Legal Commentary

Today is my last day as a guest on Prawfs, at least for now.  Many thanks to the Prawfs crew, particularly Dan Markel, for the invitation.  If you've enjoyed my posts here, you can continue to follow me on my usual blog, Law Prof on the Loose.

Before leaving, I can't resist having a post about my eccentric hobby, which is following tax protestors.  I'm not talking so much about members of the recent "tea party" brigades.  Those, as I understand them, are mostly people who believe that taxes are too high, that the government spends our tax dollars on stupid things, and that the federal income tax in particular should be abolished or at least greatly reduced -- opinions which they are certainly entitled to voice.  No, I'm talking about people who believe that, under current law, there is no legal obligation to pay federal income taxes!

Incredible as it may seem, there are a whole host of people who, for a whole host of reasons, argue that current law does not require most Americans to pay income taxes.  Needless to say, these arguments are absurd, but that doesn't stop people from believing in them.  I've collected some of the more commonly used arguments into a website about tax protestors. 

Tax protestor arguments exhibit considerable range:

• They start with the basic claim that there's just no law requiring payment of income taxes -- according to this argument, we all pay taxes because we think such a law must surely exist, but if you try to look it up you find that it doesn't.
• There are more involved arguments such as that wages are not income because they are merely an "equal exchange" of an amount of money for its value in labor (and it's worth taking a moment to see if you can come up with the correct rejoinder to that one) or that the income tax applies only to foreign income.
• And there are true flights of fancy such as that the Paperwork Reduction Act eliminates your obligation to pay income tax because Form 1040 doesn't have a valid OMB control number.

My webpage provides legal responses to these arguments, although interestingly, if you show a tax protestor the law that requires payment of income taxes, they almost never say, "oh, there it is, I guess I was wrong!" Instead they just launch into new arguments, such as that the Internal Revenue Code is not a law, or that it's unconstitutional because the 16th Amendment was never ratified, or something equally absurd, so that arguing with them can be a little frustrating.  But there's a middle group of people whom the webpage is designed to reach -- those who are tempted by tax protestors arguments, but are not so far gone that they can't understand the law if it's clearly explained.  And in any event, the webpages may provide some amusement.  Click and enjoy.