irs getting shotguns

[ocsdor]

I have a legal way of not paying income tax. I don't work. Ha. Ha. I haven't had a job since 2003.

I hope to one day figure out how to get money from the government so I can sit back and laugh at all the people who do work and give their wages to the government to give to me. It's even better to get the money from people who come on here and defend the income tax. Now, get to work slaves.

 

[JetGirl]

And I completely agree. However, let me show you most people's stance on here about this subject....

https://www.indianagunowners.com/fo...sion/72473-opting_out_of_ss-3.html#post826354

Whew! Good thing I'm not "most people"!

 

[SavageEagle]

Whew! Good thing I'm not "most people"!

Me neither. And apparently telling people to stop paying Income Tax/SS en masse is bad and can get you arrested.

 

[dross]

How do you resolve your opinion with the courts that have ruled against your interpretation? Don't get me wrong, I disagree with court rulings all the time, but if they have consistently ruled the 16th Amendment was properly ratified, where do you go from there? Putting aside that the 16th Amendment didn't give Congress the power to tax, they already had that, it just gave them more flexibility as to how to tax.

Again, I'll use another example. I think the southern states had every right under the Constitution to secede. The courts don't agree. Is that an argument worth pursuing?

I think you'd have a much better argument challenging the constitutionality of how the money is spent.

 

[SavageEagle]

How do you resolve your opinion with the courts that have ruled against your interpretation?

How do you resolve issues with government that are illegal and unConstitutional when all three branches uphold that illegal and unConstitutional law?

 

[jedi]

How do you resolve issues with government that are illegal and unConstitutional when all three branches uphold that illegal and unConstitutional law?

By

&

if someone actually writes what I

.

 

[CarmelHP]

The text you've quoted comes from the 16th Amendment ("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.") which was never properly ratified (as discovered in 1984)...thus = the law that never was.

Crazy tax Protestor Argument #2:

"The Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified."​

The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides:​

U.S. Constitution, amendment XVI ​

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.
The original Constitution required direct taxes to be apportioned among the states in accordance with population. An income tax is not so apportioned, so the amendment was needed to authorize such parts of the income tax as would constitute "direct" taxes.
Some tax protestors claim that this amendment is not really part of the Constitution -- it was never ratified! Therefore, they say, the income tax is unconstitutional. This argument was popularized by Bill Benson in a book called "The Law That Never Was."
Surprisingly enough, this argument has a little something to it. When the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified by state legislatures in the early twentieth century, the versions that some states voted on contained minor textual errors. Some of them neglected to capitalize the word "States," one had "income" in place of "incomes," one said "remuneration" instead of "enumeration," one said "levy" instead of "lay," and so on.
If the states didn't all vote on the same, identical text for the Sixteenth Amendment, can the amendment really be considered ratified? When Congress makes a law, the House and the Senate must vote on the same text. Similarly, if the states didn't vote on the right text, one could argue that they didn't ratify the amendment. No Sixteenth Amendment, no income tax.
However, it seems that the amendment really was ratified. The alleged defects in the ratification process were considered at the time of ratification in 1913. The Solicitor of the Department of State convincingly explained why the minor textual variations in the versions the states voted on should be disregarded.
First, it seems that the state legislatures intended to ratify the amendment as proposed by Congress. They understood themselves to be voting to approve the proposed Sixteenth Amendment. The text set forth in their instruments of ratification was for recitation purposes only. The errors in the text were not proposals to change the text being ratified; they were just inadvertent errors that do not detract from the intention of the state legislatures to ratify the amendment as proposed.
Benson denies this. He claims that states deliberately altered the text of the proposed amendment. But the evidence just isn't there. In one of his court filings, Benson singles out Oklahoma as a particularly clear case. He says the facts "unequivocally show that Oklahoma intentionally amended what the United States Congress had proposed" (see page 2 of Benson's filing). But looking at Benson's own book (pp. 61-67), one can see that the Oklahoma legislature adopted what it called "A resolution ratifying an amendment proposed by the sixty-first Congress of the United States" (emphasis added). This resolution then begins its ratification by reciting that "Whereas . . . Congress . . . on Monday the fifteenth day of March, one thousand nine hundred and nine, by joint resolution proposed an amendment to the constitution of the United States, in words and figures as follows:" Then, it's true, the resolution misstates the text of the amendment (and pretty badly too). But it sure looks as though the Oklahoma legislators thought they were ratifying the amendment that Congress had proposed on the specified date and just misstated it. So even in a case that Benson himself singles out, it seems quite clear that the state legislature thought it was ratifying the Sixteenth Amendment, not proposing to change it.
Indeed, the states, when voting on a constitutional amendment, have no power to make changes to the amendment's text. They can only vote yes or no on the text that Congress has proposed to them. The stituation is not comparable to the passage of a bill through Congress, where either house can make amendments. Therefore, as the Solicitor of State noted, it "seems a necessary presumption, in the absence of an express stipulation to the contrary, that a legislature did not intend to do something that it had not the power to do, but rather that it intended to do something that it had the power to do, namely, where its action has been affirmative, to ratify the amendment proposed by Congress."
Moreover, as the Solicitor noted, similar textual problems had occurred in the state ratifications of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and those amendments had long been regarded as ratified. The applicable precedents, therefore, suggest that, where a state legislature votes to ratify a proposed amendment to the Constitution, minor textual errors in the recitation of the amendment in the state's instrument of ratification are to be disregarded.
Thus, it seems that the amendment really was ratified.
In addition, there is a strong argument that the declaration of the effectiveness of the amendment, made by Secretary of State Phliander Knox in 1913, must be considered definitive. The Secretary of State was at that time the government official charged with determining whether an amendment to the Constitution has been ratified (today it's the Archivist of the United States). The courts, although regarding themselves as empowered to determine the meaning of the Constitution and the laws, generally regard themselves as not competent to say what the definitive text of the Constitution and the laws is. When the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate certify that Congress has enacted a certain bill text into law, the courts will not question whether that really happened: they will not inquire into whether the House and the Senate really voted on the proper text. This is known as the "enrolled bill rule." Similarly, the Supreme Court has held that when the Secretary of State certifies that an amendment to the Constitution has been ratified, no court is empowered to look behind that claim to determine whether it was really ratified. E.g., Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922). So whatever might have been the problem with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Secretary of State considered it and decided that the amendment really was ratified, and that's it.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Sixteenth Amendment has been around for nearly 100 years now and has been considered and applied by courts, including the Supreme Court, in innumerable cases. As one court put it, "While this alone is not sufficient to bar judicial inquiry, it is very persuasive on the question of validity." It would take an extraordinarily strong argument to show that everyone has been wrong all this time, and the argument from minor textual problems in the ratification instruments just isn't strong enough.
For all these reasons, it seems clear that the Sixteenth Amendment really is part of the Constitution.
Certainly that has been the uniform holding of the courts in cases in which this argument has been raised. For some representative cases, see United States v. Benson, 941 F.2d 598 (7th Cir. 1991) (rejecting these arguments in a criminal case brought against the author of the "Law that Never Was" book); United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d 457 (7th Cir. 1986); Cook v. Spillman, 806 F.2d 948 (9th Cir. 1986) (calling the argument that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified "frivolous" and imposing sanctions of $1,500 on the party making it); United States v. House, 617 F.Supp. 237, 238-39 (W.D. Mich.1985).
So while this argument is not as utterly absurd as most tax protestor arguments, one can be confident that it would not succeed in any actual court proceeding.
​

