The misspelling prompted me to the notion that "frivolous" is a great word that ought to be more widely applied to a variety of situations in modern life, but somehow has been pigeon-holed to a legal definition.
Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument? Maybe it's the latter, and I'm just biased. Hacker News bills itself as a civil, open minded discussion forum, and by and large it works out great. However I certainly feel that certain views are not very accepted. If the "taboo" views were explicitly laid out, that would be fine. At least we'd know where it stands.
For this particular comment, probably just that it doesn't add anything. Saying something akin to "get rid of taxes, and the IRS will have less power" is pretty tautological and not really relevant to most of the arguments linked (which are far more ... creative ... and bold, in terms of claiming that the US/IRS already doesn't have power to tax people).
I agree it's not very insightful or anything, but there are plenty of boring comments lying around that don't get downvoted that much. I imagine it's partially fueled by people's frustration with this viewpoint. But I guess it's hard to uproot bias entirely.
Green accounts tend to draw more fire as well. Trolling through sockpuppet accounts seems to be more and more common around here, so people might be trigger happy.
> Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument?
If it was posted in response to a an "Ask HN: What should we do with federal income tax policy?" or "Ask HN: How would you reduce the power of the IRS?", it would be on topic and less worthy of downvotes (of course, both of those threads would probably be flag worthy as improper for HN, but that's a different issue.)
Even for the first of those contexts, its really inadequately argued. But, in the context of the actual thread, its basically off-topic noise.
Alas, they have yet to solve the halting problem, or create the universal debugger:
"This document, including the relevant legal authorities cited, is not intended to provide an exhaustive list of frivolous tax arguments. Merely because a frivolous argument is not included in this document does not mean that it is not frivolous."
I heard about this list on the most recent episode of Planet Money, which talks to someone who believed some of these frivolous arguments and faced a lot of legal problems because of it, and separately, with a lawyer explaining that yes, these arguments are frivolous: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money
Yes, taxes are stealing, police and fire should be private and pay with your pocketbook, etc etc blah blah libertarian bullshit.
I like public parks, and schools and fire. I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues.
Every high income nation has income taxes. The US is the only high income nation that still has the death penalty. Let's fix that first.
Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything. You're talking about a broken system; the system of debt, war and money. They're all related. If humanity is going to survive another 10,000 years, we need to deal with the real issues of consumerism and move away from money entirely.
The truth? The truth is, you should stop enabling the waste of my money, you tax collector scumbags. Maybe if you give me the option of not having my stolen effort spent on foreign wars, I'll have some respect for you lickspittles.
To be honest, what do you expect to have happened after roughly 100 years of neglect and disinterest by We The People who are supposed to be doing the electing and the watching? All technology seems to have given us is the ability to be even more polarized and entrenched about the way things "ought to be" and, thus, dig in our heels unless we get exactly that.
You need to read "People's History of the US" by Howard Zinn. There never was a democracy here. The only times when people had the actual power was during the many armed insurrections, most of which were simply suppressed by force, but some of which did achieve at least some of their ends.
"We the people" is not any one individual. As an individual you are 1 in ~324M. So your say counts extremely little.
You have the opportunity to make an impact. But it requires an extraordinary amount of work to make your voice heard over the other ~324M people. As it should.
Oh I'm well aware of that. I'm also very aware that:
0. There's no direct vote on laws. This alone makes the US not a democracy, but a republic at best.
1. There's no direct vote for president and vice president.
2. Elected representatives or the president do not care one iota about their constituents between the elections. If you think they do, explain things like TPP
3. Two party system merely creates the illusion of choice. Both parties are right wing, with democrats being slightly more centrist.
The word 'democracy', when used without clarification, is rarely intended to mean a direct democracy with 100% majority rule. Instead, it almost always is shorthand for a republic with representative government.
Which, nevertheless, means that people aren't really ruling, and therefore it's not what one could legitimately call "people's rule". Their elected "representatives" (which, let me remind you, don't give a shit about their constituents between elections) write laws. The president, elected by the electoral college people elect (who also doesn't give a shit about the constituents) signs the laws and commands the army which will suppress any challenge to the authority of the federal government with violence if need be. And courts (in which judges aren't elected at all and don't have to give a shit about anybody), interpret the laws.
Why do we need so many middlemen? Is this _really_ a democracy? Or is it a mere visibility of "rule of the people" designed to keep the working class, well, working, for the benefit of the ruling class?
You are asking if this is a 'direct democracy'. No, it isn't a direct democracy even though the term 'democracy' is almost always used without clarification.
For some reason you are arguing as if a direct democracy would somehow magically address the problems you outline for a representative democracy.
