The ultimate fraud?
 

You thought Enron/Tyco/Worldcom were big scams? You thought the Halliburton 'no bid' bonanza in Iraq was corruption? What if... the 16th Amendment authorizing personal income taxes was never ratified? In that case, the US Government has been illegally extorting trillions of dollars from ordinary citizens for nearly a century.

Well, a guy who has been claiming that the 16th Amendment was never ratified has been sued by the government and won the right to present his case in court.

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http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTPLaws...2005-09-30.htm

Twenty-five years ago Bill Benson, a former Illinois Department of Revenue investigator, began a cross-country trip across the forty-eight states that comprised the Union in 1913 seeking documentary evidence regarding the ratification of the 16th Amendment. This was a most important undertaking, because the government uses the 16th Amendment as its sole authority to tax an individual’s wages and salaries.

During his two-year trip, Benson collected thousands of certified legal documents from both state and federal archives documenting exactly how the 16th Amendment was acted on by each state legislature and handled by the office of the Secretary of State for the United States.

In the end, Benson had assembled an irrefutable mountain of evidence showing that during the final days of the William Howard Taft administration in 1913, the 16th Amendment was fraudulently declared by the U.S. Secretary of State, Philander Knox, to have been properly ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. Bill Benson, and his co-researcher Red Beckman, documented the results of their work in a two volume research report entitled, “The Law That Never Was.”

Until now, no federal court has agreed to examine the vast body of legal evidence compiled by Benson. Indeed, the federal courts, both District and Appellate, have consistently refused to tackle the troubling issue, claiming the matter of the fraudulent ratification of the Amendment to be a “political question” for Congress to decide, and beyond the jurisdiction of the courts.

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Needless to say, this is gonna be interesting.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Words cannot express how much I want that guy to win. I would laugh for weeks watching the US goverment going spectacularly bankrupt.

Of course its never going to happen, regardless of if the guy is right or wrong he is going to lose, the alternative is unthinkable. Still it would be funny if he did win.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

/me activates thread cloaking device to keep this thread away from Atrocities http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

How I would like this to be true but if he was to win and the US Government at a minimum had to just pay back the money to the people that are alive it would destroy the government.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

This would be great if it was true. It would force the government to come up with a new tax plan where again the people would have their representatives vote to incorporate the Bill. Finally, some accountability of our elected officials! Could you imagine how "people friendly" this new Bill would have to be so that the politicians could count on getting re-elected. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif Just in time to vote themselves a pay and benefit cut to match the new tax plan. Sometimes change is GOOD!!!

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Yeah like that's likely. On the day the Devil drives to work on a sno-cat to deliver chocolate teapots that'll happen. Pay cuts? Don't make me laugh.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Sweet. So people all over the united states would be millionares?

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

So your whole society and state would come crashing down because the state had no money to provide the services you all want (like roads, defence, police etc.)?

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

You'd think so, but..no. Most of that is handled at a local level (with the exception of defense). It wouldn't help the states budgets any, but they wouldn't collapse either..some would actually benefit because right now they send out more taxes than are spent in their area.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

We as citizans have a duty to our nation to help fund it. That is what we do through our Tax code. Granted the tax code is a huge document filled with an utter entanglement of legalize and pork that does more harm than good. Granted the IRS has never passed an audit in its exsitance and that it promoted harrasment of tax payers without regard for situation, or circomstance.

If this is true, then I say only the people who have been bothered or have ever owed the IRS back taxes and have had to pay interest and penalties should have a claim. Wait, that nearly everybody.....

In the turn of the century cooporations paid the bulk of income tax. Now its 100% of the poor (People who make less than 25,000 a year) paying 80% of all taxes. The uber rich pay less in tax than a coctail waitress and some cooperations pay even less than that.

The tax code has been changed so many times to favor the rich and punish the poor that it is really a meaningless document that does need to be thrown out.

If cooperations and the uber rich, people who make more than 100k a year, paid their fair share - equal in percentage to what we pay making less than 25k a year, then we would not have such a huge deficate.

Most people who make less than 25k a year pay about 14 to 17% in tax.

People who make more than a 100k a year pay about 6 to 9% in tax. They say its fair because why should they pay more...

THEY SHOULD PAY MORE BECAUSE THEY MAKE MORE!!!! When I would work OT and make more I had to pay 30% of it to tax... Why the hell should I be punished and have to pay more when I make more and the rich don't? WTF is fair about that?

