8 ms·

The Truth About Frivolous Tax Arguments

31 points by rfreytag 11y ago

dasil003 11y ago
The misspelling prompted me to the notion that "frivolous" is a great word that ought to be more widely applied to a variety of situations in modern life, but somehow has been pigeon-holed to a legal definition.
- dang 11y ago
  We fixed the typo. I agree, it's a fine word.
anon_peace 11y ago
Eliminate the 16th Amendment. This would reduce the power of the IRS https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- orblivion 11y ago
  Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument? Maybe it's the latter, and I'm just biased. Hacker News bills itself as a civil, open minded discussion forum, and by and large it works out great. However I certainly feel that certain views are not very accepted. If the "taboo" views were explicitly laid out, that would be fine. At least we'd know where it stands.
  - majormajor 11y ago
    For this particular comment, probably just that it doesn't add anything. Saying something akin to "get rid of taxes, and the IRS will have less power" is pretty tautological and not really relevant to most of the arguments linked (which are far more ... creative ... and bold, in terms of claiming that the US/IRS already doesn't have power to tax people).
    - orblivion 11y ago
      I agree it's not very insightful or anything, but there are plenty of boring comments lying around that don't get downvoted that much. I imagine it's partially fueled by people's frustration with this viewpoint. But I guess it's hard to uproot bias entirely.
      - krapp 11y ago
        Green accounts tend to draw more fire as well. Trolling through sockpuppet accounts seems to be more and more common around here, so people might be trigger happy.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument? If it was posted in response to a an "Ask HN: What should we do with federal income tax policy?" or "Ask HN: How would you reduce the power of the IRS?", it would be on topic and less worthy of downvotes (of course, both of those threads would probably be flag worthy as improper for HN, but that's a different issue.) Even for the first of those contexts, its really inadequately argued. But, in the context of the actual thread, its basically off-topic noise.
tacon 11y ago
Alas, they have yet to solve the halting problem, or create the universal debugger: "This document, including the relevant legal authorities cited, is not intended to provide an exhaustive list of frivolous tax arguments. Merely because a frivolous argument is not included in this document does not mean that it is not frivolous."
scott_s 11y ago
I heard about this list on the most recent episode of Planet Money, which talks to someone who believed some of these frivolous arguments and faced a lot of legal problems because of it, and separately, with a lawyer explaining that yes, these arguments are frivolous: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money
- vonklaus 11y ago
  To be fair, they aren't frivilous. In fact, taxes were illegal or temporary(given americas hostory). See my above comment for one of the "rebuttals".
djsumdog 11y ago
Yes, taxes are stealing, police and fire should be private and pay with your pocketbook, etc etc blah blah libertarian bullshit. I like public parks, and schools and fire. I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues. Every high income nation has income taxes. The US is the only high income nation that still has the death penalty. Let's fix that first. Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything. You're talking about a broken system; the system of debt, war and money. They're all related. If humanity is going to survive another 10,000 years, we need to deal with the real issues of consumerism and move away from money entirely.
- dchest 11y ago
  Actually, before fixing dead penalty, the US should resolve the Mars-Milky Way chocolate bar mix-up.
- ahallock 11y ago
  Calling something 'bullshit' is not an argument. > I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues. That is an effect of taxation. You wouldn't be forced to fund them otherwise. > Every high income nation has income taxes. The popularity of something doesn't mean it's good or correlated to high income. > Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything. This is a pretty extraordinary claim.
trekman3 11y ago
The truth? The truth is, you should stop enabling the waste of my money, you tax collector scumbags. Maybe if you give me the option of not having my stolen effort spent on foreign wars, I'll have some respect for you lickspittles.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Your argument is with politicians, not the tax collector. The IRS funds democracy. They are not scum.
  - melted 11y ago
    Democracy is not really what we have though. We the people really don't have much say in what's going on.
    - techsupporter 11y ago
      To be honest, what do you expect to have happened after roughly 100 years of neglect and disinterest by We The People who are supposed to be doing the electing and the watching? All technology seems to have given us is the ability to be even more polarized and entrenched about the way things "ought to be" and, thus, dig in our heels unless we get exactly that.
      - melted 11y ago