But in all but the smallest organizations, a direct democracy is simply unworkable and so your complaints don't really move the discussion forward. Do you want to go to the ballot box once a week to vote on every decision currently made by your representatives at the local, state, and federal level? Do you think that is more workable than a representative mechanism?
I feel bad for the IRS. They don't make the rules, but they get the brunt of the vitriol because they are the enforcers. And honestly, as enforcers, they are pretty fair and just, given the resources they have to work with.
They've used "big data" for years to target the tax cheats they think will give them the best return on their dollar. That's why they don't go after the mega-rich -- their lawyers delay the process so much that their return is lower than going after small business owners.
As far as government orgs go, they're probably one of the most efficient.
My personal experience with them was actually very positive, even though I was there for an audit. They called me in, they said, "here are our concerns", I said, "here's my documentation". We went back and forth, and mutually agreed that some things were ok and some were not. We decided I owed some extra money, but they waived the fees and penalties.
Overall, I think they're one of the better orgs in the government.
Sorry, but an organization that targeted people because of their political beliefs, postponed or withheld nonprofit status because of such beliefs, and is now stonewalling the congressional investigation doesn't count as "one of the better orgs in the government".
They apparently can't implement their own backup policy, can't comply with congressional subpoenas, and has generally slow walked and foot dragged through the entire investigation.
“staffers in the agency's Cincinnati office were trying to manage the deluge of applications for tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax law. Between 2010 and 2012, Lerner said, the number of 501(c)(4) applications leapt from 1,500 to more than 3,400.”
Frankly, there are a lot of fraudsters out there, and when there started to be a large number of new conservative nonprofits started by people without prior experience running such organizations, the field was ripe for folks to step in with fake charities, so they could collect money from outraged “tea partiers”.
As an example, Ben Carson’s whole political campaign is basically a direct mailer donation scam (the people running it were previously running supplement scams, etc.) which somehow transcended its original scope and turned into a real campaign, much to the surprise of Carson and his buddies.
It’s not surprising that the IRS staffers would notice a pattern of abuse with a pretty good hit rate on particular keywords, and then target groups with those keywords for increased scrutiny, making them fill out a few extra forms. It was stupid of them to do so, because the political fallout is predictable. But it’s hardly the roaring scandal it’s made out to be.
I'll give you that for the sake of argument. That still doesn't explain the stonewalling, the Fifth Amendment invoking, and the "mistaken" wiped and lost hard drives.
The Tea Party's "political beliefs" literally include "not paying taxes".
I really have trouble finding this scandalous, prima facie. The conservative nature of these groups was purely incidental, it seems to me -- have I missed something?
> The Tea Party's "political beliefs" literally include "not paying taxes".
No. Their stance is to reduce and or eliminate taxes; it is not to avoid paying taxes owed. Whether you (or the IRS) agree with that political stance is entirely irrelevant to these groups' taxable status.
I can provide a little context here. When I was in college I was a conservative Republican. Some right-wing groups in Washington deliberately and consciously helped me and many other students set up tax-exempt organizations. Everything was technically OK.
But in retrospect? It's pretty clear their strategy was to create a bunch of exempt organizations through which to funnel money for political purposes. The big loophole at that time was that you could be a 501c3 and provide "education" and remain exempt. Now if ALL of that education just happened to benefit the right-wing of the GOP, well I guess that's just a coincidence.
Frankly, the IRS was totally right in going after these groups. The problem is they overreached in some cases. Many of the groups are not following the spirit of the law and I would wager that many of them are not even following the letter of the law.
For example, you're not supposed to coordinate with election campaigns if you're a 501c3, but what if everyone on your board is actively involved in local Republican politics? Even if your board meeting is technically non-partisan, when everyone goes out for drinks afterwards (on the non-profit's tab) you can be sure that election strategy is going to be a topic of conversation.
For the record, I do not see liberal groups flagrantly disregarding the law in such a manner, which makes sense because they're ideologically less committed to dodging taxes.
TLDR: If a bunch of people are organizing around the concept "taxes suck, let's not pay them!" it's a pretty safe bet that many of them are actually breaking the law.
Well, I run a 501(c)3, scientific research, ("making an open source anticancer drug") and the IRS held up my application for a year and a half on what should have been a very straightforward application. While I was waiting I had to quit my job at a big research institute to avoid use of time conflicts and literally drove for Lyft and Uber to make ends meet.
It turned out that the IRS had bolo'd ("be on the lookout") all applications that used "open source" and although I don't know for sure it seems like that was what caused the problem.
