… simply claim that the hamsters ate your 1040 (and the OP) 
Zev Steinhardt
So, is this debate then fully resolved then?
This isn’t gonna turn into one of them “Sovereign Citizen”/“Patriot” tax protestor arguments, is it?
Just about all of those arguments have already been debunked in Dan Evans’ Tax Protestor FAQ.
My OP! Its gone!
Heres the link to Irwin Schiff who says no one has to pay and he hasn’t either.
http://www.paynoincometax.com
I was wondering what would happen if Everyone stopped paying!
Uh – what it says in tracer’s link. If you really enjoy expanding a Federal judge’s vocabulary (or at least what they use in their opinions), then by all means don’t pay taxes.
If threat of prison isn’t enough, render under to Caesar and all that (if that’s your bag).
OK, did some more research. I guess you could follow Schiff’s example and be convicted of tax evasion.
Are you trying to have a debate over what would happen if Americans stopped paying taxes, period? If you’re just trying to initiate debate on whether Schiff’s correct, I don’t really think there are any legitimate arguments to make on his behalf.
Steve Martin’s approach was to use two little words…I forgot.
As in I forgot to pay my taxes.
It also works for I forgot armed robbery was against the law.
And if that doesn’t work, try two other little words.
Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!
>> Would you believe there’s no law requiring Americans to pay income taxes
No, I would not believe it. I am not an idiot and only an idiot would believe that.
Ah, yes, Irwin Schiff. A true “legend” within the Tax Protestor community.
During a late night talk show, he once offered $100,000 to anyone who called in during the show who could show where, in the Internal Revenue Code, a normal wage-earner was liable for tax. Next morning, someone saw a re-run of that talk show on the news, and immediately called in saying, “Hey, it says right here at the beginning of IRC Section 1, ‘There is hereby imposed a tax’!”. Schiff denied that this law created a tax liability because the word “liable” didn’t actually appear in the text of the law. :rolleyes: The caller sued Schiff to get the $100,000. The judge in the lawsuit said that the caller had correctly stated that IRC section 1 makes you liable for income tax, whether the word “liable” appears or not, but that since the caller had not called in during the talk show Schiff didn’t have to pay him. Of course, Schiff twisted this outcome around and said that since he had won the suit, it proved that no one was liable for income tax. (double :rolleyes: )
And now, to bring this topic into the usual realm of a Great Debates thread:
Tax protestor arguments in general tend to be very creative. (If I may be so bold as to toot my own horn here, I myself have invested some energy into debunking one set of such arguments on this webpage.) The creative nature of these arguments strikes me as being very similar to the arguments of certain biblical-literalists and Judeo-Christian apologists. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that most of the members of the Tax Protestor crowd* are Pat-Robertson-esque fundamentalist Christians.
[sub]*) It should be noted that tax protestors never ever call themselves “Tax Protestors.” They claim there’s nothing to “protest,” merely that we’ve all been hoodwinked by the Federal government into believing we had to pay taxes that we don’t actually owe. Tax Protestors prefer to call themselves by such names as “Sovereign Citizens,” “Patriots,” “American Nationals,” “Posse Comitatus,” “Jural societies,” and other such titles that previously had more innocuous meanings.[/sub]
Okay.
But what would happen if everyone did refuse to pay?
Would the government tumble?
Excuse me, tracer, but the term “Patriot” does not mean the same thing as “sovereign citizen” etc.
I don’t use the term in reference to myself because of the associated stereotypes - but I hate to let a word like “patriot” become synonymous with “criminal” because a few bad apples are both. It was bad enough when that happened to words like “hacker” and “biker”.
Vanilla, are you including the police in this “everyone”? Are you including IRS employees in this “everyone”?
If so, then unless you posit that the police, IRS employees, etc. would gladly work for free, or unless you posit that government services are drastically reduced, or unless you posit that another tax (e.g., property tax) would take the place of the income tax, then of course the government would tumble.
But this is obviously a fantasy scenario. We live with a more-or-less democratically-elected government. If a majority of people felt so strongly that income taxes were a bad idea, then we could elect a congress that would repeal the taxes.
We haven’t done so, and in fact, we may see in the next elections that people who voted for Bush’s tax cut will get thrown out of office. Americans generally gripe about income taxes, but consider them the best choice for funding the government programs we consider to be important.
So things will almost certainly continue the way they are now: most people pay their taxes, a few people don’t pay them, and a few of the nonpayers go to prison.
Next question: What would happen if everyone stole beer from the Quickie Mart? Would Quickie Marts go out of business?
Daniel
And what if congress repealed taxes?
What if everything were taxed?
In your scenario, I guess QUickie Marts would hire security.
Vanilla, is there a point to this set of questions? Without context, they’re damn near meaningless, useful only for entertaining stoned college students after they’ve already listened to all their Pink Floyd albums.
Now, if you wanna come up with a plausible scenario that could get us to the point in which congress repealed the income tax, including how Congress deals with the expense side of their budget, then we can discuss that.
But as it is – well, I’m plenty entertained just looking at my hands.
Daniel
About people not paying their taxes, wasn’t it Cecil Adams himself who once said once said: “Fine. When the Army shows up looking for their paychecks, we’ll tell them to see you.” ?
I have never listened to a Pink Floyd album.
I’ve read Sciff’s books and was wondering and maybe should have asked in GQ what would happen if citizens refused to pay.
We didn’t alwasy have a income tax did we?
How did we survive without it then?
No, we didn’t always have an income tax. It was created in (I think) the early 20th century, and originally was supposed to only apply to the very wealthiest people, and was only about 1% of their earnings. I think it may have been one of FDR’s brilliant ideas, but I may be mistaken there. That’s how it was able to gain support. There’s always a great deal of support for “let’s tax the wealthy” measures. Gradually, it went from a tiny portion of only the wealthy peoples’ paychecks to a moderate chunk of everyone’s, and a huge chunk of the wealthy peoples’.
Before income tax, teh federal government was funded by import duties and foreign taxes and such. This was perfectly sufficient then, as at the time the federal government’s powers were very limited - it basically ran the military, monitored foreign and inter-state trade, and kept the states in line. This was before the notion of “benevolent government” was hatched. Once our government got into the business of social welfare, it realized it needed more money, and voila - the federal income tax was born.
Jeff
So, we could support the military today without an income tax on the general population? NOt likely.
—But what would happen if everyone did refuse to pay?
Would the government tumble?—
First, it would borrow.
I didn’t say that. It’s unlikely that we could maintain our military as it stands today using only import duties and the like, without such duties becoming isolationist in magnitude. Our military now has the function of serving as the world’s peace-keeper, which requires a much larger military than was probably imagined by the founding fathers.
However, if there was only the military to worry about, as opposed to having to deal with social security, medicare, medicaid, the dept. of education, and such, we could make do with a small national sales tax. Even with our government as huge as it is, such a tax may work. Income tax certainly isn’t the only way to run a government, nor necessarily the best. However, this kind of goes beyond the scope of this thread.
Jeff