GIVE THE BULLY A BLOODY NOSE

            By Bill Conklin

When the IRS first attacked me, I didn't know what to do.  Then I learned to fight back!

            When I was a kid, I was sort of shy and timid and skinny, I was a natural target for the bullies hanging around the fifth grade.  When they beat up on me, I would run away and cry.  Then one day, when I got a little older a big kid was pushing me around and calling me a sissy.  I had just finished reading a book on self-defense; so I put my foot behind the bully and pushed him hard.  He fell down to the ground with an extreme surprise, and he fell real hard.  He never pushed me around again.

            The Internal Revenue Service is bullyhood personified in a huge bureaucracy.  Probably many of those bullies from the fifth grade are now IRS employees, throwing their immense power around beating up on people.  The fear of the middle class and their willingness to waive their Fifth Amendment Rights and put up with the tyranny of oppression from the out of control agency and its employees, is adding lots of fuel to the fire.  If all individuals who were audited by the IRS weren't afraid to strike back and had read their self-defense material first, the bully would be licking its wounds rather than harassing the middle class. Remember that it is the middle class that generally takes the IRS' heat.  Rich people can invest in tax-exempts that pay tax-free interest and they can live without paying any income tax.  Poor people don't pay income tax since they are on welfare or are living on the street.  The middle class,  which is getting poorer by the year, bears the brunt of the IRS bullyhood.  Therefore, it is extremely important to give the IRS a taste of its own medicine.

            The IRS is so out of control and so cocky about their power that they made tremendous procedural mistakes.  A knowledgeable pro se can continually beat them up in court for making procedural errors.  Since the IRS has lots of employee turnover, they will never learn to do it right. Therefore, one must constantly attack the IRS in Court.  Not only will the IRS be overwhelmed with the litigation, but it will get sick and tired of getting it nose bloodied when it harasses poor innocent middle class individuals.

            Surprisingly, the Internal Revenue Code has some built in maneuvers that could destroy the IRS if they were used properly.

By golly, I can fight back, I am going to get an Internal Revenue Code Book and check this stuff out!

            If you will open your Internal Revenue Code to Chapter 76: Judicial Proceedings, Subchapter B: Proceedings by Taxpayers and Third Parties, you will find a self-defense manual written into the Internal Revenue Code. Its purpose is to help you give the IRS a bloody nose.

            Sections that help individuals to fight the fascists are the following:

            Section 7422.  Civil Actions for a Refund.  This section states that individuals can pay the amounts that are illegally assessed and then file a claim for a refund. If the IRS doesn't cough up the goods, a smart freedom fighter can sue it.  What if everyone quit filing tax returns and let the employers send funds to the IRS; and then they sued the IRS arguing that since they made no self-assessment, the IRS shouldn't have any money?  It is easier to file a lawsuit than it is to file a tax return.  Could the IRS deal with 100,000,000 lawsuits in Federal Court?

            Section 7426.  Civil actions by persons other than taxpayers.  This section states that individuals can sue the IRS if they get levied for the property of another.

            Section 7429.  Review of jeopardy assessments.  The IRS has a procedure with which they can take property of individuals without following normal assessment procedures. However, after the seizure, this Section gives the individuals the right to go after the IRS with lots of gusto.

            Section 7430.  Awarding of costs and certain fees.  This section allows the guy who pops the IRS weasel to get awards and fees against the IRS if he follows the proper procedures

            Section 7431.  Civil damages for unauthorized disclosure of returns and returns information.  This section is a great one and the knowledgeable Freedom Fighter can really let the bully have it under this section.  The IRS really does make a lot of mistakes under this statute.

            Section 7432.  Civil damages for failure to release lien.  This section allows freedom fighters to sue the IRS if it doesn't release a lien that it should have released.

            Section 7433.  Civil damages for certain unauthorized collection actions.  This section allows the freedom fighter to sue the IRS for actual damages that an action might have caused.  For example if a guy looses his job and his paycheck because the IRS conducted an unauthorized collection action, the government could be in big trouble under this statute. Recently a guy named Elvis Johnson sued the IRS and blasted them for five million bucks.

            Now it is true that the Internal Revenue Code is a big and very boring book. It is real hard to understand and that is why most people don't read it very much.  It is also pretty hard for judges to understand and that is why there are so many volumes of information interpreting what it says. However, the few Code Sections listed above make for some very interesting reading.  So if you would like to learn how to pop the weasel in your spare time; take your dusty IRC off the shelf and look up the Code Sections we have just discussed, you might just get inspired to try giving the bully a bloody nose when he ambushes you.  Remember that the best way to train a bully to be a respectable individual is to give him some of his own medicine.  Hope you enjoy reading!

