Once again, CITE?
Cite, cite, cite!
No, we can’t prove a negative. You have to show that it is illegal to simply not pay.
But my Bro is an Enrolled Agent- and ex-IRS agent, who represents dudes in Tax Court. I was quoting him.
Here is some info from the IRS
http://www.irs.gov/compliance/enforcement/article/0,,id=130611,00.html
Here is what the IRS investigates for Criminal charges:
"Program and Emphasis Areas for CI
Criminal Investigation (CI) classifies its investigations into program and emphasis areas of fraud. Each program area below contains information on CI’s involvement in that area, national statistics, and case summaries.
Abusive Return Preparer Enforcement
Taxpayers should be very careful when choosing a return preparer. You should be as careful as you would in choosing a doctor or a lawyer. While most preparers provide excellent service to their clients, a few unscrupulous return preparers file false and fraudulent tax returns and ultimately defraud their clients. It is important to know that even if someone else prepares your return, you are ultimately responsible for all the information on the tax return.
Abusive Tax Schemes
Abusive tax scheme originally took the structure of abusive domestic and foreign trust arrangements. However, these schemes have evolved into sophisticated arrangements that take advantage of the financial secrecy laws of some foreign jurisdictions and the availability of credit/debit cards issued from offshore financial institutions.
Bankruptcy Fraud
One of Criminal Investigation’s goals in bankruptcy fraud investigations is to increase voluntary compliance with federal tax laws through the prosecution of those committing significant crimes in the bankruptcy arena. Since the IRS is often a major creditor in many bankruptcy proceedings, it is important that we protect the interests of the IRS.
Corporate Fraud
Criminal Investigation is involved in most of the regional corporate fraud task forces because of our financial investigative expertise. Also, corporate fraud frequently involves violations of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) through falsification of corporate and individual tax returns and CI has exclusive investigatory jurisdiction over criminal violations of the IRC.
Employment Tax Enforcement
Employment tax evasion schemes can take a variety of forms. Some of the more prevalent methods of evasion include pyramiding, employee leasing, paying employees in cash, filing false payroll tax returns or failing to file payroll tax returns. Evading employment taxes can have serious consequences for employers and the employees.
Excise Tax Fraud
Criminal Investigation continues to see schemes designed to evade excise taxes on motor fuel, tires, freon and other ozone-depleting chemicals, as well as truck chassis. The impact of these schemes goes far beyond the revenue loss.
Financial Institution Fraud
Criminal Investigation focuses on tax and money laundering violations involving fraud against banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions, check cashers, money remitters, and other financial institutions. Currency Transaction Reports and Suspicious Activity Reports continue to be effective investigative tools in the financial world.
Gaming
Illegal gaming operations, including bookmaking, numbers, Internet and some charitable gaming operations, continue to be areas of compliance concern. Criminal Investigation continues to play an enforcement role in the illegal gaming industry and to support regulatory and legislative initiatives aimed at eliminating an environment conducive to illegal gambling.
General Tax Fraud
The efforts of Criminal Investigation are directed at the portion of American taxpayers who willfully and intentionally violate their known legal duty of voluntarily filing income tax returns and/or paying the correct amount of income, employment, or excise taxes. These individuals pose a serious threat to tax administration and the American economy.
Healthcare Fraud
Multi-agency healthcare fraud investigations and prosecutions show that perpetrators of these schemes financially benefited from their fraudulent activities in false billings, mental health, nursing home fraud, chiropractic fraud, durable medical equipment fraud, staged accidents, pharmaceutical diversion, and patient referral (kickbacks) schemes. In these investigations, Criminal Investigation follows the money trail and considers both tax and money laundering perspectives.
Insurance Fraud
Insurance Fraud can involve tax law and/or money laundering violations relative to insurance claims and fraud perpetrated against insurance companies. The variety of schemes include agent/broker premium diversion, phony insurance companies, offshore/unlicensed Internet companies, staged auto accidents, viatical and senior settlement.
Money Laundering
Money laundering is a very complex crime involving intricate details, often involving numerous financial transactions and financial outlets throughout the world. Criminal Investigation has the financial investigators and expertise that is critical to “follow the money trail.”
