14A018 Cut Off Their Funds? by Jim Davies, 6/15/2014    

Among the possible ways to slash or eliminate government from society, a sweeping tax revolt is a natural candidate - if one could be arranged. Government always depends upon support - the "sanction of its victims" as Ayn Rand put it - and tax payments are one of the biggest and most visible forms of support. Remove it, and collapse must follow, yes?

It came as quite a shock, therefore - though not much of a surprise - when last week, Gary North disparaged the whole idea of refusing to cooperate with the FedGov's extortion of  the income tax. His advice was that it's impossible to win, therefore don't even try; and he chose Pete Hendrickson as his primary target. He called him a "witch doctor."

Most taxes are clearly legalized, so to refuse their payment is obviously hazardous. To do so is perfectly moral, but as a way of zerozing government it seems impracticable because of the difficulty of persuading scores of millions of people to paint targets on their backs. The interesting bit about the i-tax is that it's not clearly legalized. Making something legal does not of course make it moral or acceptable - tax is still theft, and laws are still mere opinions backed by guns - but when it's not legal, Boobus Americanus may begin to pay heed.

More: it's huge. It transfers a trillion dollars a year on its own from producers to parasites, which is about 40% of the Federal grab; and it enables the "social security" tax (another 30% of it) and 42 of the 44 income-taxing states "piggyback" on Federal law so as to collect state i-taxes. If the Federal one collapsed those governments would be able to reconstruct their own, but such a major upheaval, at a time when the public would be in a furore about government tax deception, would be iffy. Something over two thirds of all taxes therefore derive from the Federal Income Tax.

If that were to become uncollectible, the impact on government would be unprecedented, though it would still leave a small residue (therefore, too much) unless the momentum generated triggered a total revulsion against, and abolition of, all government. But, of course, it might not; a (much smaller) government could still open for business with funding by theft that is legalized. The Constitution "authorizes" such theft and so is, itself, dishonest.

The i-tax is documented in the US Code, Title 26, and right there on its first page it clearly says that a tax is levied on the "incomes" of various people. The fun bit is that the Code nowhere defines what "income" means, and therefore the law is "benign", or toothless. Pete Hendrickson (North's target) has a slightly different take: that the stuff that is legally taxable is only what one receives from Federal sources, such as bank interest, government salaries, pensions and benefits. His book Cracking the Code (CtC) explains that in detail, and outlines how to go about not paying i-tax on anything else.

The FedGov naturally dislikes that, and uses its courts to prevent such knowledge gaining traction; but in the case of CtC Hendrickson says there has been no successful prosecution (except of himself) of anyone following the procedures prescribed. Gary North states the opposite, so clearly one of them employed a terminological inexactitude. North names no example, while Hendrickson names more winners than I care to count. CtC has been going for ten years, and is estimated to have saved followers an aggregate of over $11 million. That's the total refunded to them; that is, they file documents and the IRS writes them checks, after making sure the claims are valid. It's $11 million worth of mayhem the Feds cannot commit. I wonder how much of their mayhem North has prevented.

There's quite a lot of irony around here. Pete Hendrickson aims to reduce government to the size and scope permitted by the Constitution, but not necessarily smaller; despite my efforts, he doesn't yet endorse a zero government society. Yet he has done far more to cut off the vital funding of government than has Gary North, who says he does favor an anarcho-capitalist society, while actively discouraging Pete and others whose work may help produce one! Pete is no witch doctor, but is brewing up a fine broth of trouble for the Feds.

Meantime, there is the Zero Government Blog, and the strategy it represents. The aim here is total freedom; a world in which, in reality as well as by right, every person owns and operates his or her own life completely - and therefore nobody else's at all. The means of achieving that is to withdraw the kind of support without which government certainly cannot exist: labor. It may manage without money (tax payments) because of its ability to create and borrow a form of money, and it can surely manage without votes, for elections are mere theater that change nothing. But there is no possibility at all of its managing without employees. It consists of nothing else.

To motivate everyone to decline to work for government is being done by education, spread one to one so as to generate exponential growth. A start can be made from TinyURL.com/QuitGov, but the heavy lifting (and it's really not heavy at all) depends on using the Freedom Academy. Nothing less will do the job, and nothing more is needed.