Guest Column: Frivolous Return Penalty Smackdown

Regarding The “Frivolous Return Penalty” Ploy
Last-ditch defense of the crumbling “ignorance tax” scheme
by Pete Hendrickson [Full original located here]

Please also refer to my own recent post (http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=10472) on this issue. — bw

THE ACTUAL LEGAL NATURE OF THE INCOME TAX IN AMERICA has been fully revealed. The revelation makes clear that the tax is quite importantly different from what the always revenue- and power-hungry state wishes the people to believe.

At the same time, the operation of the “ignorance tax”– the systematic misapplication of the income tax based on exploitation of widespread public ignorance of its real limits– has been shown to rely entirely on deliberately-misled declarations of belief grounded in state-serving historical and legal myths by folks submitting tax forms (both “information returns” like W-2s and 1099s, and 1040s).

With the truth about all this inexorably spreading, the “ignorance tax” scammers have been watching the slow-motion derailment of their 75-year+ gravy train by the simple mechanism of more and more newly-educated Americans making declarations which no longer support the lies and abuses. While very good for everyone else, this is not a happy thing for the scammers.

NONETHELESS, HAVING NO ACTUAL “REMEDY” to the onslaught of the truth and its consequences, the scammers generally just bow to the inevitable. In the vast majority of cases, properly-claimed refunds are issued without fuss, in a display of respect for the law that is greater than many familiar with the behavior of these agencies over the years would expect.

At the same time, however, certain bad apples in the tax agency barrel have been sporadically testing last-ditch measures meant to discourage or evade the honest filings that lead to outcomes contrary to the institutional mission of maximizing revenue. Because it is the statements of belief by filers that drive the whole income tax structure, these bad apples have been trying to figure out pretexts for disregarding inconvenient statements.

Or, the bad apples seek to develop practices by which knowledgeable filers making these inconvenient statements can be intimidated into silence, or have their successful refund claims offset by spurious “penalty” claims. Tellingly, the only pretense available– the assertion of “frivolous return” penalties– involves reducing or offsetting portions of overpayments which are admittedly owed back to the claimant, in full acknowledgement that no “income” was received, and no tax was owed (and thus, that the return on which these claims are made is perfectly correct).

MAKE NO MISTAKE: This effort by certain bad apples in the IRS (and more rarely still, by a few bad apples in state tax agencies, as well) to muffle the voices of those who know the law, and have a perfect and complete right under the law to introduce the testimony on their filings into the record, however inconvenient it may be to the revenue-hungry tax agencies, is the last battleground in the restoration of the income tax to its proper, limited application.

Further, don’t miss the message in the fact that these resistance efforts by the “ignorance tax” schemers rest on evasions of the educated filers’ claims, not rebuttals. These resistance efforts rest on contrived pretexts for removing the educated filers’ testimony from consideration, not on disputing the grounds, content or conclusions represented in that testimony as would plainly be the duty (and in the interest) of the tax agencies if such disputations were possible.

SO, HAVING OBSERVED THESE BOGUS, REVEALING “frivolous” assertions become the singular escape-hatch of the “ignorance tax” schemers when trying to evade a CtC-educated filing, I have written a series of posts addressing them in various ways. What follows are links to these papers.

The first post is a discussion of the real nature of the “frivolous return penalty” as laid out in the statute providing for it; a discussion of why these penalties do not actually apply to honest, educated filings; and a discussion of how the details of the notices by which they are threatened (in the effort to persuade a filer to reverse himself and discourage others) reveal the threats to be mere pretenses:

Regarding “Frivolous Return” Letters And Notices

Next we have a must-read revelation of the mind-blowing IRS fake-list hoax under which “frivolous return penalties” have been asserted against CtC-educated filers:

Regarding the “Frivolous Return Penalty” Hoax

In the post below is a discussion/exposé of a case of what is apparently a forgery and perjury gambit by IRS officials who had gotten caught in lies about the generation and assessment of a “frivolous return penalty:

The “Frivolous Return Penalty” Fraud Exposé

NOW WE TURN TO PRACTICALITITES. The post below offers some notions about how anyone targeted for “frivolous return penalty” abuse might prophylactically respond:

About Responding to “Frivolous Return” Letters And Notices

Next is an invitation to anyone victimized by the fake-list hoax discussed in the second post above for participation in a multi-plaintiff suit being prepared, with detailed information about how to qualify for inclusion:

The “Frivolous Return Penalty” Pushback Project

Here we have some discussion about the overall Constitutional violations inherent in “frivolous return penalty” threats, even those not demonstrably resting on the “fake list” hoax:

On Suing Over FRP Threat Civil Violations

Finally, here is a small (so-far incomplete) collection of union-state statutes reflecting some of the legal points discussed in the post above, in their criminalization of threats of the kind in we’re talking about:

State Laws Criminalizing “Frivolous Return” Penalty Threats

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they have been resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.” —  Frederick Douglass

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