XXXX,
Sure, that is part of the truth, but the evidence has been
suppressed and no court has been willing to allow it to be introduced.
The Supreme Court decisions are fait accompli – they are
a matter of record and nobody can argue with them.
In my opinion, the fraudulent ratification case is a much more
difficult case to make, as opposed to exposing the truth of the Supreme Court
decisions that are already in place.
People say and think – who the hell is Bill Benson? What does he
know? How do we know his evidence is legitimate?
Unfortunately, it takes some extensive reading and investigation
to validate the fraudulent ratification case, but even then it has no legal
standing without a court decision on the merits. And some of the Bill Benson
web sites are disappearing from the internet. Before long, Bill Benson and his
landmark effort to expose the truth of the fraudulent ratification of the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments will be forgotten.
The Brushaber decision, and all the subsequent Supreme Court
decisions confirming Brushaber, are de facto evidence of the truth and
are incontrovertible. The IRS cannot deny the truth, although they will
certainly try to use their virtually unlimited power to terrorize and
intimidate to force you to comply with their illegal demands.
The truth is what Pete Hendrickson’s approach is all about. He
advocates simply insisting on the truth in one’s income tax filings, and the
IRS will ultimately have to concede that in most cases no tax is due. Very few
people would owe any income tax if the law were properly enforced in accordance
with the Supreme Court decisions.
The IRS has been given numerous opportunities to explain exactly
where the law states that filing of income tax returns is required, and where
American citizens are made liable for payment of income taxes. They can’t
because no such laws exist. There is a famous interview with a former IRS
Commissioner who was asked these questions directly, and he refused to answer
the questions. (This interview is available on YouTube – I could find it if you
request.)
Again, I urge you to read and publicize “Cracking the Code”
and read the extensive information on Peter’s web site www.losthorizons.com.
Other valuable resources are the videos produced by Attorney
Tommy Cryer before his event unexpected death, as well as his landmark document
“The Memorandum”, all posted at www.truthattack.com.
Also of considerable value is a video series on YouTube by Larken Rose titled
“Theft by Deception” which takes you step-by-step through the labyrinth of the
Internal Revenue Code to prove that there is no law establishing an income tax
liability for most Americans.
Once you can see clearly how the lawyers and the IRS have
obfuscated and misrepresented the whole income tax liability issue in order to
steal trillions of dollars illegally from the American people, it will make you
feel the same anger you feel when you think about how the Democrats/Marxists
have managed to take over the White House with an illegal alien.
George – you have an important outlet to the people in your area
– I suggest you use it to the limit of your ability. I believe that the
fraudulent income tax, together with the unconstitutional Federal Reserve
System and the fraudulent Seventeenth Amendment are the true sources of most of
our problems in this country. Without these frauds, the Progressives/Marxists
never would have been able to create the federal monster that has taken over
our lives and made the fraudulent election of Barack Obama possible.
In regard to your attorney friend’s statement that he agreed
with “most of what I said” about the income tax and the Sixteenth Amendment,
his words leave the implication that some of what I have put out is incorrect.
If anything I have reported in incorrect, I would like to know what it is. I
have spent an enormous amount of time researching these matters, and I have
tried to be very careful that I do not publish any incorrect statements. If
everything I have reported is, in fact, correct, your friend Ted should
acknowledge that fact.
Regards,
Subject: Re: What has the U.S. Supreme Court said about the Sixteenth
Amendment?
Would it help if we emphasized also that it was never properly
ratified?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original
Message-----
Sent: Sun, Dec 9, 2012 10:45 am
Subject: RE: What has the U.S. Supreme Court said about the Sixteenth
Amendment?
George,
The only strategy I can offer is to spread the truth far and wide.
Eventually the truth will prevail.
Dave
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2012 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: What has the U.S. Supreme Court said about the Sixteenth
Amendment?
Dave:
Looks like an uphill battle, which govt. will resists with all of
its might. What strategies could be used to prevail that haven't already been
tried and failed?
It would seem that their greatest weakness is that it has been
determined that the 16th was never properly ratified.
I'm not ready to embark upon still another legal crusade, unless
there is a plan to actually win. The establishment might actually throw Obama
under the bus, if the circumstances were right. He is expendable, but the tax
revenues flowing from the current interpretation of the 16th are NOT.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sun, Dec 9, 2012 10:02 am
Subject: What has the U.S. Supreme Court said about the Sixteenth Amendment?
What has the U.S. Supreme Court said about the Sixteenth
Amendment?
