Home > FEDS CALL COURT CERTIFIED DOCUMENTS A "THEORY" IN BILL BENSON CASE
FEDS CALL COURT CERTIFIED DOCUMENTS A "THEORY" IN BILL BENSON CASE
by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 21 February 20061 comment
Posted: February 15, 2005
1:05 AM Eastern
NewsWithViews.com
Bill Benson is a former revenue collector for the State of Illinois. Back in 1984, Benson was commissioned to conduct an investigation into the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Benson traveled to all 48 states which had been admitted to the Union at the time of the ratification of this amendment in 1913. He spent close to a year in the bowels of these state archives collecting official documents.
What Benson found according to legal researchers was nothing short of a bombshell: Not only was the Sixteenth Amendment - the so-called "income tax amendment’ never ratified by the required number of states, he also discovered that the Seventeenth Amendment wasn’t ratified either.
The Seventeenth Amendment allows for U.S. Senators to be elected by the citizens of the states. Prior to this amendment, U.S. Senators were appointed by each state legislature.
Benson published a two part volume on the Sixteenth Amendment, ’The Law That Never Was’. He also published another work titled, ’Proof the Seventeenth Amendment was Never Ratified’. Over the past twenty years as a result of Benson’s battle to expose the alleged fraud which occurred on these two amendments, Benson has refused to voluntarily file or pay income taxes. While he did spend time in prison, his fiercely fought battles against the government are legendary.
NWVs has now learned that the federal government has once again gone after Benson to, in his own words, "Shut down the truth from the American people." The government has filed an injunction seeking to force Benson to cease and desist from selling his reliance defense package on income taxes, post a statement on his web site announcing the government’s injunction and demanding the names of anyone Benson has sold his reliance defense package to relating the Sixteenth Amendment.
According to Benson in a telephone interview, "The government is calling my documents a theory! Can you imagine that? I have 17,000 documents that we call court certified and the government refers to them as a theory!"
Benson indeed has the 17,000 hard documents he maintains prove his allegations that both the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments were never ratified. His legal team in Milwaukee, the Law Offices of Robert G. Bernhoft, S.C., have now filed a Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff’s Complaint and Motion for Preliminary Injunction for Lack of Subject Matter Jurisdiction and for Failure to State a Claim Upon Which Relief Can be Granted.
One of the most intriguing parts of this filing is that Benson’s counsel, Jeffrey A. Dickstein, appears to be turning the table on the government and putting them in a position where in order to prvail, the government must prove the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified - something Benson steadfastly claims they cannot do and states he has the documents to prove it. According to Benson’s latest filing:
"As previously discussed, the United States can not prevail as a matter of law unless it can prove Benson “made or caused to be made false or fraudulent statements concerning the tax benefits to be derived from the entity, plan or arrangement” and that “he knew or had reason to know the statements were false or fraudulent.” This requires the United States to prove the Sixteenth Amendment was properly ratified, because if it were not properly ratified, Benson’s statements would not be false or fraudulent, they would be true, and the United States’ action would fail."
On June 21, 2001, Phil Hart, who is now a member of the Idaho State Legislature, filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari http://www.constitutionalincome.com...with the United States Supreme Court on this very issue. The court refused to hear his case.
The government has maintained for decades that the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, it is the legal basis for the income tax and call any arguments to the contrary "frivolous."
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The Seventeenth Amendment allows for U.S. Senators to be elected by the citizens of the states. Prior to this amendment, U.S. Senators were appointed by each state legislature.
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21 February 2006, 00:14
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CDA man places tax question before the Supreme Court
"Does the 16th Amendment provide Congress with an exception to the Constitution’s apportionment clause regarding its authority to levy a direct tax?"
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho: Truth-in-Taxation proponent Phil Hart of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court June 21, 2002. (The Petition had been previously filed in April and was resubmitted in June with corrections and additional documents.) Hart, an engineer in his professional life, has dedicated the last six years to pursuing the truth about the income tax while exhausting his administrative remedies in pro per defense of an IRS tax collection case.
