Attack on IRS Follow Long Line of Tax Protesters

Fox News

Joseph Stack's methods were unthinkable -- he is accused of ramming a plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in Texas -- but his views on taxation follow a long line of protesters who believe tax laws don't apply to them.

While their numbers aren't large, according to experts, their arguments are so enticing that the IRS has published a guide to debunk their claims. In 2008, the Justice Department was concerned enough to start the "National Tax Defier Initiative" to better coordinate prosecutions.

"You would think a little light bulb would go on in their head and they would say, 'Why in the heck is everybody else paying taxes?"' said Peter R. Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who is now a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Washington. "There are people who are peddling this stuff. It's a way to get people to believe something that's too good to be true."

Reading the rest of this article, I am struck by a thought. If the various tax resister groups have no legal position, why then does the IRS need to mount a focused effort to discredit them? If there is a constitutional mandate that permits the US Government to claim an unlimited portion of our property, why does the IRS need a website to denounce "frivolous claims"?