        You need to read "People's History of the US" by Howard Zinn. There never was a democracy here. The only times when people had the actual power was during the many armed insurrections, most of which were simply suppressed by force, but some of which did achieve at least some of their ends.
    - nightski 11y ago
      "We the people" is not any one individual. As an individual you are 1 in ~324M. So your say counts extremely little. You have the opportunity to make an impact. But it requires an extraordinary amount of work to make your voice heard over the other ~324M people. As it should.
jedberg 11y ago
I feel bad for the IRS. They don't make the rules, but they get the brunt of the vitriol because they are the enforcers. And honestly, as enforcers, they are pretty fair and just, given the resources they have to work with. They've used "big data" for years to target the tax cheats they think will give them the best return on their dollar. That's why they don't go after the mega-rich -- their lawyers delay the process so much that their return is lower than going after small business owners. As far as government orgs go, they're probably one of the most efficient. My personal experience with them was actually very positive, even though I was there for an audit. They called me in, they said, "here are our concerns", I said, "here's my documentation". We went back and forth, and mutually agreed that some things were ok and some were not. We decided I owed some extra money, but they waived the fees and penalties. Overall, I think they're one of the better orgs in the government.
- jeremyt 11y ago
  Sorry, but an organization that targeted people because of their political beliefs, postponed or withheld nonprofit status because of such beliefs, and is now stonewalling the congressional investigation doesn't count as "one of the better orgs in the government". They apparently can't implement their own backup policy, can't comply with congressional subpoenas, and has generally slow walked and foot dragged through the entire investigation. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-scandal-congress-nonprofit-obama http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-sc...
  - jedberg 11y ago
    I didn't say they were perfect. I said "one of the better orgs". I'm sure they have their bad apples just like any organization. But mostly my point was that they do not deserve the hate they get in most cases.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    “staffers in the agency's Cincinnati office were trying to manage the deluge of applications for tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax law. Between 2010 and 2012, Lerner said, the number of 501(c)(4) applications leapt from 1,500 to more than 3,400.” Frankly, there are a lot of fraudsters out there, and when there started to be a large number of new conservative nonprofits started by people without prior experience running such organizations, the field was ripe for folks to step in with fake charities, so they could collect money from outraged “tea partiers”. As an example, Ben Carson’s whole political campaign is basically a direct mailer donation scam (the people running it were previously running supplement scams, etc.) which somehow transcended its original scope and turned into a real campaign, much to the surprise of Carson and his buddies. It’s not surprising that the IRS staffers would notice a pattern of abuse with a pretty good hit rate on particular keywords, and then target groups with those keywords for increased scrutiny, making them fill out a few extra forms. It was stupid of them to do so, because the political fallout is predictable. But it’s hardly the roaring scandal it’s made out to be.
Splines 11y ago
Trying to get out of paying taxes is like arguing the score of a game after the game has ended. If you didn't like how it ended up, you should have been playing it differently. High level players are able to change the rules.
- dkokelley 11y ago
  I agree to a point, but to further the game analogy, no other game has rules quite so complicated. When the referees decide that you had a foul in the first quarter, you begin a complex process of determining what the result of the game would have been had the foul been caught immediately. The best "players" have great teams studying the rules. Those without the resources to do so make their best attempt by using amateur understanding and common advice.
DanBC 11y ago
See also the Sovereign Citizen Movement, who use a lot of these frivolous arguments. (FBI claims some sovereign citizens might be terrorists; Southern Poverty Law Center says there are about 100,000 hard core believers, with an extra 200,000 partial believers.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement
vonklaus 11y ago
