IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat - MSM Buries Story

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Botef
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IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat - MSM Buries Story

Postby Botef » Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:09 pm

Little bit old news but a lot of you probably didn't hear about this. Figured with all the discussion about the gold standard and the fed this might interest a lot of you:

http://www.rense.com/general78/defeat.htm

IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat

Tax Questions Raised Regarding Gold and Silver Coins Used to Pay Wages

Around noon on Monday, September 17th, a Las Vegas federal jury returned its verdict refusing to convict nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with. The charges included income tax evasion, willful failure to file and conspiracy to evade taxes.

The four-month trial centered around the family businesses of Robert Kahre who paid numerous workers for their labor with circulating gold and silver U.S. coins, and did not report the wages. The payments took place over several years, allegedly totaling at least $114 million dollars.

On September 20, 2007, three days after the federal trial's dramatic conclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal, reportedly under a degree of public pressure, ran its first (and last) story about the outcome of the trial. To this day, with exception of the single article by the Review Journal, no major media entity has published a news story regarding the outcome of this important federal criminal tax case.

The censorship of this important news story is, unfortunately, not unexpected given the continuing, worldwide onslaught against the U.S. "dollar" -- specifically the Federal Reserve variety, and the ever growing numbers of Federal Reserve Notes required to trade for an actual ounce of silver, gold, oil, or for that matter, anything.

In short, this failed prosecution has coalesced and exposed truths our Government desperately needs to hide from the People: the truth about our money, the truth about our (privately-owned) central bank, and the truth about the fraudulent nature of the operation and enforcement of the federal income tax system.

According to defense attorney Joel Hansen, who represented co-defendant Alex Loglia, the primary "willfulness" defense was that the defendants believed they had no legal obligation to withhold, pay income taxes or report anything to the government because, in part, the nominal (i.e., face value) of the gold and silver coins is so small as to fall beneath the reporting thresholds set by the Internal Revenue Code.

The Defendants also argued that regardless of the valuation of the coins for internal revenue purposes, there is no law that requires average American workers to file or pay direct, un-apportioned taxes on the fruits of their labor.

The Government argued that the payments in solid gold and silver U.S. coins must be considered at their bullion (i.e., intrinsic full-market) value when considering the worth of the wages for purposes of the internal revenue code.

Attorney Hansen cited two Supreme Court cases bolstering Defendant's monetary argument at the heart of the defendants "willfulness" defense.

The essence of the argument is that under the Constitution Congress is obligated by law to mint and circulate such coins as demand requires, and must establish the value of coins as they are used as legal tender, but the coins' market value, arising as valuable personal "property," is a distinct, separate attribute of such coins, and is of no legal consequence if the coins are used as legal tender.

In other words, if a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable "income" (if any) can only be the face value indicated upon the coin money paid -- i.e., $1.00 for a circulating silver dollar or $50 for a circulating gold U.S. coin. Not surprisingly, the IRS has never issued any public guidance regarding this significant issue. The first case, Ling Su Fan v. U.S., 218 US 302 (1910) establishes the legal distinction of a coin bearing the "impress" of the sovereign:

"These limitations are due to the fact that public law gives to such coinage a value which does not attach as a mere consequence of intrinsic value. Their quality as a legal tender is an attribute of law aside from their bullion value. They bear, therefore, the impress of sovereign power which fixes value and authorizes their use in exchange."

The second case, Thompson v. Butler, 95 US 694 (1877), establishes that the law makes no legal distinction between the values of coin and paper money used as legal tender:

"A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value any more than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, that is to say, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them."

Defense attorney Hansen confirmed that members of the jury were able to actually hold and inspect the gold and silver U.S. coins paid to the workers.

After almost four months of testimony and three and a half days of deliberation, the jury did not convict any of the defendants of any of the 161 crimes alleged. Although some defendants were acquitted of multiple counts, and several were acquitted completely, others may have to stand for a retrial if the Government brings charges a second time.

The Review Journal reported the jury foreman claimed DOJ prosecutors admitted they were "shocked" by the outcome.

