Closing argument

Humor me.

I've been studying the subject of the legality/illegality of income taxes for about 12 years now, and have learned a great deal of good information.

It is not possible, in my view, to discredit many of the conclusions to which the evidence presented by Larken Rose, Irwin Schiff, and Tommy Cryer lead. But the evidence is complex and comprehensive and requires a thorough and in-depth examination before the logical conclusion can be reached and, even then, the conclusion is neither indelibly clear nor conspicuous nor self-evident to the "man-on-the-street." If presented to a jury, the evidence would do little more than confuse 99% of them, and the conclusions they would reach would be more influenced by their "everybody-knows" conventional wisdom than by the gravity of the facts presented to them.

Here is an explanation I have used in private conversations, but have never seen presented elsewhere, and is one I believe juries would understand:

Addressing the jury:
1. The claim that there is no law....requiring the average American to pay income taxes and file tax returns.... has been made as far back as the early 1960's at least, perhaps even earlier. Those who made the claim were typically labeled as "kooks," "conspiracy theorists," and "tax cheats."

2. Yet the claim persisted, and re-surfaced year in and year out, albeit from a small number of people who had labored through the endless turning of pages at law libraries.

3. Many such people challenged the IRS with their research and the IRS's response was not to show them the law but, instead, to put them in jail to silence them. The victims of that ruthless tactic went to jail without having seen a law.

4. Then people began formally writing the Secretary of the Treasury, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service, the Attorney General, 535 members of Congress, the administrators of the Federal Register, Law Professors, and so-called legal scholars everywhere. Though a few members of Congress, and the keepers of the Federal Register, HAVE responded on rare occasions in earlier years by stating in writing that no entry in the Federal Register has ever identified a specific law requiring the paying of income taxes or filing of tax returns, no such admission has ever been made by the IRS, Treasury, or DOJ. There has been no such response by ANYONE in government in recent years.

5. Meanwhile, the IRS and DOJ has continued to discredit and put in jail the people who spoke out and insisted "there is no law."

6. There can be no question that the senior key people in all these government agencies have long known of the alleged "controversy." They have chosen to remain silent on the subject, speaking out only sufficiently to acknowledge that the tax code is "confusing," but insist that the claim, and the alleged evidence upon which it was founded, is ridiculous, frivolous, anti-American, and is only asserted by dishonest people who don't want to pay their "fair share."

7. Since the Internet has made researching the law relatively easy....as compared to the physical turning of pages in law libraries....and has made the results achieved more reliable than ever before, the number of people insisting there is no law has grown from a few to a few hundred thousand. This steadily expanding body of citizens includes educated people, professional people, doctors, dentists, businessmen and women, CPA's, former IRS agents, and a growing number of lawyers. These people are NOT kooks, they are NOT conspiracy theorists, they are NOT dishonest, and they don't wish to avoid paying any obligation they legitimately owe. They believe that if you see someone stealing from your neighbor, you ought to tell him.

8. After "government" has been painfully aware of the "confusion" and "controversy" for several decades, a prudent person would expect that the Congress would simply pass legislation that would clarify the issue and make the requirement (that most Americans are liable to pay income taxes and file returns) clear and unambiguous, eliminate the confusion, and put the "controversy" to rest, once and for all. They certainly would do that if there were any question as to the legality or illegality of murder or armed robbery or rape or child molestation.

9. But they haven't. The Congress has been tight-lipped and has said nothing. The DOJ and IRS have said, when accused of not answering the people's questions, "We ARE answering the questions. We're answering them with prosecutions." Instead of explaining their position to the people they profess to serve, they pull out a club and beat them over the head and say "You have to pay taxes and file returns because we SAY you do, and that's all you need to know."

10. Fifty years. Five decades. Two score and ten years. Half a century. In all that time, consider how much money the federal government has spent on investigations, raids of people's homes and offices, prosecutions, costs of trials, incarcerations, paying welfare to families left unsupported when heads of households go to prison, feeding and clothing and providing health care for those who they have incarcerated, and on and on the list of expenses goes, to say nothing of the untold numbers of people who have committed suicide because of IRS harassment, threats, and persecutions. That tactic has been a very expensive "non-solution" to a problem they could have easily solved 40 or 50 years ago by simply passing into law an amendment that would need be no more than two or three paragraphs printed on a piece of paper. There are many taxes legitimately required by the tax code that are unequivocal and are plainly stated in simple language any reader can understand, but that is not the case with regard to the individual income tax. Why the law continues to imply, but deliberately not state a requirement, remains a mystery clouded in secrecy.

11. That brings up the question "WHY?" Why has Congress not amended the tax code to eliminate the "confusion" and the attendant "controversy," once and for all time?

12. Permit me to suggest the answer:...the only answer that makes any sense. "Because to pass such an amendment, clearly imposing a tax upon the wages and salaries, upon the labor and private property of U.S. Citizens, would violate the CONSTITUTION, and they aren't about to do that. It's much more profitable to just keep on extorting a TRILLION DOLLARS each year from an uninformed and gullible public, by using brute POWER and the force of arms to intimidate and terrorize the general population, and drive ever-increasing numbers of them to suicide.

In closing, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, today YOU are the LAW. Today you can begin to turn the tide that will eliminate the illegal and unconstitutional taxes you and most Americans have been intimidated into paying since your first job at McDonald's, or wherever you began your earning life. As a jury, you have more power today than the Supreme Court of the United States, more power than all the lawyers, all the federal prosecutors and all the federal judges combined. Today you can return a verdict of NOT GUILTY that no power on earth can overturn, a verdict that you need never explain or justify to ANYONE, inside or outside of government, and a verdict that no one and no government agency can ever retaliate against you for rendering. Your decision can be questioned only by your own conscience and by God Almighty.

Today you can do your civic duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America....when these representatives of government WILL NOT....and you can join for posterity those 56 brave men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. As Jesus Christ has said "I go to prepare a place for you," so too can you tell your children and grandchildren "I have helped to prepare a better place for you and your children." You can display and preserve your sacred honor TODAY for the whole world to see! You can do more today than all the juries which have gone before you in the past 50 years. And you can forever hold your heads high, for you will truly be heroes. This defendant CANNOT BE FOUND GUILTY, unless and until someone SHOWS US THE LAW.

Thank you.
Fred Marshall