> Controversial intensive scrutiny of political groups
> Beginning in March 2010, the IRS more closely scrutinized certain organizations applying for tax-exempt status under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code by focusing on groups with certain words in their names.[46][47][48] In May 2010, some employees of the "Determinations Unit" of the Cincinnati office of the IRS, which is tasked with reviewing applications pertaining to tax-exempt status, began developing a spreadsheet that became known as the "Be On the Look Out" list.
> The list, first distributed in August 2010, suggested intensive scrutiny of applicants with names related to a number of political causes, including names related to the Tea Party movement and other conservative causes.[48] Eventually, IRS employees in at least Cincinnati, Ohio; El Monte, California; Laguna Niguel, California; and Washington, D.C.[49] applied closer scrutiny to applications from organizations that:[50][51][52]
> referenced words such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project", "progressive," "occupy," "Israel," "open source software," "medical marijuana" and "occupied territory advocacy" in the case file;[47][48]
For the record, I DO see plenty of liberal groups flagrantly violating the law, and your claim about attitude toward paying taxes is a clever red herring, because EVERY organization that claims tax-exempt status is claiming the same thing with respect to what the IRS has jurisdiction to investigate: "WE, our organization, should not have to pay taxes." There are countless liberal activist organizations making that claim.
To be excused from taxes, as every such organization regardless of their politics is claiming they should be, an organization is required to obey certain rules that aren't supposed to depend on the specifics of their politics. Things such as actively trying to get a particular candidate elected explicitly violate the rules and, by law, should cost an organization its tax-exempt status. Yet Obama's IRS enforcers have had no objection to tax-exempt "community organizers" going door to door on election day to "get out the vote" but, for some reason, only knocking on doors of registered Democrats.
Regardless of any political theories about taxes in general, which the IRS is not empowered to take a position on, these organizations are all the same in claiming that THEY themselves don't have to pay them. The IRS is supposed to investigate such claims, and yet while liberal organizations were able to go as far as actively encouraging individual registered Democrats to vote in the specific election being held that very day (in which only one candidate was from the party of everyone being encouraged to go vote) without fear of scrutiny by Obama's IRS, any organization that so much as used the term "liberty" in its name was, it turned out, risking audits, time-consuming scrutiny of their activities, potential denial of tax-exempt status because they might get involved in politics, etc. We can't have political activists claiming tax-exempt status getting involved in politics, right? Well, it turned out to depend entirely on their politics, not on the nature of their activities.
ALL organizations claiming tax exempt status are making the same claim with respect to paying their own taxes, and your claims regarding your own tax liability is the ONLY thing the IRS is empowered to scrutinize. To claim that, among those groups, the ones who believe that "WE don't have to pay at all, and OTHERS should be taxed less" are more likely breaking the law than those whose position is "WE don't have to pay at all, and OTHERS should be forced to pay more for our agenda" is ridiculous.
The fundamental problem that many people have with the IRS is that they have a great deal of discretionary power. They make and enforce regulations, and do so in what are often arbitrary and capricious ways. Your experience may have been good, but agents can make one's life very difficult even if there was no infraction; their decision to waive fees could have gone the other way if the agent was feeling differently. They also could have compelled you to continue doing a great deal of work for them, possibly until you made an innocent mistake, and they charged you with a crime.
This is all aside from the routine political and personal vendettas employees with this sort of power will invariably engage in. These violations are not just a few 'bad apples', as this sort of activity is a systemic issue, and the IRS actively protects the wrongdoers.
Trying to get out of paying taxes is like arguing the score of a game after the game has ended. If you didn't like how it ended up, you should have been playing it differently.
I agree to a point, but to further the game analogy, no other game has rules quite so complicated. When the referees decide that you had a foul in the first quarter, you begin a complex process of determining what the result of the game would have been had the foul been caught immediately.
The best "players" have great teams studying the rules. Those without the resources to do so make their best attempt by using amateur understanding and common advice.
See also the Sovereign Citizen Movement, who use a lot of these frivolous arguments. (FBI claims some sovereign citizens might be terrorists; Southern Poverty Law Center says there are about 100,000 hard core believers, with an extra 200,000 partial believers.)
I stand wholly behind my comment referring to this as a comically absurd kafka-esque look at our nations tax code, which is ostensibly the nations funding model, however given the level of downvotes, I would like to clarify the position a bit more formally:
========================
First, I appreciate you finding these links for me, I can actually use google quite well, however, I deign to point out that having a key piece of tax law intermittently down with such regularity that it is mirrored at an offsite location, in slightly poor form. Especially given the backlash Linux Mint faced just yesterday for not protecting itself and its' users. Linux Mint of course being an open source software project that, according to Wikipedia[1], is subsidized by partners and donations on a much smaller scale than the U.S. Gov't.