Narcotics-Related Investigations
Criminal Investigation’s contribution to the war on narcotics is vital but sometimes difficult to recognize, because the work of IRS special agents usually doesn’t make the headlines. The long hours of tracking down and documenting financial leads allows an investigation to go right to the door of the leader of the narcotics organization, which contributes to the disrupting and dismantling the country’s major drug and money laundering organizations.
Nonfiler Enforcement
There have always been individuals who, for a variety of reasons, argue taxes are voluntary or illegal. The courts of repeatedly rejected their arguments as frivolous and routinely impose financial penalties for raising such frivolous arguments. Take the time to learn the truth about frivolous tax arguments.
Public Corruption Crimes
Public corruption investigations encompass a wide variety of criminal offenses including bribery, extortion, embezzlement, illegal kickbacks, entitlement and subsidy fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering. Criminal Investigation concentrates its resources on the tax and money laundering aspects of these investigations in cooperation with other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The expertise used in investigations has established our reputation as one of the leaders in the fight against corrupt public officials.
Questionable Refund Program (QRP)
Questionable Refund Program (QRP) is a nationwide, multifunctional program designed to identify fraudulent returns, to stop the payment of fraudulent refunds and to refer identified fraudulent refund schemes to be investigated and prosecuted criminally.
Telemarketing Fraud
The typical illegal telemarketer operates by exploiting the trust of consumers to whom they present an opportunity “too good to be true.” These opportunities include cash, vehicles, vacations, jewelry, investments, donations to charity, participation in lotteries, or the opportunity to recoup losses from prior schemes. These “opportunities” are, in fact, “too good to be true.”"
From General Tax Fraud:
"Types of Fraudulent Activities - General Tax Fraud
Although not all inclusive, listed below are some of the criminal activities in violations of the tax law:
* Deliberately underreporting or omitting income,
* Overstating the amount of deductions
* Keeping two sets of books
* Making false entries in books and records
* Claiming personal expenses as business expenses
* Claiming false deductions
* Hiding or transferring assets or income"
Now, we see “Hiding or transferring assets or income”- do you see “not paying”? :rolleyes:
Why don’t you cite one person ever jailed for failing to pay his taxes because he COULDN’T pay them. There is a big difference between cannot and will not. No, you’re are not going to jail simply because you can’t pay. But you are going to jail if you owe and refuse to pay or hide assets to avoid paying.
So I guess Al Capone went to Alcatraz on vacation, then? :dubious:
DrDeth (et al.), I’m fairly sure the onus is on the defendant to prove one doesn’t have to pay taxes, if for no other reason because might makes right.
I still want a cite showing a US citizen has succesfully avoided paying federal income tax just by saying “No.”
Hijack aside, based on language from this irs.gov page, you can not avoid paying income tax if you owe it.
All language is hedged with “can result” -type language as far as criminal penalties are concerned.
So to the OP’s questions…
Would the IRS have the legal right to garnish the President’s wages for refusal to pay income taxes?
Apparently so. The loss of wages/money can not be prevented by any satute of the U.S.A. Constitution. The loss of liberty is mentioned explicitly many times, but not loss of capital.
However… what branch of government governs the IRS? If it’s under the executive branch, could a single executive order change things? Taken to an extereme, could an executive order permanently dissolve the US congess? How about SCOTUS?
Is there enough merit that the President could be impeached by Congress over this?
I would argue there is as much merit in such a case as there was for Johnson or Clinton. IIRC, the House uses its own judgement whether to file articles of impeacment. After that point (in the Senate) all impeachments become more political than written law or case law.
It seems to me that even trying to defending ones self against a charge of failure to pay taxes would throw into question so many laws, statutes, and constitutional issues that it would become a Pyrrhic victory for a president.
Could the President even be arrested?
Was Johnson or Clinton arrested? I’m not sure an actual arrest matters as much as other issues if push came to shove. This would make an interesting question on its own, regardless of what laws are involved.
>I’m sure the taxes on his salary is withheld like any other government employee’s.
IIRC the President isn’t paid salary in the ordinary sense. Rather, he frequently sues the government for compensation, and always wins. It’s some formality quirk.
No cite.
That’s not true. They will take your property, garnish your wages, ruin your credit, and generally make your life miserable. But criminal prosecutions for not paying what you owe, while theoretically possible, are extremely rare.