I stand wholly behind my comment referring to this as a comically absurd kafka-esque look at our nations tax code, which is ostensibly the nations funding model, however given the level of downvotes, I would like to clarify the position a bit more formally: ======================== First, I appreciate you finding these links for me, I can actually use google quite well, however, I deign to point out that having a key piece of tax law intermittently down with such regularity that it is mirrored at an offsite location, in slightly poor form. Especially given the backlash Linux Mint faced just yesterday for not protecting itself and its' users. Linux Mint of course being an open source software project that, according to Wikipedia[1], is subsidized by partners and donations on a much smaller scale than the U.S. Gov't. I will cut them some slack but I think holding the US government to a standard of one 9 of up time (on the left side of the decimal) isn't unreasonable. Now, obviously I could gave made a more cohesive argument to relay that point, which I hope is what the downbotes relay, and not disagreement. The fact that some of the core Financial frameworks for a government that controls trillions of dollars of capital via tax revenue, and this very framework is how it raises that revenue, I suspect it would not be unreasonable to think a bit about structuring the system that makes it available. In that it is served via non-secure HTTP and is so frequently down that the actual site links to a third party is somewhat troubling. More so, that the responses in fact seem to excuse this behavior which is, in fact, quite a dangerous precedent. This isn't exactly, Show HN my weekend hack, right? Given that we expect an open source operating system to do many things surrounding security, do we not also find this a pretty immense lapse in judgement? Consider: * What if a student, or hacker gained access to the server by obtaining a password and making several edits to the document. It would not be unreasonable to assume that sysadmins have access to this, much like any internal infrastructure. It is not a far fetched scenario. A large multi-corp could certainly do it, and given that the governments own site suggests it as a viable alternative. So, in the edge-case where they could not have congress insert a law directly into the tax code, they could of course cut out the middle man(joke). So while I informally made a bit of a jest, I find this downright unprofessional especially in confluence with the statement they made about: https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivolous-Tax-Arguments-Section-I-A-to-C#_Toc350157884 https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivol... Now, in fact the first income tax was actually started to fund the civil war[2] and went from 3% to 10% during that time. So, there were of course taxes but not a formal income tax. It wasn't formalized until 1919, by congress and people who make under 68K wouldn't need to file. So it isn't, in fact, unreasonable for a country formed out of a seccession from taxation rejected this notion, HOWEVER, irrespective of that argument, they make this statement: [please see link for qoutes] The rebuttal of a 1960 court case using the word "voluntary". A 1986 court case stating they a are correct And this statement, which is NOT a link: The requirement to file an income tax return is not voluntary and is clearly set forth in sections 6011(a), 6012(a), et seq., and 6072(a) of the Internal Revenue Code. See also Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-1(a). Which returns some shady book which is an entire rebuttal of what they said, but more importantly, a downed website, Cornell, and the insistence to go to Cornell to get the nations bloody tax code. So to conclude, i don't know what you guys/girls are indicating, but if your contention is I should be able to use google better, and it isn't a big deal that the online version of our nations tax code is a cached 5 year old copy on a private university server, then frankly I don't know how to respond. Consider, it would be entirely possible to retroactively change laws and court opinions if these things were not stored in a public place, in their most current form so that, other universities like Cornell, could host them as well and we would have 2 verifiable copies to make sure they hadn't been edited? So a nations laws must be officially codified, however ridiculous, in a way that is irreversibly editable given it's state in time. So that, unless a new law is passed, Someone could not edit them at all, and that the public is made aware of them, and can verifiable look at them and read them, if not understand them due to their depth and complexity. Original Comment ====================== edited for punctuation. This is so Kafka it is legitimately unclear if this is trolling. Contention: There is no law requiring taxes. I actually wanted to see what the response to this was as I wondered if it was arbitrary. It is so FUCKING more absurd than that. It is a tax form[0] which is the top answer when you google "irs tax code section 1", the relavent piece of law cited by the IRS demonstrating it's authority. Now, leaving aside the link is pretty much a table that outlines what you pay in IRS legalese, it is hosted on Cornel Universities server and the IRS says it is provided to us, by Cornell. They also casually mention it isn't current, but is mostly the same as the original as this is the 2011 version. Tl:dr, this law(and our power) is legitimate because of some case law and a 5 yearold invoice hosted on a private parties server. Unclear why they dont understand why the "myth" keeps circulating ========================= 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint#Development 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service 0. https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Tax-Code,-Regulations-and-Official-Guidance https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Tax-Code,-Regulations-... No I don't want to debate whether the IRS is legal, but whether or not anyone can credibly make the argument that this default behaviour is not, absurd.