Since 1996 Hart has made two trips to the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court’s library Washington, D.C., and has visited about a half dozen other libraries. He has researched every Congressional Record entry and relevant Congressional documents from the period of time when the income tax amendment to the Constitution was being debated and ratified. He has also accumulated in his files an impressive body of newspaper articles, law and economic journal articles, books, essays and letters that capture the intent of the income tax from the first congressional debate in 1909 through the time it was implemented in 1913.
The purpose of this area of research was to discover what the intent of the American People was when they lobbied Congress and their state legislatures for an income tax amendment to the Constitution. Hart believes an objective review of the record proves that wages are not income and that the 16th Amendment does not empower Congress to levy a new kind of tax not authorized by the Constitution. According to Hart, "The purpose of the 16th Amendment was to bring tax relief to wage earners."
Much of the income tax debate has centered around the improper ratification of the 16th Amendment, whether or not wages are income and who is or is not liable for the tax. Hart believes the key question is, "Does the 16th Amendment provide Congress with an exception to the Constitution’s apportionment clause regarding its authority to levy a direct tax?" Though this is arguably the most fundamental of income tax constitutionality questions, surprisingly, no one has framed the argument quite like this before.
Confusion in the courts
Since World War II, when patriotism swept the nation and Americans gladly paid the new "victory (income tax on wages) tax", thousands of income tax cases have been heard at the lower levels of the federal court system. But back in 1916, when the first few income tax cases came up to the Supreme Court, in at least five of these cases the parties were arguing that this "income tax exception" did exist such that a direct tax could be levied without apportionment. Correctly and in harmony with the other clauses of the Constitution, the Supreme Court said no. Unfortunately, this position of the Court was somewhat obscured by the complex writing of the Court in its opinion. When Hart read Supreme Court’s entire file on these first few income tax cases, it became crystal clear as to the position of the Court on this question. Sadly, Hart is the first researcher in the Truth-in-Taxation movement to dig this deep into this area of research.
But as time has gone by, the lower courts have been inconsistent with their decisions to the point today where total confusion exists regarding the income tax. Some courts say the income tax is a direct tax, whereas other courts say it is an indirect tax. It gets even worse, there are court rulings saying that the income tax is both direct and indirect, that it is neither or that the issue is irrelevant.
Direct tax or indirect tax?
At the time the Constitution was written in 1787, there were only two authorities upon which the framers relied for the terms "direct tax" and "indirect tax." These were Adam Smith, who wrote Wealth of Nations in 1776, and Frenchman Jaques Turgot author of Plan d’un memoire sur les impositions in 1764. Smith’s Wealth of Nations states, "Capitation taxes, so far as they are levied upon the lower ranks of people, are direct taxes upon the wages of labour, and are attended with all the inconvenience of such taxes."
The IRS has steadfastly maintained that an income tax on wages is a direct tax exempted from the Constitution’s apportionment rule. But when Congress approved the 16th Amendment and sent it out to the states for ratification, four times the Senate rejected the opportunity to create this "apportionment rule exemption for income taxes." According to Hart, "The executive branch of government cannot do something that was not authorized by the legislative branch."
Will the writ be heard?
A Writ of Certiorari is, according to Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th Edition, a "writ of review or inquiry." The Supreme Court rules are very specific as to the form of the filing. It must be presented as a booklet and must not exceed 30 pages. There are rules that govern the booklet’s organization and dimensions, type style and size, margins, binding and content. Hart took special care that his writ would not be disqualified due to form.
For the Supreme Court to choose this writ from the thousands it receives, the issue must be "ripe." Due to the activities of We the People Foundation and many other Truth-in-Taxation activists such as Irwin Schiff, Bill Benson, Joe Bannister and Larry Becraft, there is little doubt that the issue is "ripe." "I believe there is a very good chance that the Supreme Court will hear this writ because of the disarray of the lower courts and the increasing political activisism on the issue," said Don Harkins, editor of The Idaho Observer. According to Hart, "The questions presented are simple, logical, the historical evidence is solid and there is no wiggle room for the government."
