean "District of Columbia". (The web page points out this flaw in their construction of the statute but apparently fails to understand that it's fatal to their interpretation. Bzzt.) Their other arguments are similarly absurd. Their interpretation of the Supreme Court case they cite is ridiculous. The decision is on the web at <http://www.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=324&invol=652>, (paper cite is 324 US 652); given the discrepancy between their version and the actual text I can see why they haven't bothered to provide a cite. The real heart of their screwed-up-ness is that they interpret "includes" to mean "is", so that they think "employee includes government employees" reads "employee is government employees" and "states includes the District of Columbia" reads "states is the District of Columbia". That interpretation is wrong, and all of their arguments that rest upon it are fatally flawed. For example, according to Black's Law Dictionary (which isn't the law anywhere, but isn't an awful place to look for the definition of a word, other resources being unavailable), says that "include" .. "may, according to context, express an enlargement and have the meaning of *and* or *in addition to*, or merely specify a particular thing already included within general words theretofore used. 'Including' within statute is interpreted as a word of enlargement or of illustrative application as well as a word of limitation. Premier Products Co. v. Cameron, 240 Or 123, 400 P2d 227, 228." (emphasized words were italicized in original)

I suppose using this information as a defense might work, but one would probably have to sue the IRS to get all forfeited property returned for failure to pay income tax.

From time to time tax protestors and people with weird interpretations of the tax code manage to convince juries that they believed that their failure to pay tax was lawful, and hence they didn't have the required criminal intent to be guilty of criminal evasion/failure to file. But more frequently, juries (who pay income tax, too) aren't especially sympathetic to that story and send the goofballs to jail. (Misinterpretation of the tax code might - might - keep you out of jail. But it won't get your house back, or put the $ back in your bank account.)

The people who publish this crap ought to be ashamed of themselves. As it happens, they usually don't follow their own advice, *go ahead and pay their taxes*, and get rich while their gullible customers get themselves in a lot of trouble. -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles@netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |