WTF!!! There is not a law enforcing us to pay Income Taxes?

Very deranged antisocial Randy Weaver types try to make this case regularly. Try not paying it, and see what happens. I don't think you'll be happy with the results.

 

The law was never written, and the 16th amendment was never ratified. It is rule by power and not by law. If you choose to stop paying income tax, good luck. It's the right thing to do, but I don't have the courage.

 

The United States also didn't have the authority to keep the CSA from splitting off. They waged a war over it anyway. The United States Constitution does not give the federal government the right to regulate drugs or medicine but it still happens.

If you get all worked up over finding out determining the exact legal minutia on this you are wasting your time. If it were 1913 you might have a chance to do something about it. Essentially it is at this point the equivilent of English Common Law, in that it is non-statutory precedent.

 

I don't. I used to run bake sales for my college's Accounting Society, and the one it would take to pay for our Defense budget alone would be a logistical nightmare.

 

Could someone summarize the video?

I did a little research on Wikipedia on the 16th Ammendment and here's what it says regarding the controversy:

Ratification of 16th Ammendment:

"In response to these developments, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed by the Sixty-first Congress and submitted to legislatures of the several states on July 12th, 1909. The amendment was the crowning feature of a larger trend of legislative action meant to curb the power of the wealthy. The famous Pujo Committee Hearings, which aired the incestuous relationship between banks and corporate interests, were held during ratification, and the Clayton Antitrust Act was enacted shortly thereafter.

On February 25, 1913, the Republican Secretary of State Philander Knox proclaimed that the amendment had been ratified by the necessary three-quarters of the states ensuring the constitutionality of unapportioned federal income taxes.

The amendment was ratified by 42 states in all: Alabama on August 10, 1909, Kentucky on February 8, 1910, South Carolina on February 19, Illinois on March 1, Mississippi on March 7, Oklahoma on March 10, Maryland on April 8, Georgia on August 3, Texas on August 16, Ohio on January 19, 1911, Idaho on January 20, Oregon on January 23, Washington on January 26, Indiana and Montana on January 30, California and Nevada on January 31, South Dakota on February 3, Nebraska on February 9, North Carolina on February 11, Colorado on February 15, North Dakota on February 17, Kansas on February 18, Michigan on February 23, Iowa on February 24, Missouri on March 16, Maine on March 31, Tennessee on April 7, Arkansas on April 22, Wisconsin on May 26, New York on July 12, Arizona on April 6, 1912, Minnesota on June 11, Louisiana on June 28, West Virginia on January 31, 1913, New Mexico on February 3 (the 36th state to ratify), Delaware and Wyoming on February 3, New Jersey on February 4, Vermont on February 19, Massachusetts on March 4, and New Hampshire on March 7. Arizona and New Hampshire ratified after an earlier rejection. Ratification was rejected by Rhode Island on April 29, 1910, Utah on March 9, 1911 Connecticut on June 28, 1911, and Florida on May 31, 1913. Virginia and Pennsylvania failed to complete action on the amendment.[8]"

Controversy over Ratification:
"The article Tax protester constitutional arguments covers this topic in considerably more detail, including details on the specific arguments made against ratification.

Some tax protesters, conspiracy investigators, and others opposed to income taxes cite what they contend is evidence that the Sixteenth Amendment was never "properly ratified." One such argument is that because the legislatures of various states passed resolutions of ratification with different capitalization, spelling of words, or punctuation marks (e.g. semi-colons instead of commas) from the text proposed by Congress, those states' ratifications were invalid. A related argument is that various states illegally violated procedural requirements of their constitutions when passing their ratification resolutions. Another argument made by some tax protesters regards Ohio, one of the states listed as ratifying the amendment. They contend that because Congress did not pass an official proclamation recognizing Ohio's date of admission (1803) to statehood until 1953 (see Ohio Constitution), Ohio was not a state until 1953 (and, therefore, could not have ratified the Sixteenth Amendment). These and similar arguments have been universally rejected by the courts."

