Posted on 09/26/2012 4:42:57 AM PDT by wesagain
"Colorado man's challenge to IRS says wages don't count"
The government calls those who argue the income tax has no legal foundation “tax protesters” and labels their arguments “frivolous.” And usually judges toss their arguments out of court, assess them court costs on top of taxes, interest and penalties, and sometimes even threaten them if they file further cases.
But now the U.S. Supreme Court – the nine judges who sit on the bench in Washington by virtue of their selection by presidents and confirmation by the U.S. Senate – has docketed exactly that type of case.
The results? Who knows, considering the radical arguments offered by the pro se plaintiff, Jeffrey Thomas Maehr, a Colorado chiropractor who has been involved in a number of business ventures, including PureHealthSystems.com.
Among Maehr’s contentions is that while the government has the legal authority to tax, the Internal Revenue Service has used “unlawful, unconstitutional, unfair and biased” manipulations to assess income taxes on that which is not income – essentially salaries and wages.
Basing his argument on 10 years’ worth of research into tax law, he concludes that salaries and wages are the result of the mutual agreement among participants to exchange labor for money – and that’s not income.
Income, he said, is the increased value of an asset, such as interest on money in a bank account, which can be subjected ........
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Income taxes were used to pay for the costs of war, initially, and even into the 1900's.
“at no time did the rules themselves change due to my actions”
No, the same way the rule against murderer doesn’t change whether you murderer someone or not. But its application to you changes. At one income level one rule applies, at another, another.
“At no time were the rules any different for me than they were for you”
Again, they stayed the same, but if we were in different brackets different ones applied; you paid one rate and I another.
“If you had made the same decisions as I did, we would have paid the same amount”
Yes, but maybe I didn’t and we paid different amounts. How can you say the same rules applied?
The article admits that the case hasn’t been taken up by the justice in conference yet. It won’t make it past there. If the 10th Circuit termed it frivilous then I don’t see the Supreme’s disagreeing.
“All income earned in the lower bracket is taxed at the same rate...All income earned in the second bracket is taxed at the same rate...All income earned in the third bracket is taxed at the same rate”
Why are you only comparing people within the same bracket? Quote me ever saying they’re not taxed equally. Try comparing an individual from bracket two to an individual in bracket three. See what I’m getting at. They have different rates, which means different rules apply to them.
“The fact that you may not earn enough to get into the second bracket or the third bracket doesn’t matter”
Yes it does. For it means you are taxed at a different rate or maybe not at all.
Interesting.
“If you can’t see that taxing everyone’s income in the same bracket at the same rate is treating people equally, I can’t help it”
If you think I’m arguing that it isn’t, you can’t read. The issue is not within individuals in the same bracket. Of course they’re taxed equally. The issue is that different rules apply to individuals in different brackets.
The income tax imposed during the Civil War was later ruled as unconstitutional by the SCOTUS.
Jeffrey Thomas Maehr is 100% corrct, but I wouldn’t bet a penny on his chance of success.
Yes, it is fundamentally different.
The fruits of labor are real and tangible, and exchangable for compensation of any kind, including the labor of another. The holding of money may or may not produce added value.
“They do have different rates when they earn money in different brackets, but the rules are the same for everyone”
Huh? If one person is taxed at one rate and another another, obviously the rules are not the same. I might as well say that if black people’s income is taxed at ten percent and white people’s at fifteen the same rules apply, because it is ten for blacks and fifteen for whites whether you’re black or white. That’s nonsensical.
“SCOTUS has ruled in the past that graduated tax rates are fine”
Bad form. I couldn’t win the argument that racial segregation in public schools violates the 2nd amendment by saying SCOTUS struck it down with Brown. You know that whatever SCOTUS ruled they didn’t argue like you that progressive rates aren’t unequal. They’d say there is legitimate state interest in discriminating. Or they’d do what they usually do and say it fails the “strict scrutiny” standard, whereby it only strikes down laws that affect minority groups, voting rights, and their preferred sections of the Bill of Rights.
Needless to say just because SCOTUS doesn’t recognize economic classifications as worthy of 14th amendment smackdowns doesn’t mean they aren’t (psst, they’re wrong a lot).
Balderdash. Most often the fruit of laborious is money. We could go back to trading only what we make, but if we ever really did it is an inferior system.
laborious = labor
The strongest argument of all is the clear and indesputable fact that the 16th was not ratified.
I believe that 11 or 12 of the states significantly limited their ratification with conditions that were never even considered, let alone met.
The fruit of labor is always measurable change in the condition of something; the money is compensation therefor, not the fruits thereof.
Money is only and always simply a means of exchange.
Do you have some links for that.
Use a search engine.
There are gigabytes of discussion and exhibits on it.
The courts have NO LEGAL AUTHORITY over a live, living person, only a ficticous entity also known as a "corporation."
That's where I think the truth lies. Some have said that the Robert's decision on the ACA was designed to illustrate exactly that point.
Regardless, the progressive income tax is a central plank of the Communist Manifesto, along with fractional reserve banking and several other monstrous evils. We've adopted many of these planks in America, and we wonder why there's something wrong?
Some things should be opposed on principle, whether doing so is "legal" or not. Anything can be made illegal by a judge who has betrayed American principles.
A man's labor is his property, and taxation of that labor is virtual slavery. I'm constantly appalled at how so many so-called conservatives have become apologists for such an intrinsically Tyrannical concept.
The more of us who resist, the greater the chance it can be abolished. The income taxation system destroys prosperity, represses the middle class, violates privacy, infringes on rights against self-incrimination, penalizes savings, and fuels runaway government.
Income taxation is an abomination to a Free people. It is antithetical to American Liberty, and its propriety can be rationalized only in the compromised mind of a collectivist authoritarian.
Well, THAT Case Law was certainly forgotten in a hurry.....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.