AND, FURTHER

Although the Constitution describes how to ratify amendments, it doesn’t say who is supposed to keep track of the ratification process and let us know when the required three-fourths of the states have ratified an amendment. After some confusion about the status of some amendments (including the infamous “Titles of Nobility” amendment that fell at least one state short of ratification, but appeared in numerous copies of the Constitution in the early and middle 1800s), Congress decided that the Secretary of State should certify what amendments have been ratified. Congress proposed the 16th Amendment on July 12, 1909, and, on February 3, 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox certified that it had been ratified.
According to the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U. S. House of Representatives, the dates of ratification by the states were (chronologically): Alabama, August 10, 1909; Kentucky, February 8, 1910; South Carolina, February 19, 1910; Illinois, March 1, 1910; Mississippi, March 7, 1910; Oklahoma, March 10, 1910; Maryland, April 8, 1910; Georgia, August 3, 1910; Texas, August 16, 1910; Ohio, January 19, 1911; Idaho, January 20, 1911; Oregon, January 23, 1911; Washington, January 26, 1911; Montana, January 30, 1911; Indiana, January 30, 1911; California, January 31, 1911; Nevada, January 31, 1911; South Dakota, February 3, 1911; Nebraska, February 9, 1911; North Carolina, February 11, 1911; Colorado, February 15, 1911; North Dakota, February 17, 1911; Kansas, February 18, 1911; Michigan, February 23, 1911; Iowa, February 24, 1911; Missouri, March 16, 1911; Maine, March 31, 1911; Tennessee, April 7, 1911; Arkansas, April 22, 1911 (after having rejected it earlier); Wisconsin, May 26, 1911; New York, July 12, 1911; Arizona, April 6, 1912; Minnesota, June 11, 1912; Louisiana, June 28, 1912; West Virginia, January 31, 1913; New Mexico, February 3, 1913. The amendment was subsequently ratified by Massachusetts, March 4, 1913; New Hampshire, March 7, 1913 (after having rejected it on March 2, 1911). The amendment was rejected (and not subsequently ratified) by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah.
The argument that the 16th Amendment was not ratified is best explained (and refuted) by this quotation from U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986):

“Thomas is a tax protester, and one of his arguments is that he did not need to file tax returns because the sixteenth amendment is not part of the constitution. It was not properly ratified, Thomas insists, repeating the argument of W. Benson & M. Beckman, The Law That Never Was (1985). Benson and Beckman review the documents concerning the states’ ratification of the sixteenth amendment and conclude that only four states ratified the sixteenth amendment; they insist that the official promulgation of that amendment by Secretary of State Knox in 1913 is therefore void.

“Benson and Beckman did not discover anything; they rediscovered something that Secretary Knox considered in 1913. Thirty-eight states ratified the sixteenth amendment, and thirty-seven sent formal instruments of ratification to the Secretary of State. (Minnesota notified the Secretary orally, and additional states ratified later; we consider only those Secretary Knox considered.) Only four instruments repeat the language of the sixteenth amendment exactly as Congress approved it. The others contain errors of diction, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. The text Congress transmitted to the states was: “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.” Many of the instruments neglected to capitalize “States,” and some capitalized other words instead. The instrument from Illinois had “remuneration” in place of “enumeration”; the instrument from Missouri substituted “levy” for “lay”; the instrument from Washington had “income” not “incomes”; others made similar blunders.

“Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and--taking into account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial problems--advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.

“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.”​

U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986).
It has also been claimed that the votes of Georgia legislature were recorded incorrectly and that Georgia actually rejected the amendment, contrary to Knox’ report. However, no Congressman or other official from Georgia has ever complained about the “error” and, even if there was an error and Georgia did not ratify the amendment, there would still have been thirty-seven ratifications, one more than the thirty-six required. (Article V of the Constitution requires that amendments to the Constitution be approved by the legislatures of three fourths of the states, and there were forty-eight states in 1913.)
Another claim is that the ratification of the 16th Amendment by several states was invalid because the constitutions of those states prohibited an income tax. A similar argument as to the 19th Amendment has been flatly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with a different constitutional amendment:

“The second contention is that in the Constitutions of several of the 36 states named in the proclamation of the Secretary of State there are provisions which render inoperative the alleged ratifications by their Legislatures. The argument is that by reason of these specific provisions the Legislatures were without power to ratify. But the function of a state Legislature in ratifying a proposed amendment to the federal Constitution, like the function of Congress in proposing the amendment, is a federal function derived from the federal Constitution; and it transcends any limitations sought to be imposed by the people of a state.”​

Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 136-137 (1922).
These technical arguments against the ratification of the 16th Amendment are troubling because they are so undemocratic (as are many other tax protester arguments). Except for a couple of claims about the votes of two states, there is really no doubt that Congress proposed an amendment that would give it the power to tax incomes, and that three fourths of the states approved the amendment. But tax protesters would like for the courts to nullify the amendment, and so nullify the power of Congress and the states to amend the Constitution, and so deny to the people the power to govern themselves, because of typographical errors.
But can courts even consider attacks on the validity of constitutional amendments? As noted by the 7th Circuit in Thomas, the argument that the 16th Amendment is invalid is not only legally and factually wrong, but it is an argument that federal courts are unable (or at least reluctant) to consider. The federal courts have always recognized limits upon their powers, and one of those limits is that the courts should not get involved in issues that the Constitution has entrusted to other branches of the government. The Constitution says that Congress may propose amendments, and the states may ratify them. Whether an amendment has been properly ratified is considered to be a “political question” to be resolved by Congress and the states, and not in court. In a challenge to the validity of the 19th Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled that official notices of the state legislatures to the Secretary of State were “binding upon him, and, being certified by his proclamation, is conclusive upon the courts.” Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 137 (1922).
Other decisions confirming (or refusing to consider) the validity of the 16th Amendment:

“Despite plaintiff’ and numerous other tax protesters’ contention that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified, courts have long recognized the Sixteenth Amendment’ ratification and validity.”​

Betz v. United States, 40 Fed.Cl. 286, 295 (1998).

