The New Income Tax Scandal: How the Income Tax Cheats Workers out of Million$ Each Year and the Corrupt Reasons Why This Happens

By J. Christopher Garrison

As a long-standing annual reality, Americans have come to view April 15 for one particular unpleasant significance - the legal deadline to file their income tax returns - unless, of course, they are in the ranks of those malcontents who defiantly refuse to fulfill this obligation. Like most of us, citizen tax reformer, J. Christopher Garrison avoids such self-defeating tactics and pays due respect to all aspects of current tax law. Nonetheless, fearlessly exercising his right to free speech, in his book, The New Income Tax Scandal, Garrison lays bare and denounces the shocking truth about the way the IRS has classified American workers under income tax law. Armed with a comprehensive body of evidence, Garrison filed suit against the IRS, determined to raise the issue before federal courts. His book documents the issue and the litigation that ensued. This is the story of Garrison's futile and exasperating attempt to right a wrong. The fact that the outcome was cynically predetermined by the government to fail, makes Garrison's documented account interesting reading. Hence, and not surprising, the attempt unearthed a trail of deceit, distortion, and hypocrisy perpetrated by those in government sworn to serve the people. Anticipate a sense of outrage when you witness how the courts stonewalled Garrison and suppressed his evidence, when you witness the courts' duplicitous interpretation of constitutional law, when you come face to face with the horrifying realization that all this was to cover up the truth that working Americans have been classified by the IRS in the same manner American slaves were classified - beings who have no right to claim their bodily labor as their property. Garrison cites State and Federal court cases (including U.S. Supreme Court) that have confirmed the legal standing of bodily labor as a worker's property, Constitutionally protected under the Fifth Amendment. Finally, Garrison outlines a new tax system that he believes will remedy the problem he addresses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 6, 2005
• ISBN: 9781514415665

J. Christopher Garrison

J. Christopher Garrison is a seminary-trained theological researcher and writer. In 1998, he completed a full curriculum of theological studies at Chicago’s North Park Theological Seminary (Evangelical Covenant Church). Since that time, the author has utilized his seminary training to pursue research and writing on various theological subjects.

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Copyright © 2005 by J. Christopher Garrison.

Library of Congress Control Number:             2005904397

ISBN :             Hardcover             978-1-4134-9602-4

             Softcover             978-1-4134-9544-7

             Ebook             978-1-5144-1566-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/28/2015

CONTENTS

Author’s Preface and Disclaimer

Introduction

I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS

1. The Income Tax Its Beginning And Corruption

2. Capitalism, Human Labor And The Income Tax

3. Reading V. Commissioner Of Internal Revenue (1978)

II. THE ROLE OF THE COURTS

4. Judicial Activism

5. Labor As Property Garrison V. United States (1990)

6. The Appellate Experience

7. Income Tax As Excise Garrison V. United States (2000)

Appendix A —A Tax Reform Proposal

Index Of Authorities And References

AUTHOR’S PREFACE AND DISCLAIMER

Every reader of this book should know at the outset that the intent of this work is strictly for the purpose of tax reform through lawful political action. In other words, this work is not intended to offer legal advice or to instruct or encourage anyone to resist or otherwise violate any existing laws. The objective behind this work is simply to show reasons why our current form of federal income tax must be abandoned and why a new system must be developed to take its place. So let the reader heed an important caution. It cannot be overemphasized that everything intended in this book with respect to tax reform is intended to be accomplished in a lawful way. Given this, all who would seek to change the tax laws by breaking those that are now enforced will find no sympathy here.

At all times, the author himself has sought to maintain a peaceful relation with the tax authorities. To every extent possible, he has complied with current tax enforcement.

The reader of this book must therefore beware. Any attempt to use information found in this book for the purpose of committing unlawful acts will find no comfort or encouragement here. Such unauthorized use of information or any unlawful act resulting from such misuse will simply not be condoned or justified in any way by the author of this book. In addition, it is now clear to many that the tax authorities and the courts will deal brutally harsh with anyone who resists or defies the current income tax system. Using information from this book will not change this or save anyone from such treatment. Given all this, it is here highly recommended that we all work together to promote peaceful political action.

J. CHRISTOPHER GARRISON

INTRODUCTION

No thoughtful and fair-minded citizen questions or resists the necessity of taxation. Because citizens need government to prevent civil disorder, taxes are necessary to support government’s operation and existence. But while taxes are necessary, there is more than one way to collect them.

The history of taxation in America is filled with a lot of controversy. The methods and means of federal taxation have been heatedly debated throughout the course of our nation’s history. Even now, as this is being written, there are proposals in Congress to reform the federal tax system. In Appendix A, this book offers its own proposal.

One alternative in Congress that has received much attention is a national consumption tax referred to as HR-25. It has bipartisan support with about 50 members of Congress endorsing it. This plan was referred to on February 2, 2003 by Daniel Akst in the New York Times. Akst reported that President Bush would be proposing a controversial tax plan and had made noises about wanting to overhaul our generally abominable income tax system. In the context of this reporting, Akst identified a plan originally developed by Edgar L. Feige, a retired economist from the University of Wisconsin.

After Akst’s column, on February 23, 2003, Chuck Martin, an editorial writer for the Wisconsin State Journal described Feige’s plan in the following terms: By its stark contrast with today’s [income] tax system, it demonstrates how wasteful, unfair and downright damaging our current system is.

