Talk:Tax protester constitutional arguments

1St Amendment Issues Post RFRA

Your article cites Reynolds V US as supportive of the idea "that a religious belief, however strongly held, does not exempt the believer from adhering to general laws." I am curious as to weather these arguments have been attempted under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which does, in fact, hold that "Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability."

I have done some substantial research, and cannot find any major case rulings in RE this issue - and it seems that there should be - am I looking in the wrong places, and if so, point me to the sources. Please do not refer me to the 'Peace Tax Act' or the related court decisions that led to it's introduction - the legislation is inherently flawed (refer to the Florida Lottery Education Fund to better understand why). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.162.93.199 (talk) 16:11, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Good question. I know of at least one court decision where someone argued this. First, for those who don't know, we're talking about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, Public Law No. 103-141, 107 Stat. 1488 (Nov. 16, 1993), codified at 42 U.S.C. sections 2000bb through 2000bb-4.

In the case of Adams v. Commissioner, the United States Tax Court rejected the argument of Priscilla M. Lippincott Adams, who was a devout Quaker. She tried to argue that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, she was exempt from federal income taxes. The U.S. Tax Court rejected her argument and ruled that she was not exempt. The Court noted that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, a "compelling interest test" is used. The Court ruled that income taxation is a "compelling interest." The Court stated: ...."while petitioner's religious beliefs are substantially burdened by payment of taxes that fund military expenditures, the Supreme Court has established that uniform, mandatory participation in the Federal income tax system, irrespective of religious belief, is a compelling governmental interest." See Adams v. Commissioner, 110 T.C. 137 (1998), at [1] (italics added by me for emphasis).

See also the U.S. Tax Court decision in Miller v. Commissioner, 114 T.C. 511 (2000). The taxpayers objected to the use of social security numbers, arguing that such numbers related to the "mark of the beast" from the Bible. In its decision, the Court discussed the applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, but ruled against the taxpayers.

Yours, Famspear (talk) 22:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I have updated the article on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to include the references to the Adams and Miller cases. Famspear (talk) 22:23, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced nonsense removed

The following unsource nonsense was removed from the article:

Probably the greatest current argument against the government enforcing the 16th amendment is that, (as Bill Benson proved in his book, "The Law That Never Was,") the states needed to make up the majority of the votes to pass the bill into law, never came into being and never voted to ratify the amendment. The act to pass the 16th was the last act of Secretary of State Knox in 1913 while in office. Out of the 48 states that then existed, 12 had already declared a no vote would be coming forth from their state legislators. This meant that Knox had to come up with 36 yes votes to pass the 16th Amendment. As Benson proved in his research, public records show the fact that many states had their votes counted before their respective legislatures ever met. Therefore without the needed votes, Secretary of State Knox had no legal right to declare that this amendment was passed into law. His connection to the then newly formed "Federal Reserve" has long been suspect and it has been mentioned that an audit of Knox' finances should be looked at to see if he received any type of monetary "motivation" to pass this amendment that the feds were claiming was to collect the interest off of the national debt. The Federal Reserve had recently been formed by a core of bankers who met in secret on a resort island off the Georgia coast. They met in hunting gear and carried hunting rifles as to not allow the public to be informed that this meeting was taking place or that this group was now forming and referring to itself as "Federal" even though it had no part of any government agency and was and is not a part of the United States Government. Furthermore the wording of the amendment in regards to ...'without apportionment' is a direct contradiction of the United States Constitution which had stated for over a hundred years that no tax will be laid upon the people without apportionment.

The Bill Benson Sixteenth Amendment non-ratification argument is a fraud, and has been ruled to be so in federal court. It has lost every single time in court. Benson even tried to use his own argument in his own federal criminal tax trial -- and he was convicted. This is already covered in the applicable Wikipedia articles.

The argument that the Federal Reserve had been "recently formed" at the time the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified is also blatant nonsense. The Amendment was ratified in February of 1913. The Federal Reserve System was not even created until December of 1913.

And the argument that the Amendment is a "direct contradiction" of the Constitution is tantamount to a tax protester argument that somehow the federal income tax is unconstitutional. And there is no rule of constitutional law that says that an amendment to the constitution somehow cannot "directly contradict" the original provisions of the constitution. To argue otherwise would be to show a basic misunderstanding of how constitutional amendments work. Famspear (talk) 01:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

That the argument has lost in court does nothing to make it "fraud". It should surprise no one but the most naive state sycophant that a branch of the Federal Government would find an act of that government Constitutional. The assumption of impartiality is misplaced in this case. Nuwriter (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Ahh, such a wonderful view that manages to totally ignore reality and past history. Ravensfire (talk) 15:41, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Needs GAR

Besides the unsourced paragraphs that don't meet the new inline citation requirements, the article mainly cites primary sources and is filled with original research—as noted in the FAC some fifteen years ago! A cite to a case can be used for basic information about a case, but cannot establish that something is a "consitutional argument" used by a "tax protestor". If there are no secondary sources, I would say it's not relevant for inclusion on Wikipedia at all. BD2412 or anyone else may fix it but otherwise it needs GAR. (t · c) buidhe 02:16, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Tax protester constitutional arguments

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Violates WP:DUEWEIGHT (part of WP:NPOV) so fails GA criterion 4. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:54, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

In addition to being rather uncited, this 2007 listing is mostly "OR/SYNTH from US legal code & court cases", in the words of Hog Farm. Thus, the article may violate GA criteria 2b) and 2c). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:48, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Court cases are primary sources to the extent that they discuss the determinations of the conflict being litigated. However, I see no reason why they can not be secondary sources for supporting propositions not directly at issue in the case, such as the holding in a previous case involving different parties. BD2412 T 18:48, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that this could use work, it is written too much like a law review article, has an overreliance on quotes, and its grasp of Bluebook style leaves something to be desired. But I'm with BD2412 that cases can be secondary sources when it comes to summarizing the law (after all, the US legal system already has a rather robust system of deciding what gets published, and how much weight to accord decisions, which meets the general RS requirements). CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I, for one, am seeing that we essentially have no indication that WP:DUEWEIGHT is being followed here. Take, for isntance, the Southern Pacific Co. v. Lowe section. We have a statement Another United States Supreme Court case frequently cited by tax protesters is Southern Pacific Co. v. Lowe, and yet we have no citations in this entire section to anything other than the case itself. Even in other sections that don't claim to have frequent use of these cases, we can't demonstrate that these court cases actually warrant the weight we are giving them unless we have actual sources that support the idea that say, Southern Pacific, is truly important in this field. What we have here is more of a legal thesis than anything else. Hog Farm _Talk 04:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Thoughts CaptainEek BD2412? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:05, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29 I agree that more other sources would be good, I already noted that this is too much like a law review article. Instead we need to be relying more on law review articles to write a neutral encyclopedia article. I do think that this article is not following DUE...it strikes me as the sort of libertarian essay that early Wikipedia turned out a lot of. This got GA reviewed so long ago that it doesn't even seem to have a GAN page. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:09, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.