Sometime last week Glenn Beck posed a question: what if one million people did not pay their taxes? Beck couched this statement in the context of civil disobedience, citing a quote from Gandhi. He also added a disclaimer: ""I want to be clear on one thing, I am not advocating that people should not pay their income tax." While this is a nice disclaimer, it is (in my opinion) too little to blunt the central thrust of his argument/editorial. In essence, Mr. Beck was advocating a criminal act.
While I cannot comment on the first amendment issues regarding Mr. Beck's statements, I can tell you the following points about tax law.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states Congress has the power to lay and collect taxes. Secondly, the 16th Amendment states: "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." In other words, the income tax is constitutional if Congress wants to use that power. It has. If you don't like it, then I suggest you work to repeal the 16th Amendment and Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
The US code, (26 USC 6012) states: "Returns with respect to income taxes under subtitle A shall be made by the following:...Every individual having for the taxable year gross income which equals or exceeds the exemption amount, except that a return shall not be required of an individual." In other words if your income exceeds the exemption amount you have to file a return. That's the law.
Black's Law Dictionary (copyright 2004) provides the following definition of tax evasion: "The willful attempt to defeat or circumvent the tax law in order to illegally reduce one's tax liability." Put another way, if your intention is to not pay taxes when they are owed the government can hit you with fines and jail time.
However, taxpayers are allowed to plan their affairs to minimum their tax liability. This was the essential ruling in Gregory v. Helvering a 1935 Supreme Court case. That case stated, "The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted."
If as a lawyer I engaged in any sentiment similar to what Mr. Beck is advocating I would be disbarred. Period. No ifs ands or buts. While I'm sure Mr. Beck does not see it that way, the reality is his statements are encouraging people to think about breaking the law.
But more to the point. Here is what infuriates me about the tea party, anti-tax people. Where were these people from 2001-2006 when the Republican dominated Congress (starting in 2003) added over $500 billion dollars of net new debt per year to the total national debt? Here is a listing from the Bureau fo Public Debt:
09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86
When their party was in power, deficit spending was OK. There were no tea parties, or calls to not file your taxes. But when a Democrat does it they feign outrage and scream from the top of their lungs that we're all going to hell in a handbasket. The double standard they apply is stunning.
In addition, I was against the Iraq War more or less from the beginning. My arguments against the war were primarily economic; simply put you can't cut taxes and engage in a protracted war and not run massive deficits. As the chart above demonstrates, you really can't. If I had written a column saying withholding your taxes from a war which you disagreed with was patriotic the entire right wing noise machine would have come down on top of me like a ton of bricks. Yet that is exactly what they are doing now. The bottom line is Beck and his ilk are nothing more than 10 year old children who scream when they don't get their way.
So -- to those of you who are thinking about not filing your taxes, it's really not a good idea.
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How come the whole thing is not decided by formula so we do not need tax lawyers?
I don't mind paying taxes but it pisses me off that people get exemptions and deductions for this that and everything else.
As for why you need to file, it's because not all income, and certainly not all expenses, are reported to the IRS, so you need to prepare a return to accurately determine your taxes, or refund, due.
As for deductions and exemptions
There's a whole host of ways.
For example, employers who rely upon manual labor and who don't want to pay employment taxes (raised signifigan
As another example, illegal aliens who provide manual labor and others in similar situations who don't want to pay income taxes can give a phoney social security number and falsly claim a number of dependents so that the withholdin
This is not just a problem involving illegal aliens from Mexico. Just go to Chinatown in San Francisco and try to find someone who pays income taxes. There are also a number of Americans, including Native Americans, who don't pay income taxes.
If you want to see how the ultra-weal
It seems that everyone there has a problem once picked for office by Obama!
"the rate at which taxpayers pay their taxes voluntaril
http://www
Occasional
This can mean that either (1) the low tax-paying multi-mill
I'll let you decide which one is right.
I can tell you this - and you know it's true - there is a general absence of cases in which attorneys have been disbarred for advising wealthy clients on how to evade the law. Of course, perhaps none of them do that.
There is a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion, but can it be said that attorneys don't teach tax evasion. If Texas disbars attorneys for doing so, why aren't more Texas attorneys disbarred for doing so?
Perhaps what upsets you is that there are various credits, deductions
Also, you fail to consider that tax evasion as a defined under criminal law is an EXTREMELY difficult crime to prove. The defense is always, "Well, the tax implicatio
You said a mouthful, Mr. Stewart...
As usual the same old GOP mantra:
If you're hungry - starve;
If you're sick - die;
And if you are homeless and have to live in your car - don't park it on my street!