In March 2007, the primary defendant, Bob Kahre, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutor and IRS agents who had conducted what he alleges to be an unlawful search and seizure raid. In 2005, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to overturn a previous District Court ruling holding that the federal prosecutor is not entitled to absolute immunity for the unlawful raid. Read more.

Execute a Google News search to attempt to locate recent news stories about the Kahre tax trial.

The media suppression of this story is similar to the widespread mainstream media suppression of the July 11, 2007 acquittal of Louisiana attorney Tommy Cryer who was also charged with multiple federal income tax crimes and relied upon numerous Supreme Court precedents and U.S. tax laws to establish his "willfulness" defense. Click here for a previous WTP update containing a link to Cryer's 100-page Motion to Dismiss which details his legal arguments.

Execute a Google News archive search to attempt to locate news stories about Tommy Cryer's tax trial.
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Postby Birile » Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:04 pm

In short, this failed prosecution has coalesced and exposed truths our Government desperately needs to hide from the People: the truth about our money, the truth about our (privately-owned) central bank, and the truth about the fraudulent nature of the operation and enforcement of the federal income tax system.


Yeah, that article didn't seem biased at all.

/sarcasm.
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Postby Botef » Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:47 pm

Most certainly biased. Unfortunately this story isn't in the mainstream media but I still think the case is of interest. If you ask me this seems like a pretty important case and one that is news worthy. Certainly more news worthy then a lot of the dribble out there every night.

I don't agree with everything said about this case but I find it pretty sad that the only sites that seem to be covering something so relevant to our tax system are extreme left blogs.
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Postby Corth » Wed Oct 17, 2007 10:01 pm

Hrmm.. so a jury refused to convict. Probably on the narrow basis that the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that these particular defendants 'willfully' evaded paying their taxes. What is the big precedent or lesson we are supposed to take out of this?
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth

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Postby rylan » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:00 am

So can I request from my employer that I be paid in US mint gold coins?
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Postby moritheil » Thu Oct 18, 2007 4:48 am

Corth wrote:Hrmm.. so a jury refused to convict. Probably on the narrow basis that the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that these particular defendants 'willfully' evaded paying their taxes. What is the big precedent or lesson we are supposed to take out of this?


So you don't actually think the argument the defense ran was valid?
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Postby Disoputlip » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:09 am

If I did a job, and got payed 114 million dollars, then I don't care if I got payed in leprechauns, I would still expect to pay tax.
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Postby Birile » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:37 pm

I agree with Corth that this isn't really all that great of a precedent considering how the ruling seems to be rather narrow--duh, if I get paid in coins with a face value of $1.00 or $0.01 then I'm not going to pay much payroll tax.

However, that would have made me wonder what sorts of minimum wage laws were being broken and what taxes the employees should be paying on their earnings from selling those coins, etc. But none of that was part of this ruling. *shrug*
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Postby Corth » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:42 pm

moritheil wrote:
Corth wrote:Hrmm.. so a jury refused to convict. Probably on the narrow basis that the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that these particular defendants 'willfully' evaded paying their taxes. What is the big precedent or lesson we are supposed to take out of this?


So you don't actually think the argument the defense ran was valid?


No idea if it was valid or not. I wasn't the one sitting around for months listening to testimony. But its an extremely common defense for a tax case. "Willfulness" is a difficult mens rea element to demonstrate. Moreover, being acquitted on that basis has no precedential value, as it simply means that these particular defendants did not possess the requisite mental state to be culpable for the crime they were charged with.

And EVEN if the jury's decision was based on the argument that the coins should be valued at face value instead of fair market value, there is still no precedential value anyway because its just a dumb jury doing what dumb juries do. Its not like a Federal Appellate court came to such a conclusion.

The point I'm trying to make is that from a legal perspective, any way you look at it, its not an important case. If this was an appellate court overturning a conviction on appeal on the basis that coins should be taxed at their face value, then my jaw would drop. This case, however, means just about nothing.
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth



Goddamned slippery mage.
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Postby Kifle » Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:15 pm

Disoputlip wrote:If I did a job, and got payed 114 million dollars, then I don't care if I got payed in leprechauns, I would still expect to pay tax.