“The Sixteenth Amendment did not authorize any new type of tax,
nor did it repeal or revoke the tax clauses of Article I of the Constitution”
By Peter Hendrickson, Author “Cracking the Code: The Fascinating
Truth About Taxation in America”
December 7, 2012
The apportionment requirement on a capitation or other direct tax
was not changed by the 16th Amendment. The Supreme
Court, in Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916), the
case taken up by the court for the express purpose of settling the meaning and
effect of the 16th Amendment, addresses Brushaber's contention that the
amendment provides for a non-apportioned capitation or other direct tax as
follows:
"We are of opinion, however, that the confusion is not
inherent, but rather arises from the conclusion that the 16th Amendment
provides for a hitherto unknown power of taxation; that is, a power to levy an
income tax which, although direct, should not be subject to the regulation of
apportionment applicable to all other direct taxes. And the
far-reaching effect of this erroneous assumption will be made clear by
generalizing the many contentions advanced in argument to support it..."
Noting that nothing in the 16th Amendment repeals Article 1,
s. 9, cl. 4 imposing the apportionment requirement on capitations and other
direct taxes, the court points out that Brushaber's erroneous argument
would cause:
“...one provision of the Constitution [to] destroy another; that
is, [it] would result in bringing the provisions of the Amendment
[supposedly] exempting a direct tax from apportionment into irreconcilable
conflict with the general requirement that all direct taxes be apportioned."
The court declares that the only effect of the 16th Amendment is
to overrule the Pollock decision's characterization of the application of the
tax to rent and dividends that otherwise qualify as "income" as
really being a direct tax, and therefore invoking the apportionment
requirement, based on the reasoning that the source of the dividends is
personal property (the stock), and to tax the dividend is effectively to tax
the source.
The court reiterates this point repeatedly in subsequent rulings:
"The provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new
power of taxation..."
Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240
U.S. 103 (1916);
"The Sixteenth Amendment, although referred to in argument, has no real bearing and may be
put out of view. As pointed out in recent decisions, it does not extend the
taxing power to new or excepted subjects..."
Peck v. Lowe, 247 U.S. 165 (1918);
"[T]he settled doctrine is that the Sixteenth Amendment
confers no power upon Congress to define and tax as income without
apportionment something which theretofore could not have been properly
regarded as income."
Taft v. Bowers, 278 US 470, 481 (1929) (Emphasis added.)
Treasury Department legislative draftsman F. Morse Hubbard
summarizes this point for Congress in hearing testimony in 1943:
"[T]he amendment made it possible to bring investment
income within the scope of the general income-tax law, but did not change the
character of the tax. It is
still fundamentally an excise or duty* with respect to the privilege of
carrying on any activity or owning any property which produces income."
(*Note: “Excise or Duty” puts the income tax squarely into the
class of indirect taxes as authorized in Article I Section 8 of the United
States Constitution, subject to the requirement of uniformity. Indirect taxes
are also characterized by being voluntary and avoidable as a result of their
application to discretionary activities, and are subject to collection by a
third party. The federal gasoline tax is a clear example.)
Here is Legislative Attorney of the American Law Division of the
Library of Congress Howard M. Zaritsky in his 1979 Report No. 80-19A, entitled
'Some Constitutional Questions Regarding the Federal Income Tax Laws':
"The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice
White, first noted that the Sixteenth Amendment did not authorize any new
type of tax, nor did it repeal or revoke the tax clauses of Article I of
the Constitution, quoted above. Direct taxes were, notwithstanding
the advent of the Sixteenth Amendment, still subject to the rule of
apportionment…"
In 1988, the Supreme Court again re-iterates that the 16th
Amendment doesn't allow the application of the tax to anything not already
properly subject to it before the amendment was ever adopted:
"The legislative history merely shows... ...that the sole
purpose of the Sixteenth Amendment was to remove the apportionment requirement
for whichever incomes were otherwise taxable."
So. Carolina v.
Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988)
(Emphasis added.)
In fact, today's tax remains in large part a body of enactments
preceding the 16th Amendment by 51 years:
"The whole body of internal revenue law in effect on January
2, 1939... ...has its ultimate origin in 164 separate enactments of Congress.
The earliest of these was approved July 1, 1862; the latest, June 16,
1938."
(The current
codified version of the tax statutes was first called the IRC of 1954 and then
later relabeled the IRC of 1986, but with the exception of some
statutes-at-large enacted in the interim, it remains for the most part derived
from the IRC of 1939. See the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation
derivation tables here. That code, as you see, is itself derived in
large part from pre-16th amendment enactments.)
Now, don't let the significance of what you've just read escape
you. What qualifies as "income," and is subject to the tax, was
identified and taxed as such long before the 16th Amendment. NOTHING IS TAXABLE WITHOUT APPORTIONMENT NOW THAT WASN'T
TAXABLE WITHOUT APPORTIONMENT THEN.
As the Supreme Court says over and over, all the 16th Amendment
did is override the Pollock court's decision holding that apportionment must be
applied in order to tax even "income"-qualified dividends and rent,
because of their relationship to their sources. The 16th neither
ended or repealed the apportionment requirement for any tax that had qualified
as a capitation or other direct tax before it, nor did it "initiate"
the income tax, which was already 51 years old when the amendment was declared
adopted.
|
Cracking
the Code- The Fascinating Truth About Taxation In America
by Peter E.