I will cut them some slack but I think holding the US government to a standard of one 9 of up time (on the left side of the decimal) isn't unreasonable. Now, obviously I could gave made a more cohesive argument to relay that point, which I hope is what the downbotes relay, and not disagreement.
The fact that some of the core Financial frameworks for a government that controls trillions of dollars of capital via tax revenue, and this very framework is how it raises that revenue, I suspect it would not be unreasonable to think a bit about structuring the system that makes it available.
In that it is served via non-secure HTTP and is so frequently down that the actual site links to a third party is somewhat troubling. More so, that the responses in fact seem to excuse this behavior which is, in fact, quite a dangerous precedent.
This isn't exactly, Show HN my weekend hack, right? Given that we expect an open source operating system to do many things surrounding security, do we not also find this a pretty immense lapse in judgement?
Consider:
* What if a student, or hacker gained access to the server by obtaining a password and making several edits to the document. It would not be unreasonable to assume that sysadmins have access to this, much like any internal infrastructure.
It is not a far fetched scenario. A large multi-corp could certainly do it, and given that the governments own site suggests it as a viable alternative. So, in the edge-case where they could not have congress insert a law directly into the tax code, they could of course cut out the middle man(joke).
So while I informally made a bit of a jest, I find this downright unprofessional especially in confluence with the statement they made about:
Now, in fact the first income tax was actually started to fund the civil war[2] and went from 3% to 10% during that time. So, there were of course taxes but not a formal income tax. It wasn't formalized until 1919, by congress and people who make under 68K wouldn't need to file. So it isn't, in fact, unreasonable for a country formed out of a seccession from taxation rejected this notion, HOWEVER, irrespective of that argument, they make this statement:
[please see link for qoutes]
The rebuttal of a 1960 court case using the word "voluntary".
A 1986 court case stating they a are correct
And this statement, which is NOT a link:
The requirement to file an income tax return is not voluntary and is clearly set forth in sections 6011(a), 6012(a), et seq., and 6072(a) of the Internal Revenue Code. See also Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-1(a).
Which returns some shady book which is an entire rebuttal of what they said, but more importantly, a downed website, Cornell, and the insistence to go to Cornell to get the nations bloody tax code.
So to conclude, i don't know what you guys/girls are indicating, but if your contention is I should be able to use google better, and it isn't ...
Duty to file an income tax return is section 6012 on that page. Section 6151 lays out the duty to pay tax and when the tax must be paid (at time of filing).
You'll also notice if you play around with it that the House site is pretty terrible to browse and read, which is why everybody links to Cornell's version.
Edit 2: The IRS stated that section 1 and Section 11 are the relevent documents, section 11 being companies. I'll take your word about the rest of it as the link does not work and irrespective to my point:
If you want to disprove the notion that you are not a legitimate gov entity, it may be wise to
* link to the documents you reference
* have them hosted at a .gov site. If they are in fact at a .gov site, it is weird to suggest the private one.
* have them be updated to 2016.
i guess no one else found it weird that in the first or 2nd example if frivilous stuff, was that justification.
Keep trying. It is failing intermittently for me. I think the server might be getting hugged.
EDIT: When it does load, it's a 2886KB transfer that takes 87 seconds to load the full page. So definitely not the fastest thing in the world. And this is why people use Cornell's browser, as ubernostrum stated.
And here's the direct link to Title 26, Subtitle A, which contains sections 1 to 2000.
While this is surely a warranted and useful document in its own right, I can't help but tell my own story of "Frivolous IRS Wastefulness" as a counter-balance.
Some in the US might remember a year when the 'Estate Tax' was suspended - that is, if a relative died and passed along an inheritance amount, it wasn't taxable like in years prior or once the suspension expired after 2010.
As a recipient of some funds - a mid single digit thousand figure - from my maternal relative passing, I paid off my credit card and - this was my mistake - included the amount received in some kind of 'income' field. This set into motion one of the most ridiculous, patience-testing exchanges in my adult life. In mid-2011, they sent me a letter wanting a check for $X,XXX.
I wrote back a clear explanation of the error in question - that the funds were an inheritance and not subject to the taxes being claimed. I sent it via FedEx, and eventually got a response. They still wanted the entire $X,XXX!
This back and forth - me being as polite and stubborn as possible in writing - and the IRS kept wanting money, offering no proof why the amount they claimed owed was actually owed (I asked repeatedly for citations). This went on for a FULL YEAR. In the second to last correspondence, I had pages and pages of the 2010 tax code included, with relevant highlights, obscure forms...yet still felt taking a polite (if a bit dense) tone would be better than getting angry, you know, poking a gorilla with a stick kind of thing.
