THE BIGGEST HOAX IN HISTORY- THE “INDIVIDUAL” INCOME TAX By Jack Cohen The modern income tax came into being pursuant to the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909. The Act was intended to amend the McKinley Customs Administrative Act of June 10, 1890, which was further amended by the Underwood Tariff Act of 1913, and repealed by act Sept 21 1922, Ch. 346, Title IV, Sec. 642 (42 Stat 989). Reviser’s Notes to Title 19 (Customs) Sec. 1485.1 The term “tariff” technically means a schedule of taxes classed as “duties”. Taxes on imported goods are always shown as ‘duties” on lists of “dutiable items”. The “duty is the tax; the tariff is the table or schedule of rates. Ordinarily, federal tariffs are those on imported goods or interstate shipping. Taxes on imports are controlled by international agreements, such as treaties. If the United States wants to tax olive oil from Spain, you can bet Spain wants to tax American Cigarettes or Zippo lighters in exchange. Tariffs on international trade come into being by agreements. The law recognizes international agreements as treaties, or as agreements other than treaties. Treaties are made between nations, binding on them, pursuant to the Constitution, signed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Treaties have the status of constitutional law. Agreements other than treaties are called by various names, but do not have the status of constitutional law. The tax agreements other than treaties are called “conventions.” Today, the United States has 74 tax “conventions” with foreign nations that serve as the true foundation for the “income tax” and Title 26 of the US Code Bearing in mind that it started out as part of a tariff act, and 74 “tax conventions” are in place, examine the first page of the Code of 1939. It says first that the Act is intended “to consolidate and codify the internal revenue laws of the United States” then in force, and then goes on to say, “(4) Repeal and Savings Provisions— (a) The Internal Revenue Title, as hereinafter set forth, is intended to include all general laws of the United States and parts of such laws, relating exclusively to internal revenue, in force on the 2d day of January 1939 (1) of a permanent nature, and (2) of a temporary nature if embraced in said Internal Revenue Title. In furtherance of that purpose, all such laws and parts of laws codified herein, to the extent that they relate exclusively to internal revenue, are hereby repealed, effective, except as provided in section 5, on the day following the date of enactment of this act.” 53 Stat 1 BILLS, RESOLUTIONS, ACTS, LAWS, STATUTES, AND CODES: WHAT’S WHAT?" The original purpose of publishing a Code was to organize relevant provisions of the laws, which are published chronologically, into a subject- matter finding aid so we can locate the law. The United States Statutes at Large is the Government Printing Office’s compilation of the acts and resolutions of Congress, treaties, Executive Orders, etc. It is said to be legal evidence of ______________________ 1 PART III. GENERAL ADMIISTRATIVE PROVISIONS (53 Stat. 773) SEC. 15. That the word " State " or " United States " when used in this title shall be construed to include any Territory, the District of Columbia, Porto Rico, and the Philippine Islands, when such construction is necessary to carry out its provisions. ______________________ the law; the law consists of the actual acts of Congress signed by the President. From the Statutes, GPO compiles the U. S. Code, which is considered to be prima facie evidence of the law, because it is twice-removed from the Acts. “Legal evidence of the law” and “prima facie evidence of the law” are relative degrees of evidence, with legal evidence taking priority over prima facie evidence. In theory and practice, if the words of the code differ from those of the statute, the statute prevails. If the words of a statute differ from those of the original bill, the bill prevails. It’s a sort of legal pecking order. By removing all possibility of a statutory foundation from the whole body of internal revenue law, Congress published a history book in 1939, not a law book. The Code of 1939, according to its very first page, includes all the repealed statutes relating to internal revenue, leaving the “tax conventions” as its only possible foundation. THE IRS IS NOT A GOVERNMENT AGENCY In a 1993 case tried in federal district court in Idaho, known as Diversified Metal Products v TBow Co. Trust, IRS, & Morgan, CV 93-405-E-EJL, 158 F.R.D. 660 (1994), the United States Attorneys stated that “The Internal Revenue Service is not an agency of the United States government….” Former IRS agents tell us their pay stubs show they were being paid by the Department of Agriculture, not the Treasury Department. (Nobody ever asks why.) Who are these guys, anyway? IRS tells us that it was created in 1861 as the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which was renamed some time in the 70’s as the IRS. Baloney. The “act” they refer to created only the office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. No Act of Congress has ever created a “Bureau of Internal Revenue”, so it must have been “created by a