Lawyer who beat IRS sues agents (1 Viewer)

[bclemms]

A lawyer who was acquitted by a federal court trial jury of Internal Revenue Service accusations he failed to filed income tax returns for two years now is suing several IRS agents over their alleged improper disclosure of his personal information in the case.

A spokeswoman in the office of lawyer Tom Cryer told WND the case was assembled and filed by Cryer between Christmas Day and the end of 2007 and is expected to be placed on the docket in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Last summer in federal court a jury voted 12-0 to find Cryer, of Shreveport, not guilty of the IRS allegations. He had been indicted on 2006 on government claims he failed to pay $73,000 to the IRS in 2000 and 2001.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59515

 

[Reddoctober]

i love that story.



this whole tax resister argument is interesting:



http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...=42&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0


who knows........

 

[Waymer]

Ok, so someone give me a reason (legit) for me to blow of the IRS like this guy did and not pay taxes come April.

 

[Reddoctober]

Ok, so someone give me a reason (legit) for me to blow of the IRS like this guy did and not pay taxes come April.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xb3pKzWikk




its obviously a fundamental construct that's understood and well-accepted and there are any number of court cases that support the irs' right to levy taxes under title 26...........somewhere.

 

[llama]

Just be prepared to mount a costly defense against the monolithic IRS. Happy Holidays!

 

[JimEverett]

Ok, so someone give me a reason (legit) for me to blow of the IRS like this guy did and not pay taxes come April.

I remember reading an article about him many months ago - before the case was decided, and while I have forgotten the details I believe his argument centered around the idea that the IRS is not allowing taxpayers to discount the costs of earning an income.
The way I interepreted it was that your free time is worth somethng, and you give that up to work so its a cost just like buyin a piece of office equipment. Putting forth mental and physical effort is a cost, that the IRS does not allow you to deduct from your gross income, etc., etc.

 

[Hoyasaint]

I remember reading an article about him many months ago - before the case was decided, and while I have forgotten the details I believe his argument centered around the idea that the IRS is not allowing taxpayers to discount the costs of earning an income.
The way I interepreted it was that your free time is worth somethng, and you give that up to work so its a cost just like buyin a piece of office equipment. Putting forth mental and physical effort is a cost, that the IRS does not allow you to deduct from your gross income, etc., etc.

Exactly. There is a thread somewhere on here (or the old board) that discussed this case the first time around. HE was essentially arguing that as a provider of professional services he should be entitled to approach his income like a manufacturer does. In the case of the manu. its (in most basic form):
Sales - cost of goods sold = profit

He was arguing that his cost of goods sold was the time and effort it took him to perform his services, then he went on to say that this amount was equal to what he billed people. Therefore 0 profit which = 0 taxes.

As I said at the time, it is a rather interesting approach that has a logical connection to accounting. Not sure that I'd pursue it, but mostly because I don't have the time or resources to fight it.

 

[staphory]

Has anyone ever read a legal document and found anything in it that remotely resembles the english language ?
It is difficult to asertain the facts because of the purposeful intention to keep those facts distorted .

....
I , for one , have not done mountains of research on the subject , but
part of what I do know is that the Supreme Court has ruled that the 16th
amendment does not give the IRS the authority to tax labor and wages .

...

I stopped reading right there.
Whatever website you copied that from is wrong.


http://www.usconstitution.net/constamnotes.html
16th Amendment
In 1895, in the Supreme Court case of Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust (157 U.S. 429), the Court disallowed a federal tax on income from real property. The tax was designed to be an indirect tax, which would mean that states need not contribute portions of a whole relative to its census figures. The Court, however, ruled that the tax was a direct tax and subject to apportionment. This was the last in a series of conflicting court decisions dating back to the Civil War. Between 1895 and 1909, when the amendment was passed by Congress, the Court began to back down on its position, as it became clear not only to accountants but to everyone that the solvency of the nation was in jeopardy. In a series of cases, the definition of "direct tax" was modified, bent, twisted, and coaxed to allow more taxation efforts that approached an income tax.
Finally, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, any doubt was removed. The text of the Amendment makes it clear that though the categories of direct and indirect taxation still exist, any determination that income tax is a direct tax will be irrelevant, because taxes on incomes, from salary or from real estate, are explicitly to be treated as indirect. The Congress passed the Amendment on July 12, 1909, and it was ratified on February 3, 1913 (1,302 days).


http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml

 

[bclemms]

I stopped reading right there.
Whatever website you copied that from is wrong.


