Tax Protesters

[Bees Knees]

"CONCORD, N.H. - Wanted for tax evasion, the fugitive couple had been waiting on their porch for nearly eight months for law enforcement officials to make their move. "The word is 'poised,'" Ed Brown said recently, handgun wedged in his jeans, AK-47 assault rifle behind the door, as he stared at a yard of cut grass and bags of explosives hanging from trees. His wife, Elaine, kept her pistol inside a pouch with her reading glasses."

read more...http://www.startribune.com/484/story/1467801.html

[JohnH]

Real Geniuses

Nice way to spend your retirement - holed up in your house waiting for the revenue agents to come calling with guns a-blazin'. Somebody spent too much of their working life breathing pesticides & anesthetic. I'm sure the kids & grandkids are real proud of them. Of course, maybe there aren't any kids, which would help prove natural selection can be a good thing. Not all gene pools need to be perpetuated.

[Golden Rocket]

Birmingham and Lake Huron

Some folks in Michigan, and some customers in Alabama, kept telling me of a tax revolt in the 80s - one of them centered in the thumb area of Michigan, another in Birmingham, Alabama. Both of these reportedly had thousands of enlisted families. I had customers telling me they knew dozens of friends who didn't have to file, and a couple of clients even entertained the idea.

The concept was the same. Scholarly lawyers had figured out that the income tax was unconstitutional. After all, lawyers know more than we do, right?

I don't know how the group in Michigan fared. I was told the leader spent time in jail, and after he got out opened a website. He is widely quoted and still has a following, but I think they have all filed back returns and have taken up their cause in federal court, where it is going absolutely nowhere.

I do know the fate of the Birmingham group. IRS started throwing people in jail -- about one taxpayer per week. Thousands of delinquent tax returns were filed by the others not wishing to go to jail. Many of them had refunds, but were assessed frivolous or "protester" penalties.