Some interesting info regarding the power of the Fed. to tax incomes even without the 16th Ammendment:
"In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad,[9] the Supreme Court indicated that the Sixteenth Amendment did not give the Congress a new power to tax incomes, as Congress already had that power. Although an income tax on income from property had been deemed (under Pollock, above) to be a direct tax, and an income tax on wages, etc., had been deemed to be an indirect tax (an excise), the Court in Brushaber decided that, after the Sixteenth Amendment, the Constitution allows Congress to tax any incomes without apportionment among the states by population (and without regard to any census or enumeration) regardless of the source of the income -- that is, regardless of whether the particular income tax is deemed direct (such as a tax on income from property) or indirect (i.e., an excise, such as a tax on income from labor). The Sixteenth Amendment made the distinction between a direct tax and an indirect tax constitutionally irrelevant with respect to the apportionment of income taxes by removing the apportionment requirement for income taxes. In Brushaber, the Court upheld the validity of the Federal income tax statute under the U.S. Constitution as amended by the Sixteenth Amendment.

In the Supreme Court case of Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co.,[10] Mr. Justice Butler stated:

It was not the purpose or the effect of that amendment to bring any new subject within the taxing power. Congress already had the power to tax all incomes. But taxes on incomes from some sources had been held to be "direct taxes" within the meaning of the constitutional requirement as to apportionment. [cites omitted] The Amendment relieved from that requirement and obliterated the distinction in that respect between taxes on income that are direct taxes and those that are not, and so put on the same basis all incomes "from whatever source derived". [cites omitted] "Income" has been taken to mean the same thing as used in the Corporation Excise Tax of 1909 (36 Stat. 112), in the Sixteenth Amendment, and in the various revenue acts subsequently passed. [cites omitted] After full consideration, this court declared that income may be defined as gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, including profit gained through sale or conversion of capital.

Although the Sixteenth Amendment is often cited as the "source" of the Congressional power to tax incomes, at least one court has reiterated the point made in Brushaber and other cases that the Sixteenth Amendment itself did not grant the U.S. Congress the power to tax incomes (a power Congress has had since the late 1700s), but only removed the requirement, if any, that any income tax be apportioned among the states according to population:

In dealing with the scope of the taxing power the question has sometimes been framed in terms of whether something can be taxed as income under the Sixteenth Amendment. This is an inaccurate formulation [ . . . ] and has led to much loose thinking on the subject. The source of the taxing power is not the Sixteenth Amendment; it is Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution.[11]

John R. Luckey, legislative attorney for the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service writes on page four of "FAQ Concerning The Federal Income Tax" that "the Court found that the Sixteenth Amendment sought to restrain the Court from viewing an income tax, because of its close effect on the underlying property as a direct tax."

 

Taxes are a necessity. I don't mind paying taxes. What I do mind is how they are spend and how the poor class is abused and the lazy class is rewarded.

 

It's amazing that almost every discussion on taxes on this board inevitably becomes a referendum on the laziness of the poor. It's almost pavlovian.

 

he actually makes a distinction, yah know. The Poor gets abused, and the lazy get rewarded. your rgument in the GW thread is messing you up. Go eat some wheaties.

 

But neither of the two things is really relevant (to what is actually a pretty silly thread, of course there is a law that says you have to pay taxes) , but they get brought in nonetheless like always:http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=2593560&highlight=Poor#post2593560

 

This is pretty silly. The non-ratification of the 16th amendment is based on the argument that grammatical differences between the various forms of the amendment pushed through the states technically meant that each state was ratifying something different, which while technically true, ignores the fact that this has been an issue with other amendments in the past. The only amendment people make this argument against is the 16th, which is pretty ludicrous.

Also, I'm not entirely sure the amendment was even necessary. As pointed out earlier, Article I - Section 8 explicitly grants Congress that right to levy taxes, duties, etc.. and furthermore it doesn't even qualify how those taxes can be made. (It does qualify duties and other excises) In fact that was one big change from the articles of confederation. The Articles were explicit and stated that Congress could only fund itself from import/export duties or funds from the states.

Pay your taxes, the income tax is legal and the constitution itself is built to grant some level of leeway regarding interpretations of law, so this argument is a non-starter for me

 

For a summary, look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America:_Freedom_to_Fascism

 

Thanks. I was being to lazy to look up the article but I knew it was in there.

 

I don't remember what the case was but I recall there was a USSC ruling shortly after the Civil War that said that the income tax was illegal so I'm not sure that Article I - Sec. 8 explicitly granted Congress the power to levy income taxes.