I'll pay you two leprechauns an hour to wax my private areas!
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Postby Tasan » Thu Oct 18, 2007 8:58 pm

Corth wrote:"Willfulness" is a difficult mens rea element to demonstrate. Moreover, being acquitted on that basis has no precedential value, as it simply means that these particular defendants did not possess the requisite mental state to be culpable for the crime they were charged with.


So when do we actually make stupidity a crime? I'm tired of stupid people flexing their majority rights! We need the ACLU on our side, fighting for all people not stupid enough to think the air they breathe is truly free.
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Postby rylan » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:00 pm

The ACLU will only fight for you if you have the correct skin color or are some other form of minority :P
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Postby Yasden » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:57 pm

White males ARE a minority. Where've you been?
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Postby kiryan » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:02 pm

I'm more of a letter of the law kind of guy instead of intent, but this is pretty dumb and another reason we have so many stupid laws. You try and write perfect laws, then you write laws to fix those laws, then the times changes and you write laws to make the laws reflect the original intent. end result, thousands of laws spanning hundreds of thousands of pages.

--

On the other hand, I'd also like to know why we have a jury of your peers if we are just going to overrule them because they were obviously too stupid to render the correct judgement. I love the liberties the judges take in jury instructions and recently even removing "problematic" jurors (jurors who won't agree with everyone else).

wouldn't it be nice if they actually got you a jury of YOUR peers rather than a collection of stay at home moms and poor people?

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Postby rylan » Fri Oct 19, 2007 10:22 pm

Yasden wrote:White males ARE a minority. Where've you been?


Yeah but white males have the incorrect skin color for any groups to stand up for us.
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Postby moritheil » Fri Oct 19, 2007 10:56 pm

Corth wrote:No idea if it was valid or not. I wasn't the one sitting around for months listening to testimony. But its an extremely common defense for a tax case. "Willfulness" is a difficult mens rea element to demonstrate. Moreover, being acquitted on that basis has no precedential value, as it simply means that these particular defendants did not possess the requisite mental state to be culpable for the crime they were charged with.

And EVEN if the jury's decision was based on the argument that the coins should be valued at face value instead of fair market value, there is still no precedential value anyway because its just a dumb jury doing what dumb juries do. Its not like a Federal Appellate court came to such a conclusion.

The point I'm trying to make is that from a legal perspective, any way you look at it, its not an important case. If this was an appellate court overturning a conviction on appeal on the basis that coins should be taxed at their face value, then my jaw would drop. This case, however, means just about nothing.



Interesting. Thank you for taking the time to make a well-reasoned and insightful post, rather than condensing it into something like "IT'S FINE, LEARN 2 PLAY." :P
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Postby Kifle » Sat Oct 20, 2007 4:14 am

rylan wrote:
Yasden wrote:White males ARE a minority. Where've you been?


Yeah but white males have the incorrect skin color for any groups to stand up for us.


Good god, Rylan! When did you turn into a crotchity old white guy?
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Postby rylan » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:40 pm

Lol, its true though Kifle. Pretty much any other group can whine and get special preferences. The only ones in a worse spot are Asians.
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Postby Lathander » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:59 pm

I posted this story a few weeks ago in another thread. In a nutshell, the coins that were given to the employees were legal tender. That means that the US government has assigned a value to them in exchange. The value of the material of the coins can not be considered because the governement has already given it a value. In addition, it is against the law to melt down legal tender so the government arguing to consider the value of the base metals doesn't make sense.

If you get paid 114 million, then you owe somewhere in the ballpark of 55 million in taxes. If you were an employee, would you like your employer to maximize your earning potential by limiting your taxes? This will not be widespread because there is a huge negative for the employer since they are effectively paying their employees alot more than they can deduct as an expense. The only argument against that would be they are also probably taking a loss on the value they pay for the gold coins vs what they realize for their value.
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Postby teflor the ranger » Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:07 pm

I always did find the $50 gold coin to be a just a little suspect.

But I'm not going to get rid of the few of them sitting in my safe deposit box.
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