Free Speech?

Larken Rose believes your income if wholly earned in the United States is not taxable. He came to this belief by studying the income tax law and its history. He produced a video now available on Google explaining some of his reasons for his belief. He dared the IRS to prosecute him. They did. He lost his case in a jury trial and is doing 15 months in Club Fed. His wife did one month. Nothing too unusual here.

Former IRS Criminal Investigative Division (CID) Special Agent and CPA Joseph Banister was tried for giving information to and engaging in a criminal conspiracy with a California buisness man to avoid Federal taxes. He was acquited. Interesingly enough, in the Banister trial the IRS could produce no evidence that Banister owed income taxes.

During the trial, Banister's former supervisor at IRS's San Jose CID office, Robert Gorini (who testified via video recording) when pointedly asked, was unable to cite any U.S. law that required Banister to pay income taxes.

Banister, who was forced to resign in 1999 after questioning IRS officials about their legal authority, gave Thompson's worker's a presentation in 2000 which reviewed his detailed investigative research of U.S. tax law which concluded that not only did the IRS lack any authority to impose income taxes on the workers, but there was no legal requirement for the business to withhold any taxes from the worker's paychecks.

OK. So what you ask does this have to do with free speech?

Larken had two www sites describing in detail his beliefs. TaxableIncome.net and Theft-By-Deception.com. If you click on those links you get a 404 error. Not found. Why is that? Because as part of the settlement of the case Larken was required to take down the www sites in question. Chilling isn't it? There is plenty of good and not so good information on the 'net. Yet in the case of tax information free speech is not allowed. Chilling isn't it?

Here is what Larken has to say on the matter of his trial.

They acknowledge that we have a right to show that we did what we believe the law requires . . . they just don't want us to be allowed to show the jury ANY section of the statutes or regulations . . . or QUOTE from any section . . . or show them my "Taxable Income" report . . . or the Theft By Deception video.

Feel free to be amazed, but don't be scared. This isn't a surprise at all, and about 80 percent of my rebuttal has been sitting here for weeks, waiting to be completed once I got their looney motion, which I knew was coming. "Sure, you can show what you believed . . . as long as you don't say anything about the law." Interesting view of "justice" they have.

Pretty chilling isn't it? You can't quote the law in your defence. Not only that they have told Larken - the American people are not allowed to evaluate your position even outside a court of law. Free speech in America? You decide.

This flash presentation 861 Evidence might also be of interest. Joseph Banister appears in the video as well as Sherry Peel Jackson CPA and former IRS agent. More details on the Joe Banister trial.

It is not just the "Campaign Finance Reform" Laws we have to fear. The IRS is in on the act too.

Interestingly the Paper Work Reduction Act says that all paperwork required by the government must be certified by the government as required by law. There is no such requirement for form 1040.

In Section 3512 of the Act, titled "Public Protection," it says that no person shall be subject to any penalty for failing to comply with an agency’s collection of information request (such as a 1040 form), if the request does not display a valid control number assigned by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in accordance with the requirements of the Act, or if the agency fails to inform the person who is to respond to the collection of information that he is not required to respond to the collection of information request unless it displays a valid control number.

There was a case brought up in Illinois on this very point. What happened?

On May 12, 2006 in Peoria, Illinois, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) begged the court to dismiss all charges against IRS victim Robert Lawrence in federal District Court.

The motion for dismissal came on the heels of a surprise tactic by Lawrence’s defense attorney Oscar Stilley.

The tactic threatened exposure of IRS’s on-going efforts to defraud the public. The move put DOJ attorneys in a state of panic that left them with only one alternative: beg for dismissal, with prejudice.

Stilley’s tactic paid off. Sixty days earlier, the DOJ had indicted Lawrence on three counts of willful failure to file a 1040 form, and three felony counts of income tax evasion. The federal Judge dismissed all charges with prejudice, meaning the DOJ cannot charge Lawrence with those crimes again.

Cross Posted at Classical Values