“As the cited cases, as well as many others, have made abundantly clear, the following arguments alluded to by the Lonsdales are completely lacking in legal merit and patently frivolous: .. .. (4) the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution is either invalid or applies only to corporations . . . .”​

Lonsdale v. United States, 919 F.2d 1440, 1448 (10th Cir. 1990).
See also, United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d 457 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 273; Pollard v. Commissioner, 816 F.2d 603 (11th Cir. 1987); United States v. Benson, 941 F.2d 598 (7th Cir. 1991); Sochia v. Commissioner, 23 F.3d 941 (5th Cir. 1994), reh. den. 1994 U.S. App. LEXIS 22014; United States v. Stahl, 792 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 888; United State v. Sitka, 845 F.2d 43 (2nd Cir. 1988); Miller v. United States, 868 F.2d 236, 239-41 (7th Cir. 1989); Biermann v. Commissioner, 769 F.2d 707 (11th Cir. 1985); United States v. Buckner, 830 F.2d 102 (1987); United States v. Dube, 820 F.2d 886, 891 (7th Cir. 1986); Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68, 70-71 (7th Cir. 1986); United States v. Moore, 627 F.2d 830, 833 (7th Cir. 1980); Knoblauch v. Commissioner, 749 F.2d 200, 201 (1984) (“Every court that has considered this argument has rejected it.”), cert. den. 474 U.S. 830 (1985); United States v. Matheson, (9th Cir. 1986); Lysiak v. Commissioner, 816 F.2d 311, 312 (7th Cir. 1987); Quijano v. United States, 93 F.3d 26, 30 (1st Cir. 1996); United States v. Mundt, 29 F.3d 233, 237 (6th Cir. 1994).
In Rev. Rul. 2005-19, 2005-14 I.R.B. 819, the IRS confirmed that the argument that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified is “frivolous” and reliance on it can result in civil and criminal penalties.
The claim that “[t]he Sixteenth Amendment was not ratified, has no effect, contradicts the Constitution as originally ratified, lacks an enabling clause, or does not authorize a non-apportioned, direct income tax” has been identified by the IRS as a “frivolous position” that can result in a penalty of $5,000 when asserted in a tax return or included in certain collection-related submissions. Notice 2007-30, 2007-14 I.R.B. 883.
Tax Protester “Evidence”

A related (and even sillier) claim made by tax protesters is that the ratification of the 16th Amendment by Ohio was invalid because Ohio did not become a state until 1953(!). This strange claim is based on a strange action that Congress took in 1953 to confirm that Ohio was indeed a state. Briefly:

1. By an act of April 30, 1802 (2 Stat. 173), section 1, Congress provided that “the inhabitants of the eastern division of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, be, and they are hereby authorized to form for themselves a constitution and state government, and to assume such name as they shall deem proper, and the said state, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union, upon the same footing with the original states, in all respects whatsoever.” (This was consistent with the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, which provided that there should be formed from the territory at least three but not more than five states.)
2. A convention met in Ohio on November 1, 1802, and adopted a constitution on November 29, 1802.
3. On January 19, 1803, a special committee of Congress reported that “the said Constitution and government so formed is republican, and in conformity to the principles contained in the articles of the ordinance made on the 13th day of July 1787, for the Government of the said Territory: and that it is now necessary to establish a district court within the said State, to carry into complete effect the laws of the United States within the same.” Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 2d sess., p. 21.
4. Congress then enacted legislation to declare that all of the laws of the United States shall be in force within the state of Ohio and to establish a federal district court in Ohio, stating in the preamble that “the said state has become one of the United States of America.” Act of February 19, 1803 (2 Stat. 201).
5. Ohio began sending Representatives and Senators to Congress, began voting in Presidential elections, and has been considered to be a state ever since.

So what’ the problem? When Ohio was preparing for the 150th anniversary of its statehood, researchers discovered that they couldn’t establish the exact date that Ohio became a state, and that there was some confusion on the issue. For example, the Senate Manual (S. Doc. 5, 82d Cong., p. 570) gave the date as March 3, 1803, while the Congressional Biographical Directory (H. Doc. 607, 81st Cong., p. 76, note 9) gave the date as November 29, 1802. Further research showed that Ohio was unique because Congress declared that Ohio would become a state upon fulfilling certain conditions but had never formally declared that the conditions had been met. In admitting other states, Congress either declared that the state would be admitted as of a certain date, or passed an enabling act and then later declared that the state was admitted. In the case of Ohio, Congress passed an enabling act but never formally declared that the conditions of the enabling act had been met, either due to an oversight or due to a belief that a formal declaration was not intended and not needed.
In a 1953 report to Congress, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress stated that the lack of a formal resolution “may be considered unessential.” (1953 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2126, 2128.) However, Ohio asked for a formal declaration, sending a new petition for statehood to Washington by horseback (yes, in 1953), and Congress complied (with a certain number of snide jokes), passing a joint resolution that declared Ohio to be one of the United States of America as of March 1, 1803. P.L. 82-204, 67 Stat. 407. The Senate Report to the resolution states that the purpose was “to make formal, legal declaration of the de facto situation with respect to the admission of Ohio as a State of the United States.” Senate Report No. 720, 1953 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2124.
So the fact of the matter was that Ohio was accepted as a state of the United States sometime in 1802 or 1803 and Congress declared the admission to be as of a certain date in 1803, but the declaration was not made until 1953.
The argument that Ohio was not a state until 1953 was rejected in Knoblauch v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 749 F2d 200, 201-202 (5th Cir. 1984), cert. den., 474 U.S. 830 (1986), and in Bowman v. Government of the United States, 920 F.Supp. 623, 625 n. 4 (E.D. Pa. 1995).