As to the reason the Supreme Court should hear the writ, the petition concludes, "The habit of government exceeding its authority in the collection of taxes is as old as history itself. All the milestones in the progress of liberty and self government for the Anglo-American people were proceeded by abusive taxation, civil unrest, sometimes civil war or revolution, culminating with memoralized documents whereby the Citizens compel the government to obey the law. In the process of framing our Constitution, that instrument would likely never have been ratified without the direct taxation compromise between the large states and the small states. The requirement of apportioning direct taxes among the several States is the only provision of the Constitution that appears twice in the document. It is this very provision that is today being abused by the Commissioner. This Court should grant Certiorari so that this question can finally be settled."
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.
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Fact #1: "In examining the history of the debate and ratification of the 16th Amendment, this book will show that there is no evidence upon which the government can rely for their claim that the American People desired to have their wages and salaries taxed. No evidence can be found in the law journals of the time, not in the journals on political economy or economics, not in the Congressional Record nor other Congressional documents, nor in any of the newspapers of record of the time. In other words, the government’s position that wages and salaries equals income within the meaning of the 16th Amendment is ’wholly without foundation.’" Phil Hart, Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any? page 10, (Alpine Press, 2001).
Fact #2: A tax on wages payable by the wage earner is a Capitation Tax. So says the premier authority on the issue, Adam Smith author of the timeless work Wealth of Nations. Ibid. pp. 141-145.
Fact #3: Capitation Taxes are direct taxes and are required by the Constitution to be apportioned among the 50 States. The 16th Amendment had nothing to do with Capitation Taxes. Ibid. pp. 250 - 253.
Fact #4: In the few hours just prior to the Senate’s passage of the 16th Amendment the morning of July 5, 1909, the Senate twice by vote rejected two separate proposals to include direct taxes within the authority of the 16th Amendment. Ibid. pp. 193-200.
Fact #5: In briefs and argument before the Supreme Court in the case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, both Brushaber and the Government claimed that the 16th Amendment provided for a direct tax exempted from the Constitutional apportionment rule. The High Court called this claim an "erroneous assumption...wholly without foundation." Ibid. pp. 204-210.
Fact #6: Just weeks after the Brushaber Case was decided, Mr. Stanton, in the case of Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co. again claimed (35 times) that the 16th Amendment created a new class of constitutional tax, that being a direct tax exempted from the apportionment rule. The High Court said in this case that the 16th Amendment created "no new tax." Ibid. pp. 212-220.
Fact #7: In the Stanton and Brushaber Cases, the Supreme Court ruled correctly by excluding direct taxes from the 16th Amendment. The intent of the American People and that of Congress was never to directly tax the American People, but only to tax income severed from accumulated wealth. Ibid. pp. 244 - 270.
Fact #8: When the Supreme Court stated in the Eisner, Stanton, and Doyle Cases that "Income may be derived from capital, or labor or from both combined" all these cases dealt with corporations and had nothing to do with the "Are wages income?" question. Ibid. pp. 239-244 and 272-274.
Fact #9: The genesis of the 16th Amendment was the income tax plank of the Democrat Party’s Presidential Platform of 1908 which clearly reveals the intent of that Amendment: "We favor an income tax as part of our revenue system, and we urge the submission of a constitutional amendment specifically authorizing Congress to levy and collect a tax upon individual and corporate incomes, to the end that wealth may bear its proportional share of the burdens of the federal government." Ibid. p. 48.
Fact #10: There is not, and never has been, any delegation of authority from We the People to the government for the collection of an unapportioned direct tax on the wages and salaries of the American People. It has been a maxim of English Law since the Magna Carta of 1215, that the People must consent to all taxation. "We are being taxed without our Consent!" Ibid. p. 278.
To read these above quotes in context, buy a copy of Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any? This book is the only exhaustive analysis of the intent of the American People in supporting an income tax amendment to the Constitution. Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any? proves without a doubt that the purpose of the 16th Amendment was to bring tax relief to wage earners.
Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any? is available from Alpine Press at $25 a copy and you can order online right now!.
Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court Docket #02-84 is available from Alpine Press for $32.00 per copy.
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