http://www.usconstitution.net/constamnotes.html
16th Amendment
In 1895, in the Supreme Court case of Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust (157 U.S. 429), the Court disallowed a federal tax on income from real property. The tax was designed to be an indirect tax, which would mean that states need not contribute portions of a whole relative to its census figures. The Court, however, ruled that the tax was a direct tax and subject to apportionment. This was the last in a series of conflicting court decisions dating back to the Civil War. Between 1895 and 1909, when the amendment was passed by Congress, the Court began to back down on its position, as it became clear not only to accountants but to everyone that the solvency of the nation was in jeopardy. In a series of cases, the definition of "direct tax" was modified, bent, twisted, and coaxed to allow more taxation efforts that approached an income tax.
Finally, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, any doubt was removed. The text of the Amendment makes it clear that though the categories of direct and indirect taxation still exist, any determination that income tax is a direct tax will be irrelevant, because taxes on incomes, from salary or from real estate, are explicitly to be treated as indirect. The Congress passed the Amendment on July 12, 1909, and it was ratified on February 3, 1913 (1,302 days).


http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml

http://www.ahherald.com/bishop/2003/gb031016_fed_income_tax.htm

 

[Sardonios]

http://www.ahherald.com/bishop/2003/gb031016_fed_income_tax.htm

This line of argument has been repeatedly rejected. Thomas v. U.S. is a good example:

Thomas is a tax protester, and one of his arguments is that he did not need to file tax returns because the sixteenth amendment is not part of the constitution. It was not properly ratified, Thomas insists, repeating the argument of W. Benson & M. Beckman, The Law That Never Was (1985). Benson and Beckman review the documents concerning the states' ratification of the sixteenth amendment and conclude that only four states ratified the sixteenth amendment; they insist that the official promulgation of that amendment by Secretary of State Knox in 1913 is therefore void.

Benson and Beckman did not discover anything; they rediscovered something that Secretary Knox considered in 1913. Thirty-eight states ratified the sixteenth amendment, and thirty-seven sent formal instruments of ratification to the Secretary of State. (Minnesota notified the Secretary orally, and additional states ratified later; we consider only those Secretary Knox considered.) Only four instruments repeat the language of the sixteenth amendment exactly as Congress approved it. The others contain errors of diction, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. The text Congress transmitted to the states was: “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.” Many of the instruments neglected to capitalize “States,” and some capitalized other words instead. The instrument from Illinois had “remuneration” in place of “enumeration”; the instrument from Missouri substituted “levy” for “lay”; the instrument from Washington had “income” not “incomes”; others made similar blunders.


Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and-taking into account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial problems-advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.

Although Thomas urges us to take the view of several state courts that only agreement on the literal text may make a legal document effective, the Supreme Court follows the “enrolled bill rule.” If a legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the appropriate officials, the court treats that document as properly adopted. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294 (1892). The principle is equally applicable to constitutional amendments.

There are numerous similar cases in the various circuits.

I remember reading an article about him many months ago - before the case was decided, and while I have forgotten the details I believe his argument centered around the idea that the IRS is not allowing taxpayers to discount the costs of earning an income.
The way I interepreted it was that your free time is worth somethng, and you give that up to work so its a cost just like buyin a piece of office equipment. Putting forth mental and physical effort is a cost, that the IRS does not allow you to deduct from your gross income, etc., etc.

I hadn't heard of this case until this thread. It sounds like he's basically making the case for taxing imputed income, but in reverse. Have I got that right?

And from what little I've found on the case, it appears that his tax liability wasn't at issue here (we're not in tax court and he's not trying to recover taxes already paid, so I don't see how his tax liability can be at issue; please correct me if I'm wrong); instead it looks like this case involved criminal charges for, basically, attempting to illegally avoid paying a portion of his income tax. The jury's acquittal of the criminal charges, then, would seem say little about his liability to pay the underlying taxes. His "this is not a valid tax" argument appears to come from a motion to dismiss, which the court rejected as without merit.

I'm trying to play catch-up here, so I'm asking this in all sincerity: Have I got this completely wrong? The case doesn't seem that remarkable if I've read it correctly. Maybe they failed to show wilfullness, or maybe his actions didn't meet the requirements for evasion. Even if acquitted, he would still have to pay the tax (unless he challenges the IRS' recalculation of his taxes and succeeds), right?

 

[Reddoctober]

pulled this up.....


my computer won't open the files for the trial transcripts here, so can anyone fill me in on what exactly transpired in case.








http://nmclvie.blogspot.com/2007/09/tom-cryer-case-references.html



Reference documents (all PDF type files):

• Memorandum File (300kb)
• Criminal Docket History File (25kb)
• Cryer Bio (12kb)
• Trial Brief (851kb)
• Jury Instructions (710kb)
• Defendant's Requested Voir Dire (313kb)
• Government Response (152kb)
• Cryer's Reply to Government Response (808kb)

• Trial Transcript - Vol. 1 (145kb)
• Trial Transcript - Vol. 2 (153kb)
• Trial Transcript - Vol. 3 (171kb)
• Trial Transcript - Vol. 4 (145kb)

http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=255218





how did they reach a verdict? what were the findings?



all i got were opening arguments in vol. 1 but i can't open the others.