 

[dross]

How do you resolve issues with government that are illegal and unConstitutional when all three branches uphold that illegal and unConstitutional law?

First, I think it's difficult to be so sure about a lot of these issues. The side that claims the 16th was ratified correctly isn't completely wacko. Personally, as much as I hate everything about the income tax, my best reading is that it was.

So here we have a couple of people (you and I) who generally agree on a lot of political issues who see it differently. You have legal scholars who see it differently. This tells me it's not a cut and dried issue, but one upon which reasonable people can disagree. The courts have consistently come down on the side of the 16th.

How do I resolve it? I assume the battle has been lost on that particular narrow part of this issue.

What won't work is if everyone who decides a particular law is unconstitutional decides not to follow the law. We must have a way to resolve these disputes, and that is in the courts. When we lose in the courts, we have to move on, or fight it again in the courts.

Ask yourself about all the people who argue the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee individual's the right to bear arms. Do we want individual states saying they won't follow the Court's ruling in Heller?

This is how our system is set up. We won't always agree with the courts' rulings.

 

[JetGirl]

Me neither. And apparently telling people to stop paying Income Tax/SS en masse is bad and can get you arrested.

Good thing I didn't tell people to stop then, eh?

How do you resolve your opinion with the courts that have ruled against your interpretation?

If it were proper law, there would be no cases of people abstaining and being found well within their rights to do so.

Crazy tax Protestor Argument #2:

"The Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified."​

The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides:​

U.S. Constitution, amendment XVI ​

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.
The original Constitution required direct taxes to be apportioned among the states in accordance with population. An income tax is not so apportioned, so the amendment was needed to authorize such parts of the income tax as would constitute "direct" taxes.
Some tax protestors claim that this amendment is not really part of the Constitution -- it was never ratified! Therefore, they say, the income tax is unconstitutional. This argument was popularized by Bill Benson in a book called "The Law That Never Was."
Surprisingly enough, this argument has a little something to it. When the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified by state legislatures in the early twentieth century, the versions that some states voted on contained minor textual errors. Some of them neglected to capitalize the word "States," one had "income" in place of "incomes," one said "remuneration" instead of "enumeration," one said "levy" instead of "lay," and so on.
If the states didn't all vote on the same, identical text for the Sixteenth Amendment, can the amendment really be considered ratified? When Congress makes a law, the House and the Senate must vote on the same text. Similarly, if the states didn't vote on the right text, one could argue that they didn't ratify the amendment. No Sixteenth Amendment, no income tax.
However, it seems that the amendment really was ratified. The alleged defects in the ratification process were considered at the time of ratification in 1913. The Solicitor of the Department of State convincingly explained why the minor textual variations in the versions the states voted on should be disregarded.
First, it seems that the state legislatures intended to ratify the amendment as proposed by Congress. They understood themselves to be voting to approve the proposed Sixteenth Amendment. The text set forth in their instruments of ratification was for recitation purposes only. The errors in the text were not proposals to change the text being ratified; they were just inadvertent errors that do not detract from the intention of the state legislatures to ratify the amendment as proposed.
Benson denies this. He claims that states deliberately altered the text of the proposed amendment. But the evidence just isn't there. In one of his court filings, Benson singles out Oklahoma as a particularly clear case. He says the facts "unequivocally show that Oklahoma intentionally amended what the United States Congress had proposed" (see page 2 of Benson's filing). But looking at Benson's own book (pp. 61-67), one can see that the Oklahoma legislature adopted what it called "A resolution ratifying an amendment proposed by the sixty-first Congress of the United States" (emphasis added). This resolution then begins its ratification by reciting that "Whereas . . . Congress . . . on Monday the fifteenth day of March, one thousand nine hundred and nine, by joint resolution proposed an amendment to the constitution of the United States, in words and figures as follows:" Then, it's true, the resolution misstates the text of the amendment (and pretty badly too). But it sure looks as though the Oklahoma legislators thought they were ratifying the amendment that Congress had proposed on the specified date and just misstated it. So even in a case that Benson himself singles out, it seems quite clear that the state legislature thought it was ratifying the Sixteenth Amendment, not proposing to change it.
Indeed, the states, when voting on a constitutional amendment, have no power to make changes to the amendment's text. They can only vote yes or no on the text that Congress has proposed to them. The stituation is not comparable to the passage of a bill through Congress, where either house can make amendments. Therefore, as the Solicitor of State noted, it "seems a necessary presumption, in the absence of an express stipulation to the contrary, that a legislature did not intend to do something that it had not the power to do, but rather that it intended to do something that it had the power to do, namely, where its action has been affirmative, to ratify the amendment proposed by Congress."
Moreover, as the Solicitor noted, similar textual problems had occurred in the state ratifications of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and those amendments had long been regarded as ratified. The applicable precedents, therefore, suggest that, where a state legislature votes to ratify a proposed amendment to the Constitution, minor textual errors in the recitation of the amendment in the state's instrument of ratification are to be disregarded.
Thus, it seems that the amendment really was ratified.
In addition, there is a strong argument that the declaration of the effectiveness of the amendment, made by Secretary of State Phliander Knox in 1913, must be considered definitive. The Secretary of State was at that time the government official charged with determining whether an amendment to the Constitution has been ratified (today it's the Archivist of the United States). The courts, although regarding themselves as empowered to determine the meaning of the Constitution and the laws, generally regard themselves as not competent to say what the definitive text of the Constitution and the laws is. When the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate certify that Congress has enacted a certain bill text into law, the courts will not question whether that really happened: they will not inquire into whether the House and the Senate really voted on the proper text. This is known as the "enrolled bill rule." Similarly, the Supreme Court has held that when the Secretary of State certifies that an amendment to the Constitution has been ratified, no court is empowered to look behind that claim to determine whether it was really ratified. E.g., Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922). So whatever might have been the problem with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Secretary of State considered it and decided that the amendment really was ratified, and that's it.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Sixteenth Amendment has been around for nearly 100 years now and has been considered and applied by courts, including the Supreme Court, in innumerable cases. As one court put it, "While this alone is not sufficient to bar judicial inquiry, it is very persuasive on the question of validity." It would take an extraordinarily strong argument to show that everyone has been wrong all this time, and the argument from minor textual problems in the ratification instruments just isn't strong enough.
For all these reasons, it seems clear that the Sixteenth Amendment really is part of the Constitution.
Certainly that has been the uniform holding of the courts in cases in which this argument has been raised. For some representative cases, see United States v. Benson, 941 F.2d 598 (7th Cir. 1991) (rejecting these arguments in a criminal case brought against the author of the "Law that Never Was" book); United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d 457 (7th Cir. 1986); Cook v. Spillman, 806 F.2d 948 (9th Cir. 1986) (calling the argument that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified "frivolous" and imposing sanctions of $1,500 on the party making it); United States v. House, 617 F.Supp. 237, 238-39 (W.D. Mich.1985).
So while this argument is not as utterly absurd as most tax protestor arguments, one can be confident that it would not succeed in any actual court proceeding.
​