This is different from an Al Capone type situation where a citizen does not report income or underreports his or her income or fails to file a tax return that would show substantial income. If you do that enough, you’ll definitely be arrested. If they catch you.
You do not have the Constitutional right to declare bankruptcy. Congress has the power “to establish…uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.” If Congress tomorrow decided to abolish federal bankruptcy by writing it out of the law the Constitution would not stop them from doing so.
There’s a difference between tax evasion and simple non-payment. Are you claiming that Al Capone filed tax returns that honestly and fully disclosed his income?
(But apparently simple nonpayment is a crime, though not often prosecuted.)
Given the forum, I’ll charitably say you guys are misinformed. But let me ask you this. Why, if you believe you’re not required to pay taxes, are you doing so? If I thought taxes were voluntary, I’d be sorely tempted to opt out.
First let me ask you a question:
Why do you pay your credit card bills? You do realize, don’t you, that you can’t be sent to jail for simply refusing to pay your credit cards?
And now my answer:
Personally, I pay my taxes for the exact same reason I pay my other bills. As mentioned by another poster, if I didn’t pay, my credit would be ruined; I would be sued; I would be on the hook for interest and penalties; my property would get taken away; and my income would be attached.
They wouldn’t wait that long. They would freeze his bank account and help themselves.
No, Al went for failure to report, tax evasion. He filed, he just reported only a tiny bit of income as a “2nd hand furniture dealer” (and then not even that for some years he did not even file) not the huge amount he got from crime. But he did get a very stiff sentence, not really for tax evasion, but mostly for being a criminal mobster.
Wiki: *Although Capone always did his business through front men and had no accounting records in his own name (even his mansion was in his wife’s name), Al Alcini started linking him to his earnings. The federal income tax laws allowed the federal government to pursue Capone on tax evasion, their best chance of finally convicting him.
Pursuing Capone were Treasury agent Eliot Ness and his hand-picked team of incorruptible U.S. Prohibition agents, “The Untouchables,” and internal revenue agent Frank Wilson of the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Revenue.[5] During a routine warehouse raid, they discovered in a desk drawer what was clearly a crudely coded set of accounts. Ness then concentrated on pursuing Capone for his failure to pay tax on this substantial illegal income. This story has become a legend and the subject of books and films.
Capone was tried in a federal court in 1931. The Alcinis tried to help Capone, but he pleaded guilty to the charges on advice of his legal counsel hoping for a plea bargain. But after the judge refused his lawyer’s offers, and the jury was replaced on the day of the trial to frustrate Capone’s associates’ efforts to bribe or intimidate the original panel, Al Capone was found guilty on five of 22 counts of tax evasion for the years 1925, 1926, and 1927, and willful failure to file tax returns for 1928 and 1929. Capone’s legal team offered to pay all outstanding tax and interest and told their client to expect a severe fine. The judge sentenced him to eleven years in a federal prison and one year in the county jail, as well as an earlier six-month contempt of court sentence;[6] he ultimately served only six and a half years because of good behavior.[7] He also had to pay fines and court costs totalling 80,000 dollars.[8]
*
Note that Capone "offered to pay all outstanding tax and interest " but still went to jail, thus he did not go for not paying. He went for not filing and not reporting all his income.
Wel, yes, you can file an honest return but not pay and still stay out of prison. But the IRS- even though they can’t actually put you behind bars- can levy, lein and seize just about everything you own or earn. So what’s the use of refusing to pay if they just take it anyway- plus a lot of interest and penalties?
I pay my taxes because I believe that I ought to pay my taxes.
We are the richest people in history. We live in the greatest luxury, and security ever enjoyed by any majority population in the history of the planet. Is it expensive? Shit yeah, it’s expensive! What, you think it ought to be free?
Tris
Would somebody please explain to him the difference between civil law and criminal law? I don’t seem to be getting through.
It was explained to you earlier. Some conduct is unlawful (will expose you to civil liability) but not criminal.
This sounds like that “tax protestor” nonsense. If you file a return, declare all your income, and then refuse to pay it, you bet your life the IRS will come after you. They may not jail you, but they could if they wanted to. Yes, it’s rare - they only used it on Capone because they couldn’t nail him on anything else.
This “evasion” vs. “simple non-payment” thing seems like a distinction without a difference. Did you get that off some “tax protestor” blog?