In the end, I sucked it up and sent them about $150, what they eventually came down to after all this time, just to get them to shut up. The IRS, without question, wasted time, resources, and money stubbornly pursuing money that they weren't entitled to at all.
So, while I respect their power and genuinely believe in their mission to acquire funds to keep the government working in its basic fashion, I have absolutely no pity for staff members who have to read through line after line of bullshit excuses, because they do it too.
Hmm, the fact that you were being ignored tells me that you actually were not getting time, resources, and money allocated to your case. It was probably the case that they lacked the time, resources, and money to take it seriously and just kept sending you the default response. Sending many pages of tax code probably hurt you in the long run.
Quite the opposite, they weren't ignoring me. Every single correspondence demonstrated effort and time on their part to read through, re-calculate some things, re-package, and send it back hoping I'd just kind of cave in. The stack of papers is about six inches tall.
When I was in law school I liked to research "tax protestor" and "sovereign citizen" arguments to practice my legal research skills. The IRS documents submitted cover much of what I remember of these people's arguments, but not all. Some other arguments or mistakes I recall being common:
• Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The case turns out to be real...but what they are quoting is not from the court's ruling but rather is from a brief submitted by the losing side.
• Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The cited court exists, but the case does not.
• Similar to the above, but the cited court itself does not exist.
• They cite a real case from a real court, but the parts they quote to support their argument do not exist.
• On those very rare occasions when they cite a real case, from a real court, and actually quote from the court's ruling, it turns out to be a ruling that was overturned quickly by a higher court.
• (One of my favorites) Saying that a court lacked jurisdiction because the flag in the courtroom had a gold fringe, which they say signifies that this is an "Admiralty Court" and only has jurisdiction over the seas and navigable waterways.
The article mentioned the argument that the Federal government only has authority over D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, etc., but doesn't say why some people believe that. I've seen two arguments for that belief. The first is that the Federal government was created by the Constitution specifically to run D.C. and other Federal territory and was not given any authority over anything else.
The second is that there is someplace in the tax code that says something like "For purposes of this section, 'United States' includes D.C., Guam, [...]" and they think "includes" means "consists of only" (and they ignore the restriction to "this section" and so think this applies to the whole tax code).
I've never run into an argument from these people that was not, frankly, idiotic. If one of their arguments does not immediately fail due to a fundamental misunderstanding of basic English, it falls apart as soon as you try to track down original sources.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 92.8 ms ] threadhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi
If it was posted in response to a an "Ask HN: What should we do with federal income tax policy?" or "Ask HN: How would you reduce the power of the IRS?", it would be on topic and less worthy of downvotes (of course, both of those threads would probably be flag worthy as improper for HN, but that's a different issue.)
Even for the first of those contexts, its really inadequately argued. But, in the context of the actual thread, its basically off-topic noise.
"This document, including the relevant legal authorities cited, is not intended to provide an exhaustive list of frivolous tax arguments. Merely because a frivolous argument is not included in this document does not mean that it is not frivolous."
See my above comment for one of the "rebuttals".
I like public parks, and schools and fire. I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues.
Every high income nation has income taxes. The US is the only high income nation that still has the death penalty. Let's fix that first.
Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything. You're talking about a broken system; the system of debt, war and money. They're all related. If humanity is going to survive another 10,000 years, we need to deal with the real issues of consumerism and move away from money entirely.
> I don't like funding wars or corrupt police, but those are separate issues.
That is an effect of taxation. You wouldn't be forced to fund them otherwise.
> Every high income nation has income taxes.
The popularity of something doesn't mean it's good or correlated to high income.
> Ultimately, getting rid of taxes won't change anything.
This is a pretty extraordinary claim.
The IRS funds democracy. They are not scum.
You have the opportunity to make an impact. But it requires an extraordinary amount of work to make your voice heard over the other ~324M people. As it should.
0. There's no direct vote on laws. This alone makes the US not a democracy, but a republic at best. 1. There's no direct vote for president and vice president. 2. Elected representatives or the president do not care one iota about their constituents between the elections. If you think they do, explain things like TPP 3. Two party system merely creates the illusion of choice. Both parties are right wing, with democrats being slightly more centrist.
Here is a good discussion of these differences: http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demr...
Actually, it most often representative democracy, which may be a republic, but may just as easily be, say, a constitutional monarchy.
Why do we need so many middlemen? Is this _really_ a democracy? Or is it a mere visibility of "rule of the people" designed to keep the working class, well, working, for the benefit of the ruling class?