AND, FURTHER

Although the Constitution describes how to ratify amendments, it doesn’t say who is supposed to keep track of the ratification process and let us know when the required three-fourths of the states have ratified an amendment. After some confusion about the status of some amendments (including the infamous “Titles of Nobility” amendment that fell at least one state short of ratification, but appeared in numerous copies of the Constitution in the early and middle 1800s), Congress decided that the Secretary of State should certify what amendments have been ratified. Congress proposed the 16th Amendment on July 12, 1909, and, on February 3, 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox certified that it had been ratified.
According to the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U. S. House of Representatives, the dates of ratification by the states were (chronologically): Alabama, August 10, 1909; Kentucky, February 8, 1910; South Carolina, February 19, 1910; Illinois, March 1, 1910; Mississippi, March 7, 1910; Oklahoma, March 10, 1910; Maryland, April 8, 1910; Georgia, August 3, 1910; Texas, August 16, 1910; Ohio, January 19, 1911; Idaho, January 20, 1911; Oregon, January 23, 1911; Washington, January 26, 1911; Montana, January 30, 1911; Indiana, January 30, 1911; California, January 31, 1911; Nevada, January 31, 1911; South Dakota, February 3, 1911; Nebraska, February 9, 1911; North Carolina, February 11, 1911; Colorado, February 15, 1911; North Dakota, February 17, 1911; Kansas, February 18, 1911; Michigan, February 23, 1911; Iowa, February 24, 1911; Missouri, March 16, 1911; Maine, March 31, 1911; Tennessee, April 7, 1911; Arkansas, April 22, 1911 (after having rejected it earlier); Wisconsin, May 26, 1911; New York, July 12, 1911; Arizona, April 6, 1912; Minnesota, June 11, 1912; Louisiana, June 28, 1912; West Virginia, January 31, 1913; New Mexico, February 3, 1913. The amendment was subsequently ratified by Massachusetts, March 4, 1913; New Hampshire, March 7, 1913 (after having rejected it on March 2, 1911). The amendment was rejected (and not subsequently ratified) by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah.
The argument that the 16th Amendment was not ratified is best explained (and refuted) by this quotation from U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986):

“Thomas is a tax protester, and one of his arguments is that he did not need to file tax returns because the sixteenth amendment is not part of the constitution. It was not properly ratified, Thomas insists, repeating the argument of W. Benson & M. Beckman, The Law That Never Was (1985). Benson and Beckman review the documents concerning the states’ ratification of the sixteenth amendment and conclude that only four states ratified the sixteenth amendment; they insist that the official promulgation of that amendment by Secretary of State Knox in 1913 is therefore void.

“Benson and Beckman did not discover anything; they rediscovered something that Secretary Knox considered in 1913. Thirty-eight states ratified the sixteenth amendment, and thirty-seven sent formal instruments of ratification to the Secretary of State. (Minnesota notified the Secretary orally, and additional states ratified later; we consider only those Secretary Knox considered.) Only four instruments repeat the language of the sixteenth amendment exactly as Congress approved it. The others contain errors of diction, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. The text Congress transmitted to the states was: “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.” Many of the instruments neglected to capitalize “States,” and some capitalized other words instead. The instrument from Illinois had “remuneration” in place of “enumeration”; the instrument from Missouri substituted “levy” for “lay”; the instrument from Washington had “income” not “incomes”; others made similar blunders.

“Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and--taking into account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial problems--advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.

“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.”​

U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986).
It has also been claimed that the votes of Georgia legislature were recorded incorrectly and that Georgia actually rejected the amendment, contrary to Knox’ report. However, no Congressman or other official from Georgia has ever complained about the “error” and, even if there was an error and Georgia did not ratify the amendment, there would still have been thirty-seven ratifications, one more than the thirty-six required. (Article V of the Constitution requires that amendments to the Constitution be approved by the legislatures of three fourths of the states, and there were forty-eight states in 1913.)
Another claim is that the ratification of the 16th Amendment by several states was invalid because the constitutions of those states prohibited an income tax. A similar argument as to the 19th Amendment has been flatly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with a different constitutional amendment:

“The second contention is that in the Constitutions of several of the 36 states named in the proclamation of the Secretary of State there are provisions which render inoperative the alleged ratifications by their Legislatures. The argument is that by reason of these specific provisions the Legislatures were without power to ratify. But the function of a state Legislature in ratifying a proposed amendment to the federal Constitution, like the function of Congress in proposing the amendment, is a federal function derived from the federal Constitution; and it transcends any limitations sought to be imposed by the people of a state.”​

Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 136-137 (1922).
These technical arguments against the ratification of the 16th Amendment are troubling because they are so undemocratic (as are many other tax protester arguments). Except for a couple of claims about the votes of two states, there is really no doubt that Congress proposed an amendment that would give it the power to tax incomes, and that three fourths of the states approved the amendment. But tax protesters would like for the courts to nullify the amendment, and so nullify the power of Congress and the states to amend the Constitution, and so deny to the people the power to govern themselves, because of typographical errors.
But can courts even consider attacks on the validity of constitutional amendments? As noted by the 7th Circuit in Thomas, the argument that the 16th Amendment is invalid is not only legally and factually wrong, but it is an argument that federal courts are unable (or at least reluctant) to consider. The federal courts have always recognized limits upon their powers, and one of those limits is that the courts should not get involved in issues that the Constitution has entrusted to other branches of the government. The Constitution says that Congress may propose amendments, and the states may ratify them. Whether an amendment has been properly ratified is considered to be a “political question” to be resolved by Congress and the states, and not in court. In a challenge to the validity of the 19th Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled that official notices of the state legislatures to the Secretary of State were “binding upon him, and, being certified by his proclamation, is conclusive upon the courts.” Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 137 (1922).
Other decisions confirming (or refusing to consider) the validity of the 16th Amendment:

“Despite plaintiff’ and numerous other tax protesters’ contention that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified, courts have long recognized the Sixteenth Amendment’ ratification and validity.”​

Betz v. United States, 40 Fed.Cl. 286, 295 (1998).