6stringmerc 11y ago
While this is surely a warranted and useful document in its own right, I can't help but tell my own story of "Frivolous IRS Wastefulness" as a counter-balance. Some in the US might remember a year when the 'Estate Tax' was suspended - that is, if a relative died and passed along an inheritance amount, it wasn't taxable like in years prior or once the suspension expired after 2010. As a recipient of some funds - a mid single digit thousand figure - from my maternal relative passing, I paid off my credit card and - this was my mistake - included the amount received in some kind of 'income' field. This set into motion one of the most ridiculous, patience-testing exchanges in my adult life. In mid-2011, they sent me a letter wanting a check for $X,XXX. I wrote back a clear explanation of the error in question - that the funds were an inheritance and not subject to the taxes being claimed. I sent it via FedEx, and eventually got a response. They still wanted the entire $X,XXX! This back and forth - me being as polite and stubborn as possible in writing - and the IRS kept wanting money, offering no proof why the amount they claimed owed was actually owed (I asked repeatedly for citations). This went on for a FULL YEAR. In the second to last correspondence, I had pages and pages of the 2010 tax code included, with relevant highlights, obscure forms...yet still felt taking a polite (if a bit dense) tone would be better than getting angry, you know, poking a gorilla with a stick kind of thing. In the end, I sucked it up and sent them about $150, what they eventually came down to after all this time, just to get them to shut up. The IRS, without question, wasted time, resources, and money stubbornly pursuing money that they weren't entitled to at all. So, while I respect their power and genuinely believe in their mission to acquire funds to keep the government working in its basic fashion, I have absolutely no pity for staff members who have to read through line after line of bullshit excuses, because they do it too.
- nightski 11y ago
  Hmm, the fact that you were being ignored tells me that you actually were not getting time, resources, and money allocated to your case. It was probably the case that they lacked the time, resources, and money to take it seriously and just kept sending you the default response. Sending many pages of tax code probably hurt you in the long run.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
LordKano 11y ago
One of the items, specifically alleging that the 16th amendment wasn't properly ratified has some merit but there's an even better counter-argument. The government will seize your property and incarcerate you if you don't pay.
Animats 11y ago
If only that applied to pretending that your company is headquartered in a tiny office in Bermuda.
kazinator 11y ago
It's amazing that some actually tried the equivocation on the word "voluntary" as far as taking it to court and losing.
tzs 11y ago
When I was in law school I liked to research "tax protestor" and "sovereign citizen" arguments to practice my legal research skills. The IRS documents submitted cover much of what I remember of these people's arguments, but not all. Some other arguments or mistakes I recall being common: • Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The case turns out to be real...but what they are quoting is not from the court's ruling but rather is from a brief submitted by the losing side. • Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The cited court exists, but the case does not. • Similar to the above, but the cited court itself does not exist. • They cite a real case from a real court, but the parts they quote to support their argument do not exist. • On those very rare occasions when they cite a real case, from a real court, and actually quote from the court's ruling, it turns out to be a ruling that was overturned quickly by a higher court. • (One of my favorites) Saying that a court lacked jurisdiction because the flag in the courtroom had a gold fringe, which they say signifies that this is an "Admiralty Court" and only has jurisdiction over the seas and navigable waterways. The article mentioned the argument that the Federal government only has authority over D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, etc., but doesn't say why some people believe that. I've seen two arguments for that belief. The first is that the Federal government was created by the Constitution specifically to run D.C. and other Federal territory and was not given any authority over anything else. The second is that there is someplace in the tax code that says something like "For purposes of this section, 'United States' includes D.C., Guam, [...]" and they think "includes" means "consists of only" (and they ignore the restriction to "this section" and so think this applies to the whole tax code). I've never run into an argument from these people that was not, frankly, idiotic. If one of their arguments does not immediately fail due to a fundamental misunderstanding of basic English, it falls apart as soon as you try to track down original sources.