For some reason you are arguing as if a direct democracy would somehow magically address the problems you outline for a representative democracy.
But in all but the smallest organizations, a direct democracy is simply unworkable and so your complaints don't really move the discussion forward. Do you want to go to the ballot box once a week to vote on every decision currently made by your representatives at the local, state, and federal level? Do you think that is more workable than a representative mechanism?
They've used "big data" for years to target the tax cheats they think will give them the best return on their dollar. That's why they don't go after the mega-rich -- their lawyers delay the process so much that their return is lower than going after small business owners.
As far as government orgs go, they're probably one of the most efficient.
My personal experience with them was actually very positive, even though I was there for an audit. They called me in, they said, "here are our concerns", I said, "here's my documentation". We went back and forth, and mutually agreed that some things were ok and some were not. We decided I owed some extra money, but they waived the fees and penalties.
Overall, I think they're one of the better orgs in the government.
They apparently can't implement their own backup policy, can't comply with congressional subpoenas, and has generally slow walked and foot dragged through the entire investigation.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-sc...
But mostly my point was that they do not deserve the hate they get in most cases.
Frankly, there are a lot of fraudsters out there, and when there started to be a large number of new conservative nonprofits started by people without prior experience running such organizations, the field was ripe for folks to step in with fake charities, so they could collect money from outraged “tea partiers”.
As an example, Ben Carson’s whole political campaign is basically a direct mailer donation scam (the people running it were previously running supplement scams, etc.) which somehow transcended its original scope and turned into a real campaign, much to the surprise of Carson and his buddies.
It’s not surprising that the IRS staffers would notice a pattern of abuse with a pretty good hit rate on particular keywords, and then target groups with those keywords for increased scrutiny, making them fill out a few extra forms. It was stupid of them to do so, because the political fallout is predictable. But it’s hardly the roaring scandal it’s made out to be.
I really have trouble finding this scandalous, prima facie. The conservative nature of these groups was purely incidental, it seems to me -- have I missed something?
[citation needed]
The TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already(backronym). They're not opposed to paying any taxes, they're opposed to paying more.
More than this, the IRS has been used as a weapon for much longer. Under the Clinton Administration, the IRS was used to harass WND and Joseph Farah.
No. Their stance is to reduce and or eliminate taxes; it is not to avoid paying taxes owed. Whether you (or the IRS) agree with that political stance is entirely irrelevant to these groups' taxable status.
I can provide a little context here. When I was in college I was a conservative Republican. Some right-wing groups in Washington deliberately and consciously helped me and many other students set up tax-exempt organizations. Everything was technically OK.
But in retrospect? It's pretty clear their strategy was to create a bunch of exempt organizations through which to funnel money for political purposes. The big loophole at that time was that you could be a 501c3 and provide "education" and remain exempt. Now if ALL of that education just happened to benefit the right-wing of the GOP, well I guess that's just a coincidence.
Frankly, the IRS was totally right in going after these groups. The problem is they overreached in some cases. Many of the groups are not following the spirit of the law and I would wager that many of them are not even following the letter of the law.
For example, you're not supposed to coordinate with election campaigns if you're a 501c3, but what if everyone on your board is actively involved in local Republican politics? Even if your board meeting is technically non-partisan, when everyone goes out for drinks afterwards (on the non-profit's tab) you can be sure that election strategy is going to be a topic of conversation.
For the record, I do not see liberal groups flagrantly disregarding the law in such a manner, which makes sense because they're ideologically less committed to dodging taxes.
TLDR: If a bunch of people are organizing around the concept "taxes suck, let's not pay them!" it's a pretty safe bet that many of them are actually breaking the law.
It turned out that the IRS had bolo'd ("be on the lookout") all applications that used "open source" and although I don't know for sure it seems like that was what caused the problem.
> Controversial intensive scrutiny of political groups
> Beginning in March 2010, the IRS more closely scrutinized certain organizations applying for tax-exempt status under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code by focusing on groups with certain words in their names.[46][47][48] In May 2010, some employees of the "Determinations Unit" of the Cincinnati office of the IRS, which is tasked with reviewing applications pertaining to tax-exempt status, began developing a spreadsheet that became known as the "Be On the Look Out" list.