bureaucrat. Only a government bureaucrat could change the name of nothing to the name of something. Yet, the nonexistent “Bureau of Internal Revenue” was renamed “the Internal Revenue Service” by the Secretary of the Treasury, “pursuant to” Reorganization Plan # 26 of 1950. NO OFFICE, NO OFFICER. NO OFFICER, NO OFFICE Congress has created only two offices for “internal revenue”; the office of “the Commissioner of Internal Revenue”, and “the office of Chief Counsel for Internal Revenue Service” under the office of the General Counsel of the Department of the Treasury. Note that the “Commissioner of Internal Revenue” is not “the Commissioner of the “Internal Revenue Service”. He is appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. That makes him an “officer” of the United States. While he occupies his office, there are both office and officer. The 1939 Code showed that at that time, the collectors were officers, appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. By Reorganization Plan # 26 of 1950, all offices of the Treasury department were terminated, all authority of the Department recalled to the Secretary, who, by regulation, could “redelgate” his authority to civil servants. Another Reorganization Plan, in 1972, removed “the alcohol and functions of the Internal Revenue Service” and transferred them to the newly-created Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms BATF. BATF does not appear in Title 26 either. It used to appear in Title 27, but Title 27 was the Federal Alcohol Administration Act that was repealed with prohibition. Since the identity and authority of the Commissioner is in question, and the identity of the IRS is likewise in question, the only other “officer” we find in the law, is Chief Counsel. He is one of the Assistant Counsels to the Secretary’s General Counsel, who is appointed by the President, with Senate confirmation. The Secretary’s General Counsel has no other officers, or “agents” but one- General Counsel for the IRS, appointed by the President with the assent of the Senate. He has “Assistant Commissioners” appointed by the Secretary, without the advice and consent of the Senate. General Counsel may have as many as 5 Assistant Counsels appointed by the Secretary. But the only IRS “officer” that appears in the law, is General Counsel’s “Assistant General Counsel who shall be the Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service. The Chief Counsel is the chief law officer for the Service and shall carry out duties and powers prescribed by the Secretary” (31 USC 301(f)(2)). No other officer has been delegated those or any other powers, because there is no other officer. Now consider this- the Office of the Commissioner does not show up in Title 31 (Money and Finance, where all the powers of the Secretary are enumerated, and all his offices likewise), whereas the Office of General Counsel does. The office of General Counsel does not show up in Title 26, and, since the Code of 1954, neither does the Commissioner! What gives? If there is no Commissioner in Title 26 or Title 31, who is in charge of the “Internal Revenue Service”? General Counsel? If he is the only officer other than the Secretary appearing in either title, and he has no “agents” or “officers” under him. He has no IRS. There is no Commissioner in either Title, 26 or 31, so the Secretary does not have an IRS. If the Secretary has no IRS, who are these guys? What the government calls “officers” of the “Internal Revenue Service” are actually no more than civil service employees, with as much authority over the public as the janitors in the federal building downtown. Incidentally, we have learned from former IRS agents that IRS pay stubs show that their pay comes from the Department of Agriculture, not Department of the Treasury. OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS TELL THE TRUTH, AND MAKE LIARS OF THE IRS GO FIGURE! In my Master Blaster Memorandum, available on my Catalog page (shameless plug), I show how to read Publication 515, 15, Form W-4, and the instructions for Form 1040 to prove to yourselves that you are not a “person made liable ”. First of all, read the Constitution correctly. It says Congress can regulate international and interstate commerce. It has long been held that what Congress can regulate, it can tax, and vice-versa. Therefore, federal and state taxation generally is limited to the regulation of commerce. If we aren’t engaged in one or the other, interstate or international, Congress can’t regulate our activities. From the beginning, the Tariff Act taxed “corporations having capital stock represented by shares, and insurance companies (mutual insurance companies are associations owned by the members, like corporations, but whose members have no shares of stock). So, somehow, one must be an “it” before one can possibly be a taxpayer. To summarize thousands of pages of official government publications, a taxpayer is an “it”; sometimes the “it” is an “entity”, sometimes a “business”, a “government agency”, a government “instrumentality”, an “agent of a foreign principal” or a trustee of a trust or estate. Bodies corporate operate as individuals. The term “individual” may refer to a nonresident