31 points by rfreytag 11y ago

The misspelling prompted me to the notion that "frivolous" is a great word that ought to be more widely applied to a variety of situations in modern life, but somehow has been pigeon-holed to a legal definition.

dang 11y ago
We fixed the typo. I agree, it's a fine word.

anon_peace 11y ago

Eliminate the 16th Amendment. This would reduce the power of the IRS https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
orblivion 11y ago
Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument? Maybe it's the latter, and I'm just biased. Hacker News bills itself as a civil, open minded discussion forum, and by and large it works out great. However I certainly feel that certain views are not very accepted. If the "taboo" views were explicitly laid out, that would be fine. At least we'd know where it stands.
- majormajor 11y ago
  For this particular comment, probably just that it doesn't add anything. Saying something akin to "get rid of taxes, and the IRS will have less power" is pretty tautological and not really relevant to most of the arguments linked (which are far more ... creative ... and bold, in terms of claiming that the US/IRS already doesn't have power to tax people).
  - orblivion 11y ago
    I agree it's not very insightful or anything, but there are plenty of boring comments lying around that don't get downvoted that much. I imagine it's partially fueled by people's frustration with this viewpoint. But I guess it's hard to uproot bias entirely.
    - krapp 11y ago
      Green accounts tend to draw more fire as well. Trolling through sockpuppet accounts seems to be more and more common around here, so people might be trigger happy.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument? If it was posted in response to a an "Ask HN: What should we do with federal income tax policy?" or "Ask HN: How would you reduce the power of the IRS?", it would be on topic and less worthy of downvotes (of course, both of those threads would probably be flag worthy as improper for HN, but that's a different issue.) Even for the first of those contexts, its really inadequately argued. But, in the context of the actual thread, its basically off-topic noise.

tacon 11y ago

Alas, they have yet to solve the halting problem, or create the universal debugger: "This document, including the relevant legal authorities cited, is not intended to provide an exhaustive list of frivolous tax arguments. Merely because a frivolous argument is not included in this document does not mean that it is not frivolous."

scott_s 11y ago

I heard about this list on the most recent episode of Planet Money, which talks to someone who believed some of these frivolous arguments and faced a lot of legal problems because of it, and separately, with a lawyer explaining that yes, these arguments are frivolous: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money

vonklaus 11y ago
To be fair, they aren't frivilous. In fact, taxes were illegal or temporary(given americas hostory). See my above comment for one of the "rebuttals".

djsumdog 11y ago

Yes, taxes are stealing, police and fire should be private and pay with your pocketbook, etc etc blah blah libertarian bullshit. I like public parks, and schools and fire. I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues. Every high income nation has income taxes. The US is the only high income nation that still has the death penalty. Let's fix that first. Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything. You're talking about a broken system; the system of debt, war and money. They're all related. If humanity is going to survive another 10,000 years, we need to deal with the real issues of consumerism and move away from money entirely.

dchest 11y ago
Actually, before fixing dead penalty, the US should resolve the Mars-Milky Way chocolate bar mix-up.
ahallock 11y ago
Calling something 'bullshit' is not an argument. > I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues. That is an effect of taxation. You wouldn't be forced to fund them otherwise. > Every high income nation has income taxes. The popularity of something doesn't mean it's good or correlated to high income. > Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything. This is a pretty extraordinary claim.

trekman3 11y ago

The truth? The truth is, you should stop enabling the waste of my money, you tax collector scumbags. Maybe if you give me the option of not having my stolen effort spent on foreign wars, I'll have some respect for you lickspittles.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Your argument is with politicians, not the tax collector. The IRS funds democracy. They are not scum.
- melted 11y ago
  Democracy is not really what we have though. We the people really don't have much say in what's going on.
  - techsupporter 11y ago
    To be honest, what do you expect to have happened after roughly 100 years of neglect and disinterest by We The People who are supposed to be doing the electing and the watching? All technology seems to have given us is the ability to be even more polarized and entrenched about the way things "ought to be" and, thus, dig in our heels unless we get exactly that.
    - melted 11y ago
      You need to read "People's History of the US" by Howard Zinn. There never was a democracy here. The only times when people had the actual power was during the many armed insurrections, most of which were simply suppressed by force, but some of which did achieve at least some of their ends.
  - nightski 11y ago
    "We the people" is not any one individual. As an individual you are 1 in ~324M. So your say counts extremely little. You have the opportunity to make an impact. But it requires an extraordinary amount of work to make your voice heard over the other ~324M people. As it should.

