You’re wrong on both sides of this formulation, so it’s no wonder you find the answers already posted and linked to incomprehensible.
The Bill of Rights, which includes the Fifth Amendment, is a series of restrictions on government powers. They restrict the government in a number of different ways. Remember that the authors of the Bill of Rights had had recent experience with a government that did not respect such restrictions on its power. People tend to forget that the Bill of Rights was written by people concerned with local issues and things they personally experienced. Check out the Third Amendment sometime if you doubt me.
The point is, the authors did not add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution just to “protect us” in legal activities. This misconception of yours (along with the misconception that paying taxes is somehow a punishment inflicted on you) has to be left aside before you can understand anything else.
The other half of your misconception is that the Fifth Amendment was for some reason added to the Constitution to protect the guilty. Like the Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, the Fifth was intended more to protect the innocent from wrongful convictions. Put in your simplistic formulations:
You earn honest money -> Good -> you’re protected by the Fifth Amendment in criminal court
You steal -> Bad ->you’re still protected by the Fifth Amendment in criminal court
I suspected that! But all I can remember is the line about “the law requires written records. Check again, the law can’t even require one to read and write. The man forgot his briefcase. … Dad never argued and never gave in.”
Been a few decades since I last read that book as well…
But the 1040 does ask for your occupation. What if I made $200k last year from selling cocaine? Do I have to put “drug dealer” on the form and expose myself to prosecution? If I say something else, then that would be lying on a federal form, perjury perhaps since I sign it.
What if I leave it blank? Would that be legit or could it be used by the feds to investigate me further?
You earn honest money -> Good -> you’re protected by the Fifth Amendment in criminal court
Protected? If I am protected, why the hell I have to put anything in tax return. Anyway, there is another interesting point though. A drug dealer, (which I am not), can put salesman, businessman, trader, or pharm. Hmm… I’ll get back to it.
But then IRS will require further info no? Receipts? Contacts? Connections? Otherwise, it will be very difficult for IRS to track down and proof that you earned more than what you claim. How did Al Capone get convicted anyway? He honestly say he is a salesman right? So why is he still convicted?
My gutt feeling is thieves and robbers simply don’t bother mentioning their income and somehow IRS won’t pursue them either.
You see, Irwin lost his case because his argument is considered frivolous. Irwin first argument is that he doesn’t fill tax return because he’d rather appeal the fifth.
I think there is a supreme court case that decided that it’s not constitutional but it’s 5 against 4. Boy, I still have Irwin book somewhere…
I mean to what extend we must put information in our tax return anyway?
From one extreme to another I see far away on the right.
Put nothing.
From the other extreme, I see
2. Put everything, that you make money by robbing, killing, drug dealing, child raping for hire, and judge killing.
Now criminals are usually allowed to simply put 1 in their testimony. However, okay okay, the 5th amendment cannot be used for putting 1. So we got to put something, and it must be true. How much we MUST put. Can’t be 2. Otherwise, all thieves and robbers would have been caught. How much must we put? Anyone knows?
Is it okay to just put a vague number that you feel right like $5k income in a year and hide everything else.
I mean, when IRS want to convict you court of law, you just say you forget and let them do all the work of proofing that you did earn more than $5k. They got the burden of proof right, in criminal case?
Okay, that 1.1 doesn’t work. So we must put something more than that. How much? What’s the limit?
If you get audited, which is a rare occurance. Obviously in the case of Capone, they specially ordered his audit, knowing they’d find income way, way larger than what he reported.
Capone was not convicted of claiming he had a Secondhand Furniture business where in fact he was a mobster. He was convicted of not reporting something like 99% of his actual income. The fact that his income had an illegal source made for much stiffer sentencing. That and attempting to bribe the jury.
It’s true that most criminals do not bother even trying to report their income honestly, but after all, they are criminals and criminals figure they won’t get caught.
Some Bookies and gamblers do report income which appears to be reasonable.
There are two obvious faults with teguh123’s arguments.
One is that the IRS cares primarily about the source of income. It doesn’t. Law enforcement agencies might, but the IRS is not a law enforcement agency. It cares about you not paying taxes, which is a crime in and of itself. (Some tax protesters deny this, but that also is nonsense covered by my earlier cite.)
The other is that illegal acts can do anything other than to lead to more illegal acts. Once you commit “robbing, killing, drug dealing, child raping for hire, and judge killing” everything else you do as a result is tainted by those crimes. The fifth amendment gives them the legal right to not testify against themselves in court. It does not give them any right to make further lies about their crimes.
You can’t make a case if your premises are false to begin with. That’s where you are going wrong. That puts you in the bad company of Irwin Schiff, whose arguments also depended on false premises. His arguments were so wrong that the courts found them frivolous. The same problem applies to your arguments.
