Saturday, June 14, 2014

The Missing "Frivolous" Argument

USC 26 6702(c) States:

(c) Listing of frivolous positions
The Secretary shall prescribe (and periodically revise) a list of positions which the Secretary has identified as being frivolous for purposes of this subsection. The Secretary shall not include in such list any position that the Secretary determines meets the requirement of section 6662 (d)(2)(B)(ii)(II).

This appears to be (Actually, Pete found the correct link for me, so...) Here is the "list of positions which the Secretary has identified as being frivolous," but there is one position that is missing.  It's my position, and if they would like to add it to the list, then I will have to admit that I no longer have a legal basis for refusing to support their criminal operations.  Here is my position, which I think would go under section B ("The Meaning of Income:  Taxable Income and Gross Income"):
"Taxable Income" can only mean what a person gets by exercising some kind of federal privilege, so those who exercise no such privilege are not liable for the tax.
[The following was added to this post after Mr. Hendrickson directed me to the information the IRS has provided regarding the word "privilege" in the actual list of frivolous positions.]
The closest position to mine that does appear says this:
(1) Compliance with the internal revenue laws is voluntary or optional and not required by law, including arguments that:
...(g) Only persons who have contracted with the government by applying for a governmental privilege or benefit, such as holding a Social Security number, are subject to tax, and those who have contracted with the government may choose to revoke the contract at will.
What the IRS is saying is that this is an incorrect position, and so it must be.  Let's go so far as to assume that you really do have to apply in order to gain a federal privilege, but notice the "and" that I italicized.  Why is that chunk of text compounded into this frivolous position?  Would it not cover more cases without the addition of that conjunction and the text following it?  Perhaps those who have contracted with the government may not choose to revoke the contract at will.  Perhaps the position that holds that such one-sided abdication of contractual obligation is a legal option for those exercising federal privilege (whether applied for or not) is actually frivolous.  I would assume that it's immoral, at least, to unilaterally revoke a contract, so it's no small stretch to see that arguing in favor of such revocation would be frivolous.
[End of added material.]

Thanks to Pete Hendrickson's legal research on this subject, available at his website, http://losthorizons.com, for those interested in ending their financial support for the criminal endeavors of the US federal government.

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