Pete Hendrickson: expert witness!

[Famspear]

.....having played defensive back for the New England Patriots, 1973-1975; perhaps he should have claimed diminished capacity from repeated concussions.

Or, diminished capacity directly caused by Persistent Perusal of Prevaricating Peter's Perforative, Pestilential Pontifications -- without the intervening Protection of Prophylactic Common Sense.

[Gregg]

CTC does not say only government paychecks are taxable. It says more or less that what you, me and most everyone else include in the terms "wages, tips and other compensation" and "from whatever source derived" don't mean common sense tells you they do, that only money paid to you in some connection to the exercise or some yet to be defined federal privilege is what those sneaky IRS types are allowed to collect tax on.

Its a nuance, and its nitpicking, but these are incredibly OCD people about this and not only do rulings like this allow them to crow "that's not even what Pete says" but it further muddies the water around the central truth of the matter, which is, the whole damn thing is just as nutty as a Snickers factory.

As for the whole federal privilege thing, so far they have managed to for the record rationalize and rule out many very much the people who do indeed earn a living by doing something the federal government licenses as a privilege...its a popular theory among airline pilots, for instance. Hell, one of Pete's "owls" was collecting a military pension and had a reason why that wasn't included.

[noblepa]

Its a nuance, and its nitpicking, but these are incredibly OCD people about this and not only do rulings like this allow them to crow "that's not even what Pete says" but it further muddies the water around the central truth of the matter, which is, the whole damn thing is just as nutty as a Snickers factory.

I think that these people find the law, particularly the tax laws, to be very complicated and virtually impossible to understand. And it can be. I'm sure that there are statutes that, even a lawyer would find difficult to understand and that seem to say the opposite of what they really mean.

So, the tax protesters assume that a statute NEVER means what a plain english reading seems to say. It is ALWAYS couched in arcane language with special meanings that must be painstakingly extracted.

Couple that with the not-uncommon belief that the wealthy avoid paying taxes due to "loopholes", and these people become desperate to find loopholes that THEY can use. They may not have investments that qualify for capital gains treatment, and they may not own tax-free municipal bonds, but, damnit, their occupation isn't included in the list of occupations that a certain section of the tax code lists, and everyone knows that if something isn't INCLUDED in a list, it is explicitly EXCLUDED.

Of course, their purpose in reading the tax code (if they actually do read the code and don't simply rely on CTC or some other guru) is not to determine how much they owe, but to prove that they don't owe anything at all. They're desperate to prove that and will grasp at any straw they find.

[notorial dissent]

What you are saying about the tax laws is true in a sense, IF you make over a certain amount or have investment income or something else equally complicated, but, I would say, the majority of Prevaricatin' Pete's adherents DON'T. Most of them barely make enough to be paying taxes to begin with from what I've seen. With the exception of the airline pilot, and when it comes right down to it most of them any more are just very well paid wage earners, and chiropractic sets, most of them earn a regular, well as regular as someone that dim can, income that comes in either monthly or bi-monthly or more likely weekly amounts, seldom varies by more than a few dollars, and is generally pretty much the same from year to year, and unless they have a mortgage or something like that they probably don't even qualify to use anything but a 1040EZ.

Now if you were saying Pete's adherents were basically illiterate, which I think a lot of them are functionally illiterate although they seem to pass for literate, or are just plain greedy, then yes I would agree with you whole heartedly, as I think greed is the underlying and driving factor here, and that is the determining factor I think, and all the rest is just window dressing. Complicated is just an excuse that really doesn't fly in probably 95% or getter of their cases. Now it may be that the math throws them, but that goes back to an earlier point.

[Gregg]

My taxes are complicated, my return is thicker than most magazines and I pay more the have it prepared than most of the CtC idiots owe in taxes. I also have some of those "tax secrets of the super rich" going for me, like tax free muni bonds, most of my income is capital gains, I give quite a bit away these days, you know the "TOP SECRET" stuff.... and I know enough about tax to know I shouldn't be doing it myself and when the guy I pay big bucks to do it tells me something, I usually take his advice or at the very least get a second opinion, and not from the guy who cuts my grass.

But then, I know I have to pay, and while I want to minimize what I pay I'm not too nuts about aggressive tax avoidance.

And while the tax code it complex, and I have had to have explained to me the how and why of what something was being done for, ND hits upon the more common explanation as applies to Crackheads and Tax Deniers in general. If line 1 of the Tax Code was "You, yes you, (insert name here) are personally liable to pay income tax upon every dime you bring in with the exception of those amounts you can prove are exempt, deductible or subject to a credit, period." They would still find a way to say it didn't mean that. If nothing else, if it spelled their names in all CAPS they'd say that was a legal fiction and not them, and if it didn't spell their name in all CAPS, they'd claim that only when a name was spelled in all CAPS is it legal. Their goal is not to understand taxes, their goal is to understand a way to get out of taxes.

[notorial dissent]

Their goal is not to understand taxes, their goal is to understand a way to get out of taxes.

Yeah, what he said, although I think find an excuse comes closer.

[The Observer]

...I usually take his advice or at the very least get a second opinion, and not from the guy who cuts my grass.

Larken Rose was your lawn man?

[Duke2Earl]

It all starts with one simple proposition...."It's just not fair that I have to pay taxes." It all proceeds in a totally predictable manner from there.

[Famspear]

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Gregory P. Boyd, inmate # 69890-097, was released on Friday, September 2, 2016 (a bit later than the earlier projected date of August 20th).