jedberg 11y ago

I feel bad for the IRS. They don't make the rules, but they get the brunt of the vitriol because they are the enforcers. And honestly, as enforcers, they are pretty fair and just, given the resources they have to work with. They've used "big data" for years to target the tax cheats they think will give them the best return on their dollar. That's why they don't go after the mega-rich -- their lawyers delay the process so much that their return is lower than going after small business owners. As far as government orgs go, they're probably one of the most efficient. My personal experience with them was actually very positive, even though I was there for an audit. They called me in, they said, "here are our concerns", I said, "here's my documentation". We went back and forth, and mutually agreed that some things were ok and some were not. We decided I owed some extra money, but they waived the fees and penalties. Overall, I think they're one of the better orgs in the government.

jeremyt 11y ago
Sorry, but an organization that targeted people because of their political beliefs, postponed or withheld nonprofit status because of such beliefs, and is now stonewalling the congressional investigation doesn't count as "one of the better orgs in the government". They apparently can't implement their own backup policy, can't comply with congressional subpoenas, and has generally slow walked and foot dragged through the entire investigation. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-scandal-congress-nonprofit-obama http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-sc...
- jedberg 11y ago
  I didn't say they were perfect. I said "one of the better orgs". I'm sure they have their bad apples just like any organization. But mostly my point was that they do not deserve the hate they get in most cases.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  “staffers in the agency's Cincinnati office were trying to manage the deluge of applications for tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax law. Between 2010 and 2012, Lerner said, the number of 501(c)(4) applications leapt from 1,500 to more than 3,400.” Frankly, there are a lot of fraudsters out there, and when there started to be a large number of new conservative nonprofits started by people without prior experience running such organizations, the field was ripe for folks to step in with fake charities, so they could collect money from outraged “tea partiers”. As an example, Ben Carson’s whole political campaign is basically a direct mailer donation scam (the people running it were previously running supplement scams, etc.) which somehow transcended its original scope and turned into a real campaign, much to the surprise of Carson and his buddies. It’s not surprising that the IRS staffers would notice a pattern of abuse with a pretty good hit rate on particular keywords, and then target groups with those keywords for increased scrutiny, making them fill out a few extra forms. It was stupid of them to do so, because the political fallout is predictable. But it’s hardly the roaring scandal it’s made out to be.

Splines 11y ago

Trying to get out of paying taxes is like arguing the score of a game after the game has ended. If you didn't like how it ended up, you should have been playing it differently. High level players are able to change the rules.

dkokelley 11y ago
I agree to a point, but to further the game analogy, no other game has rules quite so complicated. When the referees decide that you had a foul in the first quarter, you begin a complex process of determining what the result of the game would have been had the foul been caught immediately. The best "players" have great teams studying the rules. Those without the resources to do so make their best attempt by using amateur understanding and common advice.

DanBC 11y ago

See also the Sovereign Citizen Movement, who use a lot of these frivolous arguments. (FBI claims some sovereign citizens might be terrorists; Southern Poverty Law Center says there are about 100,000 hard core believers, with an extra 200,000 partial believers.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