The History of the Freedom Movement continued

            Arthur Porth was the founder of the current Freedom Movement in the United States.  He was the best known and most active rebel during the 1950s.  In 1952, he sent the IRS $125.00 as withholding from one of his employees and he sued the IRS for a refund, arguing that since he was an unpaid tax collector, he was subjected to involuntary servitude which was outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

            In 1957, the IRS seized his records and assessed a deficiency of $4,000 on him.  He refused to pay and the IRS put a lien on his house.  He finally compromised at $3,000.  After that, he got all of the property out of his name and decided to challenge the IRS based on U.S. v. Sullivan which states that a taxpayer need not divulge privileged or incriminating information. 

            He submitted blank tax returns for the years 1961, 1962 and 1963.  He wrote: "I plead the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of America." on the returns.  The IRS issued a summons to him demanding all his records.  He fought back but had a heart attack and he finally turned over his 1963 records to the IRS.  The IRS used the information to proceed against him criminally. 

            In the meantime, he published a Manual for Those who think that They Must Pay An Income Tax, in which he argued that no one need "become fearful of an agent or officer of the Internal Revenue Service."  He traveled the country distributing the literature arguing that individuals did not have to file "proper income tax forms."

            Finally the IRS struck.  On October 21, 1965, he was indicted in a three-count grand jury indictment.  He was indicted for failing to collect from his employees and for failing to make an accounting of his earnings on a tax return.  He went to trial and was convicted.  The judge sentenced him to 13 years in a federal pen and a fine of $50,000.  Later, the judge reduced the fine and allowed the sentence to run concurrently which reduced the sentence to five years.  After his appeals were exhausted, he was transported to the U.S. Medical Center for the criminally insane, as were the dissidents in Russia.          

            A big protest started as hundreds of people realized that a political prisoner had been placed in an institution for the criminally insane.  The warden received hundreds of phone calls.  Mr. Porth was released on probation after 77 days, and hundreds of people who had never resisted the income tax became non-filers.  The IRS' prosecution of Mr. Porth backfired, because he was able to get so much momentum behind him. He continued as a leader in the movement for many years after that.  Porth emerged a hero from the encounter while his prosecutors have disappeared from history.  Today, we can take great strength from this brave man who knew forty years ago what many are just beginning to realize today: The government cannot legally require individuals to file tax returns. 

            Vaughn Ellsworth is another great freedom fighter from the beginning of the fight.  He was one of the first and most well known patriots to challenge the unconstitutional administration of the Internal Revenue Code.  Starting in 1969, he filed blank income tax returns with only his name and address, but he did not include any data for the computation of the income tax. 

            Ellsworth argued that Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in specie as required by the Constitution.  He pasted a pre-1965 coin to the upper right-hand corner of his 1040 with the suggestion that it should be used to pay off the national debt.  He wrote many pamphlets advising other tax freedom fighters of methods to defeat the IRS.  Finally, after ten years, the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS came to his office and read him a Miranda Warning.  In 1975, Ellsworth was subjected to a kangaroo trial.  The Judge took over the job as prosecutor.  The jury, which consisted largely of retired individuals living on Social Security, convicted him.  The judge offered him probation if he would file proper returns and give up his battle against the IRS.  Vaughn turned down the judge and he was incarcerated at Terminal Island, California on July 25, 1977.  He pumped out letters and news releases from prison.  In one release he stated: "I turned down a suspended sentence and took, instead, a three-year prison term rather than abandon my opposition to the income tax, based on constitutional issues... After my six day trial, in which the judge denied me assistance of counsel, apparently he was partially ashamed of his role in which he acted as ‘prosecutor' before a courtroom filled with the Defendant's friends."

            Ellsworth was prosecuted for his outspoken criticism.  In one of his many news releases during his prison term, he stated:  "A few, perhaps many, persons are going to j ail for standing up for the interests and inalienable rights for which our forefathers risked their liberty and their blood...Again, my only regret is that I did not learn earlier so that I could have fought more successfully with court procedures, etc.  I know that my constitutional arguments are sound--and they must be maintained.  Vaughn spent a year in prison and jumped back into the fray.

            Today, we must be grateful to these two famous freedom fighters for their very early brave stands.  The income tax system gets weaker by the day, because Vaughn and Arthur pulled the first bricks from its foundation.  We owe them a debt for pushing the first domino.  It is up to us to continue on the course.  The income tax must go.