alien or a partnership. But a “person liable” is always an “it”, or what the law calls a legal fiction or artificial entity. (See 26 CFR 301.6109-1. “ A U. S. person or foreign person must furnish “its” Tax ID number.) The United States Attorney’s Manual says that a lien is created by a judgment, on filing of the abstract of judgment in the appropriate court. IRS sends notices of liens to county offices everywhere, which allege that the United States has a lien. If one of us did the same thing, we’d be executed for filing a fraudulent security. County auditors universally file this trash as though it meant something legally, which it doesn’t. However, by filing them, the County auditor collaborates with some unknown IRS geek in ruining one’s credit without any evidence, other than the “notice” that the government has a lien. Talk about irresponsible! The IRM (Internal Revenue Manual) and the USAM (United States Attorney’s Manual) both say that before the government can levy, it must file the lien, and the lien is obtained by judgment. Well, if they followed that one, no one in America would sweat it until the government got a judgment, which created the lien, which gave them the authority to levy by order of the court. However, IRS never provides proof of any judgment. It does not need to, because people don’t read the notices or other publications, or understand the safeguards built into American law, and knee-jerk in response to any mail sent by IRS. A notice of lien is not the lien, nor is a notice of levy a levy. Yet people react to them as though they were the things the notices are meant to call attention to, a lien or levy. The IRS appears to have extraordinary powers, and when analyzed in light of our legal foundations, would appear to have more power than all three branches of government combined. It can lay the tax on anyone it presumes is liable, collect it, and take property from the reluctant, acting as lawgiver, administrator, and judge and jury, all without taking anyone to court. If the law gives the IRS power to “lay and collect taxes”, without regard to common law and constitutional safeguards, then Congress has authored a bill of attainder. A bill of attainder is one that deprives a citizen of the right to life, liberty, property, or any other natural right, without the protection of the courts. Congress has not authored a bill of attainder, which means that the IRS, like any other party, whether citizen or government, must take us to court to deprive us of our property if we disagree with them, or are merely unwilling to pay. We should all reexamine the expression “voluntary compliance”. The term is an oxymoron, like “military intelligence”. Either a law is mandatory or it is inapplicable. Is it possible that we are volunteering to comply with a law that is not mandatory on us? The Internal Revenue Manual Part 5, Collection Activity Belief? Say it isn’t so! A final note on the controversial Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act. The Act was proposed by the “progressives” in the Republican Party to reduce tariffs. It was opposed by others, who saw it as the equivalent of a trillion-dollar budget cut today. It got eviscerated between the Senate and the House, and, as it turned out, made few changes in the taxes, and was itself amended two years later. What has been overlooked is its overall historical context. It came into being after the United States had conquered (they said “annexed”) Hawaii and Guam, wrested Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico from Spain. The U. S. paid Spain a cool $20 million, for the Philippines, which became the first “possession” that was a colony rather than a territory, and all were governed under martial law at the time. This confuses things, because in making law for the “possessions” the government was exercising colonial powers, which it cannot derive from the Constitution. Thus began the process of engaging in “tax conventions” with foreign nations, having to do with the possessions rather than the Union. The Act was reported by some in the media as drastic, others said it was ineffective, some said it would break the republic, others (parroting President Taft) hailed it as the best tariff act the republicans had ever presented. The Canadians complained about it bitterly, and two years later tariffs were again reduced. Electric Library Payne -Aldrich Tariff Act, 1909, passed by the U.S. Congress. It was the first change in tariff laws since the Dingley Act of 1897; the issue had been ignored by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Republican platform of 1908 pledged revision of the tariff downward, and to this end President Taft (in 1909) called Congress into special session. …. It lowered 650 tariff schedules, raised 220, and left 1,150 unchanged. Although the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act was less aggressively protectionist than the McKinley Tariff Act (1890, the one Payne-Aldrich amended) and the later Dingley Act, it was, nevertheless, protectionist.. Check back from time to time, as I am constantly adding new materials and services. I hope you all benefit from discovering my site. Jack Cohen February, 2002 |