“As the cited cases, as well as many others, have made abundantly clear, the following arguments alluded to by the Lonsdales are completely lacking in legal merit and patently frivolous: .. .. (4) the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution is either invalid or applies only to corporations . . . .”​

Lonsdale v. United States, 919 F.2d 1440, 1448 (10th Cir. 1990).
See also, United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d 457 (7th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 273; Pollard v. Commissioner, 816 F.2d 603 (11th Cir. 1987); United States v. Benson, 941 F.2d 598 (7th Cir. 1991); Sochia v. Commissioner, 23 F.3d 941 (5th Cir. 1994), reh. den. 1994 U.S. App. LEXIS 22014; United States v. Stahl, 792 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir. 1986), cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 888; United State v. Sitka, 845 F.2d 43 (2nd Cir. 1988); Miller v. United States, 868 F.2d 236, 239-41 (7th Cir. 1989); Biermann v. Commissioner, 769 F.2d 707 (11th Cir. 1985); United States v. Buckner, 830 F.2d 102 (1987); United States v. Dube, 820 F.2d 886, 891 (7th Cir. 1986); Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68, 70-71 (7th Cir. 1986); United States v. Moore, 627 F.2d 830, 833 (7th Cir. 1980); Knoblauch v. Commissioner, 749 F.2d 200, 201 (1984) (“Every court that has considered this argument has rejected it.”), cert. den. 474 U.S. 830 (1985); United States v. Matheson, (9th Cir. 1986); Lysiak v. Commissioner, 816 F.2d 311, 312 (7th Cir. 1987); Quijano v. United States, 93 F.3d 26, 30 (1st Cir. 1996); United States v. Mundt, 29 F.3d 233, 237 (6th Cir. 1994).
In Rev. Rul. 2005-19, 2005-14 I.R.B. 819, the IRS confirmed that the argument that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified is “frivolous” and reliance on it can result in civil and criminal penalties.
The claim that “[t]he Sixteenth Amendment was not ratified, has no effect, contradicts the Constitution as originally ratified, lacks an enabling clause, or does not authorize a non-apportioned, direct income tax” has been identified by the IRS as a “frivolous position” that can result in a penalty of $5,000 when asserted in a tax return or included in certain collection-related submissions. Notice 2007-30, 2007-14 I.R.B. 883.
Tax Protester “Evidence”

A related (and even sillier) claim made by tax protesters is that the ratification of the 16th Amendment by Ohio was invalid because Ohio did not become a state until 1953(!). This strange claim is based on a strange action that Congress took in 1953 to confirm that Ohio was indeed a state. Briefly:

1. By an act of April 30, 1802 (2 Stat. 173), section 1, Congress provided that “the inhabitants of the eastern division of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, be, and they are hereby authorized to form for themselves a constitution and state government, and to assume such name as they shall deem proper, and the said state, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union, upon the same footing with the original states, in all respects whatsoever.” (This was consistent with the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, which provided that there should be formed from the territory at least three but not more than five states.)
2. A convention met in Ohio on November 1, 1802, and adopted a constitution on November 29, 1802.
3. On January 19, 1803, a special committee of Congress reported that “the said Constitution and government so formed is republican, and in conformity to the principles contained in the articles of the ordinance made on the 13th day of July 1787, for the Government of the said Territory: and that it is now necessary to establish a district court within the said State, to carry into complete effect the laws of the United States within the same.” Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 2d sess., p. 21.
4. Congress then enacted legislation to declare that all of the laws of the United States shall be in force within the state of Ohio and to establish a federal district court in Ohio, stating in the preamble that “the said state has become one of the United States of America.” Act of February 19, 1803 (2 Stat. 201).
5. Ohio began sending Representatives and Senators to Congress, began voting in Presidential elections, and has been considered to be a state ever since.

So what’ the problem? When Ohio was preparing for the 150th anniversary of its statehood, researchers discovered that they couldn’t establish the exact date that Ohio became a state, and that there was some confusion on the issue. For example, the Senate Manual (S. Doc. 5, 82d Cong., p. 570) gave the date as March 3, 1803, while the Congressional Biographical Directory (H. Doc. 607, 81st Cong., p. 76, note 9) gave the date as November 29, 1802. Further research showed that Ohio was unique because Congress declared that Ohio would become a state upon fulfilling certain conditions but had never formally declared that the conditions had been met. In admitting other states, Congress either declared that the state would be admitted as of a certain date, or passed an enabling act and then later declared that the state was admitted. In the case of Ohio, Congress passed an enabling act but never formally declared that the conditions of the enabling act had been met, either due to an oversight or due to a belief that a formal declaration was not intended and not needed.
In a 1953 report to Congress, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress stated that the lack of a formal resolution “may be considered unessential.” (1953 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2126, 2128.) However, Ohio asked for a formal declaration, sending a new petition for statehood to Washington by horseback (yes, in 1953), and Congress complied (with a certain number of snide jokes), passing a joint resolution that declared Ohio to be one of the United States of America as of March 1, 1803. P.L. 82-204, 67 Stat. 407. The Senate Report to the resolution states that the purpose was “to make formal, legal declaration of the de facto situation with respect to the admission of Ohio as a State of the United States.” Senate Report No. 720, 1953 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2124.
So the fact of the matter was that Ohio was accepted as a state of the United States sometime in 1802 or 1803 and Congress declared the admission to be as of a certain date in 1803, but the declaration was not made until 1953.
The argument that Ohio was not a state until 1953 was rejected in Knoblauch v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 749 F2d 200, 201-202 (5th Cir. 1984), cert. den., 474 U.S. 830 (1986), and in Bowman v. Government of the United States, 920 F.Supp. 623, 625 n. 4 (E.D. Pa. 1995).

Not, in fact by 3/4...which would indeed make it properly ratified.
You're really good with the whole wall-o-text copy/paste...but I'm actually more interested in your own words/thoughts.

 

[dross]

Good thing I didn't tell people to stop then, eh?

If it were proper law, there would be no cases of people abstaining and being found well within their rights to do so.