> The list, first distributed in August 2010, suggested intensive scrutiny of applicants with names related to a number of political causes, including names related to the Tea Party movement and other conservative causes.[48] Eventually, IRS employees in at least Cincinnati, Ohio; El Monte, California; Laguna Niguel, California; and Washington, D.C.[49] applied closer scrutiny to applications from organizations that:[50][51][52]
> referenced words such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project", "progressive," "occupy," "Israel," "open source software," "medical marijuana" and "occupied territory advocacy" in the case file;[47][48]
To be excused from taxes, as every such organization regardless of their politics is claiming they should be, an organization is required to obey certain rules that aren't supposed to depend on the specifics of their politics. Things such as actively trying to get a particular candidate elected explicitly violate the rules and, by law, should cost an organization its tax-exempt status. Yet Obama's IRS enforcers have had no objection to tax-exempt "community organizers" going door to door on election day to "get out the vote" but, for some reason, only knocking on doors of registered Democrats.
Regardless of any political theories about taxes in general, which the IRS is not empowered to take a position on, these organizations are all the same in claiming that THEY themselves don't have to pay them. The IRS is supposed to investigate such claims, and yet while liberal organizations were able to go as far as actively encouraging individual registered Democrats to vote in the specific election being held that very day (in which only one candidate was from the party of everyone being encouraged to go vote) without fear of scrutiny by Obama's IRS, any organization that so much as used the term "liberty" in its name was, it turned out, risking audits, time-consuming scrutiny of their activities, potential denial of tax-exempt status because they might get involved in politics, etc. We can't have political activists claiming tax-exempt status getting involved in politics, right? Well, it turned out to depend entirely on their politics, not on the nature of their activities.
ALL organizations claiming tax exempt status are making the same claim with respect to paying their own taxes, and your claims regarding your own tax liability is the ONLY thing the IRS is empowered to scrutinize. To claim that, among those groups, the ones who believe that "WE don't have to pay at all, and OTHERS should be taxed less" are more likely breaking the law than those whose position is "WE don't have to pay at all, and OTHERS should be forced to pay more for our agenda" is ridiculous.
This is all aside from the routine political and personal vendettas employees with this sort of power will invariably engage in. These violations are not just a few 'bad apples', as this sort of activity is a systemic issue, and the IRS actively protects the wrongdoers.
Actually, they only enforce regulations. Congress (specifically the House) makes the regulations.
This is incorrect.[1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_administrative_l...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasury_regulations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn_Zln_4pA8
High level players are able to change the rules.
The best "players" have great teams studying the rules. Those without the resources to do so make their best attempt by using amateur understanding and common advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement
========================
First, I appreciate you finding these links for me, I can actually use google quite well, however, I deign to point out that having a key piece of tax law intermittently down with such regularity that it is mirrored at an offsite location, in slightly poor form. Especially given the backlash Linux Mint faced just yesterday for not protecting itself and its' users. Linux Mint of course being an open source software project that, according to Wikipedia[1], is subsidized by partners and donations on a much smaller scale than the U.S. Gov't.
I will cut them some slack but I think holding the US government to a standard of one 9 of up time (on the left side of the decimal) isn't unreasonable. Now, obviously I could gave made a more cohesive argument to relay that point, which I hope is what the downbotes relay, and not disagreement.
The fact that some of the core Financial frameworks for a government that controls trillions of dollars of capital via tax revenue, and this very framework is how it raises that revenue, I suspect it would not be unreasonable to think a bit about structuring the system that makes it available.
In that it is served via non-secure HTTP and is so frequently down that the actual site links to a third party is somewhat troubling. More so, that the responses in fact seem to excuse this behavior which is, in fact, quite a dangerous precedent.
This isn't exactly, Show HN my weekend hack, right? Given that we expect an open source operating system to do many things surrounding security, do we not also find this a pretty immense lapse in judgement?
Consider:
* What if a student, or hacker gained access to the server by obtaining a password and making several edits to the document. It would not be unreasonable to assume that sysadmins have access to this, much like any internal infrastructure.
It is not a far fetched scenario. A large multi-corp could certainly do it, and given that the governments own site suggests it as a viable alternative. So, in the edge-case where they could not have congress insert a law directly into the tax code, they could of course cut out the middle man(joke).
So while I informally made a bit of a jest, I find this downright unprofessional especially in confluence with the statement they made about:
https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivol...
Now, in fact the first income tax was actually started to fund the civil war[2] and went from 3% to 10% during that time. So, there were of course taxes but not a formal income tax. It wasn't formalized until 1919, by congress and people who make under 68K wouldn't need to file. So it isn't, in fact, unreasonable for a country formed out of a seccession from taxation rejected this notion, HOWEVER, irrespective of that argument, they make this statement:
[please see link for qoutes]
The rebuttal of a 1960 court case using the word "voluntary".
