By David Franke
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON -- What should you do when your government oppresses you with illegal laws, illegally confiscates your money and property, and refuses to even justify its actions to you?

That was the dilemma facing the Founding Fathers, of course, and it was the dilemma facing a roomful of income tax protesters meeting last week in the nation's capital. The symposium was called by the We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education Inc., to discuss the topic "Are the Income and Social Security Taxes Legal?"

Friday's article in WorldNetDaily featured William J. Benson's research on the ratification -- "fraudulent," he says -- of the 16th Amendment, which established the income tax. Other speakers at the symposium included Joseph R. Banister, the former investigator and gunslinger for the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS who looked into the arguments of income tax protestors and decided they were right.

Originally the foundation had hoped to have an academic-type format, with arguments and counter-arguments presented on both sides of the issue. "The foundation itself has not taken a position on the legality of the income tax," explained We the People's Robert L. Schulz.

There was just one problem: Nobody in the federal government would send an authority to present the government's case -- if it has one -- for the legality of the income tax. Not the IRS, not President Clinton, not Senate President Pro Tempore Trent Lott, not House Speaker Dennis Hastert. They all refused even to respond to their certified, registered and very respectful invitations to send representatives to the symposium.

"I consider this very newsworthy that they (the IRS) didn't show up," Banister said to the audience. "I somehow found my way from California to this meeting. They're two blocks away and couldn't spare one prosecutor. Is it that the IRS and the Treasury Department still don't have enough people to spare one for a couple of hours?"

"They're one short," shouted a member of the audience.

But Banister could not have been too surprised by the IRS's refusal to talk. The IRS treated him the same way when it was his employer. He had respectfully written to his superiors, explaining that he was concerned about some of the arguments and documentation he had received from opponents of the income tax, and might have to resign if he could not answer those arguments to his satisfaction. He asked for a meeting. Instead his firearm was taken from him, he was placed on administrative leave, and he received a written reply stating that "there is no reason to have a meeting. This will be the last time we will reply to your request." Then he learned from an office memo that his "voluntary resignation" had been accepted.

"Voluntary" -- there was that word again.

The IRS-maintained fiction that the income tax is "voluntary" was raised by a number of the speakers. Banister quoted former FBI Director William H. Webster's April 1999 review of the IRS's Criminal Investigation Division: "CID is staffed with approximately three thousand special agents for the purpose of influencing millions of taxpayers to voluntarily comply with their taxpaying obligations" [emphasis added].

"An IRS special agent," said Banister, who had been one, "is given firearms, pepper spray, and handcuffs. Why would that be necessary if payment is voluntary? Yet three IRS commissioners have stated that the tax system is based on 'voluntary compliance.'"

"One can plainly see there is more to the repeated use of the word 'voluntary' than the IRS wants to admit," Banister added.

"What we've got on our hands here," said Denver-based tax consultant William T. Conklin, "is an Orwellian situation where they say this is voluntary, but we'll prosecute you if you don't volunteer."

He received his first IRS audit notice, Conklin told the audience, three days after he wrote an anti-IRS article for a Denver newspaper. "I realized right then there was a huge problem," he said, "and that became my passion and my life's work."

So, back to the original question: What to do? Benson suggests widespread use of "jury nullification" to defeat tax prosecutions, while Conklin specializes in a Fifth Amendment defense against the income tax.

Variations of "write your congressman" would seem to be hopeless when only one member of Congress (Ohio's maverick Democratic, Rep. James Traficant) even responded to the seminar's sponsors. Still, We the People's Bob Schulz favors starting with that approach.

"I will recommend that our foundation's board urge Congress to hold hearings on this issue," Schulz told WorldNetDaily. "Congress could subpoena the IRS commissioner. After all, they are the people's representatives and that's the way the system is designed to work."

Assuming that doesn't work, though, Schulz feels the anti-IRS movement "should also try to get relief through the legal process. We could try the approach Vietnam veterans took with the Agent Orange issue. Hundreds of them filed individual lawsuits, which were then consolidated and heard by the D.C. circuit court. They eventually won in the Supreme Court."

"We should also consider taking a page out of Mahatma Gandhi's book," Schulz continued, referring to the Hindu nationalist leader in India. "He said it was necessary to have a militant, non-violent, mass movement -- and if any of those three elements are missing, you will fail. Martin Luther King wrote about that formula and employed it as well. Hopefully it will never come to this, but we too may have to consider some civil disobedience of this sort."

For Part 1 of this report, click here.

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