Not, in fact by 3/4...which would indeed make it properly ratified.
You're really good with the whole wall-o-text copy/paste...but I'm actually more interested in your own words/thoughts.

Can you cite people who have abstained on the basis of the 16th not being properly ratified and been found by the courts to be within your rights?

I don't quite understand what you're saying in your last sentence. Are you saying that three fourths of the state did not ratify the amendment?

 

[CarmelHP]

If it were proper law, there would be no cases of people abstaining and being found well within their rights to do so.

Crazy tax Protestor Argument #3:

"Nothing bad ever happens to tax protestors."​

Some tax protestors parade around the Internet saying "I haven't paid taxes in years, and look, I'm not in jail! There must be no duty to pay!" (See, for example, this film starting at 10:13 and again at 14:49.)
The law’s mill grinds slowly, but exceedingly fine. It may take the IRS a while to catch up with tax protestors, but a check of the law reports shows that there are many, many cases in which the IRS does catch up with and nail them. Some notorious tax protestors have received substantial jail sentences:
​

• Ed and Elaine Brown, who proclaimed that the federal court trying them was a "fiction," and who were finally arrested after a bizarre, months-long standoff in their home, got over five years for not paying their taxes.
• John Cheek, who got the Supreme Court to reverse his first conviciton, was convicted again on retrial and sentenced to a year and a day and fined $62,000. This conviction was upheld and the Supreme Court declined to get involved a second time. U.S. v. Cheek, 3 F.3d 1057 (7th Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1112 (1994).
• Arthur Farnsworth, another tax protestor with an Internet site explaining his kooky theories, was sentenced on April 3, 2007 to over two years in prison for tax evasion (this judgment was affirmed in December 2008).
• Sherry Peel Jackson, former IRS agent, Certified Public Accountant, and Certified Fraud Examiner, who gave seminars on absurd tax protestor theories (and who appears in the film linked above, boasting about not paying taxes), was sentenced in 2008 to four years imprisonment after being convicted of federal tax crimes.
• Karl Kleinpaste, who used to have an Internet site about his eccentric tax theories, got two and a half years in prison for not paying his taxes.
• Larken Rose (a proponent of the "861 argument") got 15 months. Quite a price to pay for a crazy theory.
• Irwin Schiff, perhaps the granddaddy of all tax protestors, was convicted three times of tax offenses and on this third conviction was sentenced to over twelve years in prison.

Those are just some well-known protestors. You can see the bulk statistics from the IRS here. As you can see, the IRS brings hundreds of criminal prosecutions every year against those who don't file their tax returns. According to the statistics, the average sentence has varied in recent years from 34 months to 40 months -- that's over three years in prison.
And those are just the criminal cases. The IRS can also just go after people civilly, that is, just going after the money, without trying to put them in jail. The result is that not only does the IRS charge tax protestors for the tax they owe, it increases their tax by the applicable statutory penalties for failing to file or for filing a frivolous return. These penalties can easily increase your tax bill by 25% and in some cases by 75%.
Moreover, the courts regard tax protestors as a thorn in their side. The courts have become completely fed up with tax protestors and won’t give them the time of day. Not only do courts routinely rule against tax protestors (often, these days, without even bothering to address the protestors’ arguments), but many courts have started a practice of issuing a “sanction” against tax protestors for wasting the courts’ time with frivolous arguments. Some courts of appeals, for example, routinely charge tax protestors an extra $2000 or more as a sanction for their frivolous appeal. So do not imagine that, once you run the gauntlet of all the preliminary IRS proceedings, your “day in court” will finally be the day that you are vindicated. In fact, your day in court will more likely be the day that you are slammed with an extra monetary penalty for wasting the court’s time.
Moreover, the above increases, penalties, and sanctions are just the civil penalties that tax protestors are made to pay. If the government chooses to go after you criminally, you can wind up in prison.
I can’t promise that you will be caught if you don’t pay your taxes. But I can tell you that a lot of tax protestors are caught and that it ends up costing them a lot of extra money and, in some cases, jail time. It is cheaper just to pay the taxes that you owe. It would certainly make your life a lot simpler.


​

 

[CarmelHP]

Also:
Crazy tax Protestor Argument #4:

"Lots of cases support tax protestor theories."​

Every court that has ever ruled on a tax protestor argument has rejected it, so it's pretty amazing to see tax protestors claiming that court decisions support them.
Some tax protestors claim that there are actually cases holding that income tax is voluntary or that wages are not income or adopting some other tax protestor theory.
In fact, ever since the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment nearly a hundred years ago, no cases, from the Supreme Court or from any other federal court, have ruled favorably on any tax protestors theories, while hundreds of cases have specifically considered and rejected them. Judicial decisions are 100% against tax protestor theories—not 90%, not 99%, but 100%.
So how can tax protestors possibly think that the cases support them? Are they blind?
The answer is that when a tax protestor says that there are cases adopting tax protestor theories, one of three things is going on:

Misconstruing Stray Sentences​

By far the most common explanation is this: when a tax protestor says that a case upholds a tax protestor theory, in fact the case has nothing to do with that theory, but there is a stray sentence in the case that, if plucked out of context and misinterpreted, can be imagined to provide support for it.
For example, in claiming that wages are not income, tax protestors sometimes rely on this quotation: "Congress has taxed income, not compensation."That's from Connor v. United States, 303 F.Supp. 1187, 1191 (S.D. Tex. 1969), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 439 F.2d 974 (5th Cir. 1971).
Well, that is what the court said, but what was the context? In fact, the case had nothing to do with the taxability of wages. The taxpayers in the case had suffered a loss when their home was destroyed by fire. They received compensation from their fire insurance company. The case was about the taxability of these insurance proceeds, not about wages.
Another quote protestors like to use to prove that wages are not income is this:
There is a clear distinction between 'profit' and 'wages' or compensation for labor. Compensation for labor can not be regarded as profit within the meaning of the law. The word 'profit', as ordinarily used, means the gain made upon any business or investment - a different thing altogether from mere compensation for labor.
Oliver v. Halstead, 196 Va. 992 (1955).
Again, the quotation looks relevant until you know the context. This time the case had nothing to do with income taxes at all. It was about whether a director of a farm cooperative association could be employed by the association even though the by-laws of the association prohibited the association from entering into a "contract for profit" with one of its directors. The question was whether working for a salary constituted a "contract for profit" within the meaning of this by-law, not whether a salary is income for tax purposes. The case had nothing to do with income tax!
One more example: to show that wages are not income, protestors may quote this sentence: "one does not 'derive income' by rendering services and charging for them." Edwards v. Keith, 231 F. 110 (2d Cir. 1916).
Once again, the quotation is accurate, but taken completely out of context. The case involved the government's attempt to tax commissions earned by a life insurance agent. The commissions had been duly earned but had not yet been paid in the tax year in question. The case was about accounting methods -- whether income should be considered income in the year in which it is earned, or the year in which it is received. (Today, this debate would be referred to as the choice between the "cash" and "accrual" methods of accounting.) The court ruled that the taxpayer was right to count the commissions as income only when they were actually received and did not have to pay tax on commissions earned but not yet received. It was in this context that the court said that one does not derive income merely "by rendering services and charging for them." The context makes clear that the court was only discussing when the commissions would be considered income, not whether the commissions would be considered income. Big difference.
Tax protestors like to imagine that a stray sentence from any case about anything somehow proves that courts accept their theories. But that's not how the law works. Context is very important.
In interpreting case law, it's always important to ask what a particular case was actually about. There are literally hundreds of cases that are specifically about tax protestor theories. For example, courts have specifically considered the question of whether wages are income hundreds of times and have held that the answer is yes every time.*
Those are the cases that matter. The whole case is about the exact point at issue. A stray sentence from a case about something else is different. It's easily misunderstood if taken out of context. For example, when a court says that "Congress has taxed income, not compensation," but it's talking about money from fire insurance, it means that insurance proceeds that provide compensation for a monetary loss are not income. That's different from the term "compensation" as used to refer to wages or salary.
A stray sentence from a case that isn't even about a tax protestor theory doesn't mean that a court has ruled in favor of a tax protestor theory. This is particularly true given that every time a court actually considers a tax protestor theory in a case directly, in a case that is really about that theory, the court rules against it.

Misunderstanding Criminal Cases​

Another frequent protestor mistake is misunderstanding the result of criminal cases. Tax protestors will point out that, on rare occasions, protestors prosecuted for income tax crimes are acquitted. (Tommy Cryer is a recent example.) Protestors cite these cases as though they prove the defendants' tax protestor theories were correct.
Of course such cases prove nothing of the kind. As explained in detail here, a special rule applies to criminal tax cases: the government must prove, not only that the defendant owed taxes and failed to pay, but that the defendant knew he or she was breaking the tax laws. Therefore, if the defendant truly believed that he or she didn't owe any taxes, the defendant is not guilty of the crime charged, even if the basis of the defendant's belief was a crazy tax protestor theory. This doesn't prove that the protestor theory is correct, but only that the defendant believed it. (Or rather, that the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant didn't believe it.)

Making Stuff Up​

Finally, some quotations that appear to favor tax protestor theories are complete fabrications. You can, for example, see this quotation on the Internet:
Income within the meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment and the Revenue Act, means 'gain' . . . and in such connection 'gain' means profit . . .proceeding from property, severed from capital, however invested or employed, and coming in, received, or drawn by the taxpayer, for his separate use, benefit and disposal . . . . Income is not a wage or compensation for any type of labor.
Staples v. U.S., 21 F.Supp. 737 (D. Pa. 1937) (often miscited as "Stapler v. U.S."). This quotation, particularly the last sentence, seems very persuasive. The problem is that the last sentence is completely made up. It's not from the Staples case or from any other federal case. If you look at the actual case in a real case reporter (not some fabricated Internet version), you will see that the last sentence doesn't exist.
Of course, once you start making stuff up, all bets are off. You can provide support for anything if you allow yourself to make up the support. Here's a tip: if someone supports their arguments with fabricated quotations, don't believe anything they say.
​

[SIZE=-1]*[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]Here are just a few of hundreds of examples of cases specifically holding that wages are income: Jones v. Commissioner, 338 F.3d 463 (5th Cir. 2003); Ledford v. United States, 297 F.3d 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2002); United States v. Mason, 46 F.3d 1147 (9th Cir. 1995); United States v. Connor, 898 F.2d 942 (3d. Cir. 1990); Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68, 70 (7th Cir. 1986) (collecting cases).[/SIZE]

 

[ocsdor]

How do you resolve issues with government that are illegal and unConstitutional when all three branches uphold that illegal and unConstitutional law?

Want to stop runaway government? Stop funding them! No Bucks = No Buck Rogers! (starts at 3:10 in video)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOp1i06yTfY&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - The Right Stuff Clip 17 - Astronaut Selection[/ame]

 

[JetGirl]

Can you cite people who have abstained on the basis of the 16th not being properly ratified and been found by the courts to be within your rights?

Yeah, that was most of the second video I posted. Scroll back.

 

[CarmelHP]

Yeah, that was most of the second video I posted. Scroll back.

Sherry Peel Jackson, former IRS agent, Certified Public Accountant, and Certified Fraud Examiner, who gave seminars on absurd tax protestor theories (and who appears in the film linked above, boasting about not paying taxes), was sentenced in 2008 to four years imprisonment after being convicted of federal tax crimes.

 

[JetGirl]

Sherry Peel Jackson, former IRS agent, Certified Public Accountant, and Certified Fraud Examiner, who gave seminars on absurd tax protestor theories (and who appears in the film linked above, boasting about not paying taxes), was sentenced in 2008 to four years imprisonment after being convicted of federal tax crimes.

No, I'm referring to Whitey Harrell, who won.

 

[dross]

Yeah, that was most of the second video I posted. Scroll back.

I just watched that entire video. The first half claimed there was no law requiring an income tax. This is easily disproved. It's in the many volume IRS code, which is passed into law every year by Congress.

The second half dealt with one case, in which a jury found the guy not guilty. Much different than a court validating his claims. He was subsequently convicted in 2008, BTW, and is going to jail.

 

[x2bax]

" 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division. The Remington parkerized shotguns, with fourteen inch barrel, ."

People, you are missing the most important fact, the IRS get SBS's. That just not fair. Do they they have to pay themselves the $200 tax stamp?

 

[CarmelHP]

No, I'm referring to Whitey Harrell, who won.

The mass that get convicted don't count?

 

[CarmelHP]

People, you are missing the most important fact, the IRS get SBS's. That just not fair. Do they they have to pay themselves the $200 tax stamp?

No, but it is odd that the proposal specified that P-R excise tax was to be included in the price.