A 1986 court case stating they a are correct
And this statement, which is NOT a link:
The requirement to file an income tax return is not voluntary and is clearly set forth in sections 6011(a), 6012(a), et seq., and 6072(a) of the Internal Revenue Code. See also Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-1(a).
Which returns some shady book which is an entire rebuttal of what they said, but more importantly, a downed website, Cornell, and the insistence to go to Cornell to get the nations bloody tax code.
So to conclude, i don't know what you guys/girls are indicating, but if your contention is I should be able to use google better, and it isn't ...
Here's 26 USC Subtitle F, "Procedure and Administration":
http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title26/subt...
Duty to file an income tax return is section 6012 on that page. Section 6151 lays out the duty to pay tax and when the tax must be paid (at time of filing).
You'll also notice if you play around with it that the House site is pretty terrible to browse and read, which is why everybody links to Cornell's version.
Edit: http://imgur.com/rd6Jl3f
Edit 2: The IRS stated that section 1 and Section 11 are the relevent documents, section 11 being companies. I'll take your word about the rest of it as the link does not work and irrespective to my point:
If you want to disprove the notion that you are not a legitimate gov entity, it may be wise to
* link to the documents you reference
* have them hosted at a .gov site. If they are in fact at a .gov site, it is weird to suggest the private one.
* have them be updated to 2016.
i guess no one else found it weird that in the first or 2nd example if frivilous stuff, was that justification.
EDIT: When it does load, it's a 2886KB transfer that takes 87 seconds to load the full page. So definitely not the fastest thing in the world. And this is why people use Cornell's browser, as ubernostrum stated.
And here's the direct link to Title 26, Subtitle A, which contains sections 1 to 2000.
http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title26/subt...
(Beware, it's 18MBs)
Some in the US might remember a year when the 'Estate Tax' was suspended - that is, if a relative died and passed along an inheritance amount, it wasn't taxable like in years prior or once the suspension expired after 2010.
As a recipient of some funds - a mid single digit thousand figure - from my maternal relative passing, I paid off my credit card and - this was my mistake - included the amount received in some kind of 'income' field. This set into motion one of the most ridiculous, patience-testing exchanges in my adult life. In mid-2011, they sent me a letter wanting a check for $X,XXX.
I wrote back a clear explanation of the error in question - that the funds were an inheritance and not subject to the taxes being claimed. I sent it via FedEx, and eventually got a response. They still wanted the entire $X,XXX!
This back and forth - me being as polite and stubborn as possible in writing - and the IRS kept wanting money, offering no proof why the amount they claimed owed was actually owed (I asked repeatedly for citations). This went on for a FULL YEAR. In the second to last correspondence, I had pages and pages of the 2010 tax code included, with relevant highlights, obscure forms...yet still felt taking a polite (if a bit dense) tone would be better than getting angry, you know, poking a gorilla with a stick kind of thing.
In the end, I sucked it up and sent them about $150, what they eventually came down to after all this time, just to get them to shut up. The IRS, without question, wasted time, resources, and money stubbornly pursuing money that they weren't entitled to at all.
So, while I respect their power and genuinely believe in their mission to acquire funds to keep the government working in its basic fashion, I have absolutely no pity for staff members who have to read through line after line of bullshit excuses, because they do it too.
The government will seize your property and incarcerate you if you don't pay.
• Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The case turns out to be real...but what they are quoting is not from the court's ruling but rather is from a brief submitted by the losing side.
• Quoting from a court case and claiming it says they do not have to pay tax. The cited court exists, but the case does not.
• Similar to the above, but the cited court itself does not exist.
• They cite a real case from a real court, but the parts they quote to support their argument do not exist.
• On those very rare occasions when they cite a real case, from a real court, and actually quote from the court's ruling, it turns out to be a ruling that was overturned quickly by a higher court.
• (One of my favorites) Saying that a court lacked jurisdiction because the flag in the courtroom had a gold fringe, which they say signifies that this is an "Admiralty Court" and only has jurisdiction over the seas and navigable waterways.
The article mentioned the argument that the Federal government only has authority over D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, etc., but doesn't say why some people believe that. I've seen two arguments for that belief. The first is that the Federal government was created by the Constitution specifically to run D.C. and other Federal territory and was not given any authority over anything else.
The second is that there is someplace in the tax code that says something like "For purposes of this section, 'United States' includes D.C., Guam, [...]" and they think "includes" means "consists of only" (and they ignore the restriction to "this section" and so think this applies to the whole tax code).
I've never run into an argument from these people that was not, frankly, idiotic. If one of their arguments does not immediately fail due to a fundamental misunderstanding of basic English, it falls apart as soon as you try to track down original sources.