I have no problem paying taxes to pay for schools, roads, cops, firemen, good goverment, health services, foresty services, and so on. What I dislike about paying taxes is that they are NOT fairly distributed to all and those who make less pay more in tax. That is fundamentally [censored] up!

Cooperations get these huge tax breaks, find loop holes, and move cooperate HQ's out of the US in order to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. They move jobs overseas, cut the benefits they pay their US workers, and take tax breaks and write offs for doing it. That is NOT RIGHT, and should be stopped now. If a company moves jobs out of the US to save a buck, then they should be TAXED heavily for every job they export. Its only fair as the US is loosing that jobs tax base... The amount of money a person in the US would pay in income tax if that job had stayed in the US.

I do hope he wins.... but he will most likely either get killed, suffor a heart attack, die of an accident or natural causes long before this case ever sees the light of a court room. Chances it will be thrown out of court long before any of that ever happens.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Muwhahahahahahahahahahahhahhhhh - caugh - hahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Something from an entirely different conversation which I thought AT might like to know. Estonia has flat rate taxes, everyone pays 20% (or whatever %) income tax across the board.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

I think there are a few other nations that do this.. Not sure how good it is.

As to the US, I would just like to see those who have a ton of money pay their equal share. If I pay 14% on my income, then so should they. Why should they only have to pay 5% or less because they make more money? If I can't keep 14% of the money I earn, then neither should they!

Right now the tax code rewards the rich and severly punishes the lower income folks. Factor in the new tax increases in gas, comodities, property, and sales taxes, you begin to see just how over taxed the lower income really is.

When we pay out 14% of our base wage in tax, and 30% of our OT wages go to taxes we have less to spend on other taxes like gas, sales, and property.

For example out of every $100.00 I earn, I would lose $14.00 in tax leaving me with just $86.00 to spend. Other taxes eat a majority portion of that up. (8.8% sales tax plus Gas Tax Plus other taxes.)

Now if that $100.00 was OT. Then you would only get $70.00 of it.

For every $100.00 a person over lets say $150.000 dollars a year makes, they would pay about 4 to 5% less in tax. So for every $100.00 they earn at base wage, they would get to keep $95.00 to $96.00 dollars.

Compare:
Your $100.00 - after taxes $86.00
Their $100.00 - after taxes $95.00.

They just earned $9.00. Now if they are earning $9.00 out of every $100.00 they earn OVER YOU, well then you can see the disadvantage of the whole system.

For every $1,000.00 in tax the rich save $90.00 whereas the lower income folks don't.

Now this is all just a generalization, and is not meant to be taken as concrete fact. The tax percentages and income levels can vary and most likely do. The above comments are meant to outline a basic understanding of the dispute between rich and poor tax payers. The are not to be taken as actual fact. For accurate tax percentage scales and or level of taxation please contact the IRS.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

If I understand that right, it is a spectacularly stupid system. I really can't think of any justification for it working that way, although you'd hope there is one.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

It is a very bad system in my opinion as well. The way it's written the rich can claim correctly that they pay a higher percent of their income in taxes, because 1/2 - 3/4 of their income can be deducted as non-taxable. Here's an example:

If I make $25,000 in a year, and my standard deductions are $7,500. Because my job and the resulting limitations on my lifestyle, I have very little else I can claim as a tax deduction. That leaves $17,500 that I need to pay taxes on. At 20% tax on that, I pay $3,500. That comes out to 14% of my original $25k income.

Now say someone else makes $250,000 in a year. They then start subtracting all their deductions, $50k for a retirement savings, a "bussiness trip" to the bahamas for $10k, donations of around $5k, Buisiness lunches, wardrobe, home office space and equipment, even their childrens allowances can be deducted as household help. By the time they are done they can easily get down to claiming $100,000 as income, and if they pay 25% of that it comes to $25k, which is only 10% of their total income.

So they can say they pay a higher percent of their income, since they pay 25% instead of 20%, but after everything is calculated they come out quite a ways ahead.

Note that this is also just a generalization to show how the rich can bend the tax code, and is not to be taken as actual tax records. If you want numbers from the actual tax code, try this http://www.fourmilab.ch/ustax/ustax.html
or contact the IRS.

Re: The ultimate fraud?
 

Thank you Wolfman, that was very englightening to say the least. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif A very good example on how the tax code screws the litte man.

Now if you could only get your tax base down to $10,000, having deducted away $15,000 ($150.000 by the rich man standard) then you would be in a far better place. As it stands, per dollar earned, people making less pay on average 75% to 100% more in taxes than those who earn over a 100k a year. That is a frelled up system by any standards that only favors the rich and dramatically punishes the poor.