Isn’t that BEAR FLAG REPUBLIC?
For the record, my location should not indicate any sort of support for this tax protester nonsense.
Double post.
This post has been reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Expect an audit that will make the new TSA patdowns look down right romantic by comparison.
Oh and, Nzinga, Seated? If you want some of their other idiocy, see this.
The above is just brain damaged. It’s one thing to try and twist the Constitution and the tax code to get out of paying your taxes. Snipes not only told the government he wasn’t going to pay taxes on the $19 million he made that year, he asked them to just give him another $7 million. He’s lucky they can’t lock you up for being a moron, because he’d have gotten a lot more than three years.
Perhaps it will dissuade some people from becoming tax protestors.
Where do these people think that the money for police and roads and things should come from?
I’m glad he’s being punished.
Looking at the amended return he was filing, I don’t think he wasn’t trying to get the government to “give him another $7 million.” Instead, the amended return was attempting to reduce his tax liability from $7.36 million to zero. Presumably, this amount had been paid with the original return, or had been withheld, and he was trying to get it refunded.
He’s still a whackjob idiot. I think he should have been convicted of the felony counts and gotten some serious prison time instead of just 3 years.
Will the feds charge him money for his upkeep in jail? Does he have any assets?
Brooklyn’s Finest was not straight to video.
When an actor gets paid by studios for standard acting work, is federal tax withheld?
I assume you mean to ask if it is withheld from the payout, like it is from a wage earner’s pay check. My experience with this (on the end of my clients, not me :)) is: it varies. If they’re paid out as a 1099, no. If they get royalties: sometimes (though I think that’s a voluntary thing… though I honestly am not 100% sure).
Just like any contractor, they have to worry about paying out quarterly estimates to stay current.
It should have been.
I can one up you. I never saw it. I just wiki’d it.
While I agree with most of what you said, and agree that Snipes was a moron for listening to the advice he got from clowns, this is not exactly correct. He didn’t claim that he made zero dollars, he claimed that his income that the government had the right to tax was zero dollars. He thoroughly listed the $19M and change that he made, he just then listed it in the “Deductions” column, the column for the portion that is not taxable.
That $7Million was money previously paid to the IRS (looks like withholding and prior year payment) that he was claiming was advance payment on a tax liability that became zero dollars, so it was a refund. Just like any other citizen that has withholding and then files their tax return to show a smaller tax liability than they have already paid will get a refund. The issue is not that he claimed the government owed him, it’s that the basis for that claim was false.
A lot of Tax Protestors go to Court then back down, doing a plea bargain with the IRS, which makes them pay back every cent and scads of penalties, but no jail time. They admit their guilt and get to stay out of prison. Fair.
Snipes refused and continued his idiocy. He deserves prison time.
Did he have some remotely decent/believable reason for thinking that money wasnt taxable, like say, something like “royalties for performances aren’t taxable income”? Or was it some assinine reason like “the IRS doesnt have the authority to tax personal income period”?
Dr Deth brings up a good point. He most likely had plenty of opportunity to back down on his stupidity and didn’t, so screw his blade swinging ass…
Sorry I wasn’t clear: clearly he knows he MADE money, what I meant was that he couldn’t honestly believe he made zero by way of taxable income. That’s what I meant.
He was claiming out on 861, so he’s saying that his income isn’t legally taxable. I’m literally looking at a case on my desk of the same bullshit. While Snipes was smart enough to file returns that actually had numbers on them (but stupid ones), most people who do 861 literally just put all zeros (like homie on my desk right now).
This is the Wiki on the argument for how he was trying to get out of his taxes. Asinine is a kind way of putting it.
There are certain things that flag you with the IRS as a tax protester. Claiming out 861 on stuff is a great way of starting that, if you guys are interested in trying it for yourself :).
[QUOTE=DrDeth;13207590
Snipes refused and continued his idiocy. He deserves prison time.[/QUOTE]
Prison is for criminals not idiots. Yeah I know he is both technically, but I still think there are much better ways of dealing with this than jail time.
From what I read on The Smoking Gun and the article in the OP, his reason was completely assinine. He appears to be claiming a section of the tax code that addresses foreign nationals and stating that since the examples of “Taxable Income” from that list do not apply to him, that he does not have any taxable income. As if that is the only section of the code that defines “taxable income”. Or something like that.
How do you know he doesn’t truly believe it? He fell victim to some tax protestor shyster (the guy who filed the form for him and the attached statements about what part of the legal code was relevant). The fact that he didn’t back down in court suggests he truly believes he doesn’t owe the money, rather than was just trying a creative tactic that he knew was shady but hoped would pan out.
Thanks for the link. Helps clarify what I was trying to glean from the low resolution copy of his 1040 on the Smoking Gun. If I read that correct, 861 applies to foreign nationals and defines their US tax liability. But it says nothing about US nationals. Since Snipes is a US national, 861 is irrelevant to him.
Unless he’s buying the bullshit that says he is not a citizen of the United States, and thus 861 applies on those grounds, in which case he’s still an idiot.
Looks to me like Snipes firmly believed it was a legal justification, and so had no issues supplying his real numbers, just thinks he can list them as nontaxable. “But your honor, I accurately listed all my financial information, it’s not like I omitted the values, I firmly stated what I made. I just the law clearly shows it isn’t taxable income. It’s not tax evasion, See?”