Hendrickson
Lost Horizons, 2003, 232
pages, $24.95
Reviewed
by Steve Thomas
“There’s
no shortage of frivolous books on the market that make the claim that you can
avoid taxes. ‘Cracking The Code’ is not one of them.”
Any student of liberty and of the founding of the United States has to
know intuitively that the current tax code of our federal government could
have never been the intention of our Founding Fathers. One can take it
as a given that the Founders would be disheartened and outraged by the growth
and perversion of the federal government – and the abuse of power it employs
in collecting taxes from the people.
I have often wondered how much different the course of American history
would be if an economist like Milton Friedman or James Buchanan – with
two hundred years of hindsight – could be transported back in time to advise
the Founders on Constitutional issues like taxation. Perhaps they could
provide the Founders with insights that would have made the Constitution
impervious to time and the “factions” that so troubled them.
In his recently published book, Cracking The Code: The Fascinating
Truth About Taxation In America, libertarian author Peter Eric Hendrickson
makes it perfectly clear that America’s Founders were very much aware of the
dangers associated with the federal government’s power to tax. Accordingly,
they established a wholly viable system of checks and balances within the
Constitution to prevent the federal government from abusing its taxing
power. Hendrickson also points out that the Founders actually had a
renowned economist (if indirectly) advising them: a capable Scotsman by the
name of Adam Smith.
The Constitution calls for direct taxes (i.e., those which are
unavoidable) to be apportioned according to each state’s
population. That means that federal taxes are supposed to be
collected from the states proportionate to their percentage of the nation’s
total population – not directly from individuals.
Even the Sixteenth Amendment, which is widely misunderstood as having
established an “income” tax, actually represents only a slight modification
of the tax already in place at the time of its proposal. It did not
change the Constitution’s restriction on direct taxation.
Nonetheless, a widespread misunderstanding of the effects of that
amendment has successfully been exploited to convince Americans that
everything changed in 1913. People wrongly believe that the amendment
gives the government the legal ability to take citizen’s property at will –
but nothing could be further from the truth, says Hendrickson. There’s
a reason why we hear all the time that it’s a ‘voluntary’ system, and it’s
not because we all ‘volunteer’ to save the government the trouble of doing the
paperwork.
It is Hendrickson’s contention that the only people from whom the
federal government can legally demand an “income” tax are those who are
direct beneficiaries of the federal government. Such parties would
include federal employees, contractors and those who benefit from government
licensing. In other words, if you are a private citizen who earns
a salary, Hendrickson claims that you do not have to pay “income” taxes –
including FICA – to the federal government.
Don’t believe him? Then go to Hendrickson’s website ( www.losthorizons.com)
and bear witness to the unthinkable: a letter from the IRS acknowledging that
his claim of “money improperly withheld.” is valid. But don’t expect
your accountant or attorney to jump on Hendrickson’s bandwagon any time
soon. Their jobs – and those of millions of others – depend on your
confusion and fear when it comes to the IRS and the bewildering tax code it
enforces.
Cracking The Code is a product of the information age. The Internet and
its search engines allowed Hendrickson to not only wade through the entire
tax code, but to investigate and cross-reference its content: all 3,413,780
words of it. What Hendrickson found is that the tax code, regardless of
its confusing and misleading language, is consistent with the Constitution’s
original restriction on direct taxes – and that there is no legal way for the
federal government to enforce an “income” tax on the labor or earnings of
private citizens. Hendrickson cites clear and consistent case law
throughout the book to back his claim – including a plethora from the United
States Supreme Court.
Readers of Cracking The Code will undoubtedly experience a paradigm
shift in their thinking as they make their way through its pages.
Skepticism and doubt will slowly be replaced with certainty and conviction as
Hendrickson systematically walks his readers through the law and the tax
code’s maze of confusion. But it won’t come easy.
As Thomas Paine once wrote in Common Sense, “ . . . a long habit of not
thinking something wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right,
and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” Paine’s
wisdom undoubtedly applies to the sentiments most Americans have when it
comes to the way income taxes are imposed upon them.
There’s no shortage of frivolous books on the market that make the
claim that you can avoid taxes. Cracking The Code is not one of
them. It is a judicious and thoughtful work written by an American
patriot deeply dedicated to the rule of law. Hopefully, this book will
find its way into the hands of concerned citizens, legal scholars and federal
judges who truly believe in upholding the Constitution – and who are sympathetic
to the cause of liberty.
# # #
Steve
Thomas is a freelance writer and businessman in Detroit, Michigan, and an
Adjunct Scholar with the Mackinac Center For Public Policy in Midland,
Michigan.
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