So here at the outset, it is important for the reader to know that while taxes are necessary and unavoidable, our current income tax system is not the only feasible method of collecting taxes. There is no need to worry that the United States government would quickly go broke if for some reason the current income tax system were to disappear. Based on the above reports, an alternative method of federal taxation may indeed be a welcome change, one that is more humane, more effective and not as scandalous as the system we have now.

Whether such a change can take place any time soon remains to be seen as debates unfold in Congress. There are formidable barriers. One barrier, among others that can be mentioned, is the fact that the income tax has now become an entrenched political institution backed by a constitutional amendment, run by a vast, settled bureaucracy and supported by powerful special interests. It is well-known that such institutions die hard.

From its very beginning, while retaining at all times its strong supporters, the federal income tax has been looked upon by some political leaders and economists as a scandal. One example of this can be found in a concise statement made about two decades ago by the economist Douglas Y. Thorson:

The income tax made its debut in the United States over a century ago. It was ushered in on a wave of high expectation by some, skepticism by others, and doctrinaire opposition by still others. After a long history of experience, it is time for an appraisal. The keynote of our conclusion is that while this tax had met some important fiscal and social needs in the past, in our own time the income tax has become a debacle. It is inefficient, inequitable, and complex.

Douglas Y. Thorson, The Growth and Failure of the Income Tax, R. W. Lindholm, Ed., Examination of Basic Weaknesses of Income as the Major Federal Tax Base (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1986), 1.

Thorson gave us reasons why the income tax is a scandal. The reasons he gave us, inefficient, inequitable, and complex, are not necessarily issues of law. As such, they may easily be considered irrelevant by determined income tax supporters who rely much on the force of law to strengthen their position. This dye of income tax as law was cast long ago in 1913 with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It now has the strength of a long-standing institution, which from the beginning has also included the Internal Revenue Service as an inseparable part.

Indeed, some have come to see our income tax system as a whole as such an inseparable part of political life that to challenge the wisdom of retaining the system is in a sense to challenge and threaten the stability of the country and of government itself. But such is not the case. The courts have declared repeatedly that Congress has wide latitude in the ways it can raise revenue. Why one system of collecting taxes becomes institutionalized while others are not even tried can be more a matter of politics and special interests than fiscal wisdom that would benefit the country.

Particularly for those who believe that the law is on the side of our current income tax system, this book seeks to show that the newest scandal about the income tax is an appalling scandal that arises from income tax law itself. The new income tax scandal consists at its root of a sudden discovery that an income tax is not in any way different from an excise tax and that an excise tax is not a direct tax on property. It is indirect. There is a critical difference here such that if the income tax is erroneously enforced as a direct tax on employee earnings it can mean thousands of dollars in taxes wrongfully collected from every working American over their lifetime. This erroneous enforcement of the income tax as a direct tax is exactly what is now being imposed over the wages and salaries of all employees. Clearly, this revelation has enormous political and economic implications for every American employee.

In 1916, after the ratification of the Sixteenth (or Income Tax) Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. (240 U.S. 1) that an income tax is an excise tax and that it is to be enforced as such. The actual words in the Brushaber case are as follows:

[The] conclusion reached in the Pollock Case [Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & T. Co., 157 U.S. 429 (1895)] . . . recognized the fact that taxation on income was in its nature an excise entitled to be enforced as such.

Brushaber, 240 U.S. 1, 16-17.

In chapter one of this book, we will see more abundant evidence of this type. The Brushaber case just happens to have been the first and most comprehensive case on the issue of income tax as excise after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. In fact, the Brushaber case is a virtual commentary on the meaning, intent and purpose of the Sixteenth Amendment.

In passing, we may note that as recent as 1988, in the case of South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988), the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the 1916 Brushaber case as good law. It did so by citing the case affirmatively and without qualification to buttress its opinion in the South Carolina case (see 485 U.S. at 522, note 13).

We can therefore be assured that, from 1988 to the present, any radical change that could have taken place to the Court’s Brushaber position on income tax as excise would not have escaped the notice of our modern media and its reporting. Indeed, a declaration in this recent span of time by the U.S. Supreme Court to the effect that it had overturned its 1916 position on income tax as excise, finding it now to be a direct tax, would have been spectacular breaking news, equal at least in shock content as was the legalizing of abortion. In addition, the Supreme Court would have a lot of explaining to do as to why such a radical change and why now. Furthermore, this book’s reporting on the issue would then already be superfluous and irrelevant.

In any case, the fact is that the U.S. Supreme Court has never overturned its Brushaber position on income tax as excise. To our present day, Brushaber remains good law. If this position now poses a dilemma for the courts and the government, it is a dilemma of their own making.

Some have argued that it is too late now to raise the issue raised in this book. The issue should have been raised long ago, perhaps when the income tax was first turned from a class tax on the rich—for whom it was originally intended—into a mass tax to reach the laboring workers.

Yes, I agree. It would have been much better if such a thing had happened. But since it did not should we now be forced to accept the problem in silence and forget it? Can we actually do this when countless citizens have been and are now being brutalized, both economically and politically, as a result of this colossal mistake of the past? Should we forget this past when each year its legacy continues to grind down unjustly and immorally innocent citizens in this land? For my part I don’t think so! At the very least, these Americans are owed an explanation as to why these awful things are happening to them.

As for any potential disruption to the nation’s fiscal needs that might result from the findings in this book, it is my belief that this government can find a way to deal with the emergency. In Appendix A of this book, I have set forth a fiscal and tax reform plan as an example of what can be done to handle such an emergency. If a constitutional amendment is