vonklaus 11y ago

I stand wholly behind my comment referring to this as a comically absurd kafka-esque look at our nations tax code, which is ostensibly the nations funding model, however given the level of downvotes, I would like to clarify the position a bit more formally: ======================== First, I appreciate you finding these links for me, I can actually use google quite well, however, I deign to point out that having a key piece of tax law intermittently down with such regularity that it is mirrored at an offsite location, in slightly poor form. Especially given the backlash Linux Mint faced just yesterday for not protecting itself and its' users. Linux Mint of course being an open source software project that, according to Wikipedia[1], is subsidized by partners and donations on a much smaller scale than the U.S. Gov't. I will cut them some slack but I think holding the US government to a standard of one 9 of up time (on the left side of the decimal) isn't unreasonable. Now, obviously I could gave made a more cohesive argument to relay that point, which I hope is what the downbotes relay, and not disagreement. The fact that some of the core Financial frameworks for a government that controls trillions of dollars of capital via tax revenue, and this very framework is how it raises that revenue, I suspect it would not be unreasonable to think a bit about structuring the system that makes it available. In that it is served via non-secure HTTP and is so frequently down that the actual site links to a third party is somewhat troubling. More so, that the responses in fact seem to excuse this behavior which is, in fact, quite a dangerous precedent. This isn't exactly, Show HN my weekend hack, right? Given that we expect an open source operating system to do many things surrounding security, do we not also find this a pretty immense lapse in judgement? Consider: * What if a student, or hacker gained access to the server by obtaining a password and making several edits to the document. It would not be unreasonable to assume that sysadmins have access to this, much like any internal infrastructure. It is not a far fetched scenario. A large multi-corp could certainly do it, and given that the governments own site suggests it as a viable alternative. So, in the edge-case where they could not have congress insert a law directly into the tax code, they could of course cut out the middle man(joke). So while I informally made a bit of a jest, I find this downright unprofessional especially in confluence with the statement they made about: https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivolous-Tax-Arguments-Section-I-A-to-C#_Toc350157884 https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivol... Now, in fact the first income tax was actually started to fund the civil war[2] and went from 3% to 10% during that time. So, there were of course taxes but not a formal income tax. It wasn't formalized until 1919, by congress and people who make under 68K wouldn't need to file. So it isn't, in fact, unreasonable for a country formed out of a seccession from taxation rejected this notion, HOWEVER, irrespective of that argument, they make this statement: [please see link for qoutes] The rebuttal of a 1960 court case using the word "voluntary". A 1986 court case stating they a are correct And this statement, which is NOT a link: The requirement to file an income tax return is not voluntary and is clearly set forth in sections 6011(a), 6012(a), et seq., and 6072(a) of the Internal Revenue Code. See also Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-1(a). Which returns some shady book which is an entire rebuttal of what they said, but more importantly, a downed website, Cornell, and the insistence to go to Cornell to get the nations bloody tax code. So to conclude, i don't know what you guys/girls are indicating, but if your contention is I should be able to use google better, and it isn't a big deal that the online version of our nations tax code is a cached 5 year old copy on a private university server, then frankly I don't know how to respond. Consider, it would be entirely possible to retroactively change laws and court opinions if these things were not stored in a public place, in their most current form so that, other universities like Cornell, could host them as well and we would have 2 verifiable copies to make sure they hadn't been edited? So a nations laws must be officially codified, however ridiculous, in a way that is irreversibly editable given it's state in time. So that, unless a new law is passed, Someone could not edit them at all, and that the public is made aware of them, and can verifiable look at them and read them, if not understand them due to their depth and complexity. Original Comment ====================== edited for punctuation. This is so Kafka it is legitimately unclear if this is trolling. Contention: There is no law requiring taxes. I actually wanted to see what the response to this was as I wondered if it was arbitrary. It is so FUCKING more absurd than that. It is a tax form[0] which is the top answer when you google "irs tax code section 1", the relavent piece of law cited by the IRS demonstrating it's authority. Now, leaving aside the link is pretty much a table that outlines what you pay in IRS legalese, it is hosted on Cornel Universities server and the IRS says it is provided to us, by Cornell. They also casually mention it isn't current, but is mostly the same as the original as this is the 2011 version. Tl:dr, this law(and our power) is legitimate because of some case law and a 5 yearold invoice hosted on a private parties server. Unclear why they dont understand why the "myth" keeps circulating ========================= 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint#Development 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service 0. https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Tax-Code,-Regulations-and-Official-Guidance https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Tax-Code,-Regulations-... No I don't want to debate whether the IRS is legal, but whether or not anyone can credibly make the argument that this default behaviour is not, absurd.

6stringmerc 11y ago

While this is surely a warranted and useful document in its own right, I can't help but tell my own story of "Frivolous IRS Wastefulness" as a counter-balance. Some in the US might remember a year when the 'Estate Tax' was suspended - that is, if a relative died and passed along an inheritance amount, it wasn't taxable like in years prior or once the suspension expired after 2010. As a recipient of some funds - a mid single digit thousand figure - from my maternal relative passing, I paid off my credit card and - this was my mistake - included the amount received in some kind of 'income' field. This set into motion one of the most ridiculous, patience-testing exchanges in my adult life. In mid-2011, they sent me a letter wanting a check for $X,XXX. I wrote back a clear explanation of the error in question - that the funds were an inheritance and not subject to the taxes being claimed. I sent it via FedEx, and eventually got a response. They still wanted the entire $X,XXX! This back and forth - me being as polite and stubborn as possible in writing - and the IRS kept wanting money, offering no proof why the amount they claimed owed was actually owed (I asked repeatedly for citations). This went on for a FULL YEAR. In the second to last correspondence, I had pages and pages of the 2010 tax code included, with relevant highlights, obscure forms...yet still felt taking a polite (if a bit dense) tone would be better than getting angry, you know, poking a gorilla with a stick kind of thing. In the end, I sucked it up and sent them about $150, what they eventually came down to after all this time, just to get them to shut up. The IRS, without question, wasted time, resources, and money stubbornly pursuing money that they weren't entitled to at all. So, while I respect their power and genuinely believe in their mission to acquire funds to keep the government working in its basic fashion, I have absolutely no pity for staff members who have to read through line after line of bullshit excuses, because they do it too.

nightski 11y ago
Hmm, the fact that you were being ignored tells me that you actually were not getting time, resources, and money allocated to your case. It was probably the case that they lacked the time, resources, and money to take it seriously and just kept sending you the default response. Sending many pages of tax code probably hurt you in the long run.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago

LordKano 11y ago

One of the items, specifically alleging that the 16th amendment wasn't properly ratified has some merit but there's an even better counter-argument. The government will seize your property and incarcerate you if you don't pay.

Animats 11y ago

If only that applied to pretending that your company is headquartered in a tiny office in Bermuda.

kazinator 11y ago

It's amazing that some actually tried the equivocation on the word "voluntary" as far as taking it to court and losing.

tzs 11y ago

When I was in law school I liked to research "tax protestor" and "sovereign citizen" arguments to practice my legal research skills. The IRS documents submitted cover much of what I remember of these people's arguments, but not all. Some other arguments or mistakes I recall being common: • Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The case turns out to be real...but what they are quoting is not from the court's ruling but rather is from a brief submitted by the losing side. • Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The cited court exists, but the case does not. • Similar to the above, but the cited court itself does not exist. • They cite a real case from a real court, but the parts they quote to support their argument do not exist. • On those very rare occasions when they cite a real case, from a real court, and actually quote from the court's ruling, it turns out to be a ruling that was overturned quickly by a higher court. • (One of my favorites) Saying that a court lacked jurisdiction because the flag in the courtroom had a gold fringe, which they say signifies that this is an "Admiralty Court" and only has jurisdiction over the seas and navigable waterways. The article mentioned the argument that the Federal government only has authority over D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, etc., but doesn't say why some people believe that. I've seen two arguments for that belief. The first is that the Federal government was created by the Constitution specifically to run D.C. and other Federal territory and was not given any authority over anything else. The second is that there is someplace in the tax code that says something like "For purposes of this section, 'United States' includes D.C., Guam, [...]" and they think "includes" means "consists of only" (and they ignore the restriction to "this section" and so think this applies to the whole tax code). I've never run into an argument from these people that was not, frankly, idiotic. If one of their arguments does not immediately fail due to a fundamental misunderstanding of basic English, it falls apart as soon as you try to track down original sources.