Posts Tagged ‘FrivolousTaxArguments’

He Cracked the Code (but Won’t be Happy with the Result)

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

Back in 2007, Peter Hendrickson wrote a book titled Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth About Taxation in America. I haven’t read it, nor would I advise you to. Today, Judge Buch of the Tax Court demolished each and every argument in the book.

But I’m starting with the decision rather than the case itself. Steven Waltner challenged the IRS’s collection of a frivolous tax submissions penalty in Tax Court. He paid the IRS so that issue was moot. However, each side asked for sanctions on the other side (that being Mr. Waltner and the IRS) alleging misconduct.

Judge Buch notes,

This case has occupied an inordinate amount of the Court’s time. The Court could have disposed of the entire matter summarily by reference to Crain v. Commissioner or any number of other cases that stand for the proposition that we need not address frivolous arguments. [footnotes omitted]

Well, why does the decision go on for another 40 pages?

The Court has taken the time, however, to address those arguments because Mr. Waltner appears to be perpetuating frivolous positions that have been promoted and encouraged by Peter Hendrickson’s book Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth About Taxation in America (2007). Indeed, it appears not merely that Mr. Waltner’s positions are predicated on that book but that his returns and return information have been used to promote the frivolous arguments contained in that book. Consequently, a written opinion is warranted.

It’s not that the IRS didn’t err; they did. It’s what the IRS counsel did after making mistakes that contrasts with what the petitioner (Mr. Waltner) did. I’ll let Judge Buch take it:

Respondent’s counsel sought discovery that went beyond the scope ofthis case, and the Court issued orders excusing Mr. Waltner from responding to those requests. Likewise, respondent’s counsel was evasive in answering some of Mr. Waltner’s discovery requests, and the Court ordered respondent to supplement those responses. In each instance, once the Court ruled, respondent’s counsel cured the defect, through either supplementing his responses or accepting the Court’s determinations that his requests were improper.

Mr. Waltner sought to avoid answering every discovery request.

There’s more, though, a lot more. It appears that the petitioner’s aided a Web site used to market Cracking the Code. The Court then takes 30 pages to demolish the arguments in the book. Here are some additional excerpts of Judge Buch’s opinion:

Cracking the Code is written by Peter Eric Hendrickson. Nowhere in his book does Mr. Hendrickson set forth his credentials, other than on the back cover where he vaguely identifies himself as “researcher, analyst and scholar”. Add to that felon and serial tax evader.

Well, you have a lot of free time to research when you’re at ClubFed.

It is this passage that is quoted at the beginning of Cracking the Code. It is fitting because the book is largely an exercise in twisting the meaning of words into what the author wants them to mean, even if statutes, regulations, and case law define those words otherwise…

Having spent the immediately preceding chapter misinterpreting the word “including”, the author turns to the same Latin phrase discussed above and then proceeds to misinterpret it…

This chapter provides an example of how one illogical conclusion can be used to bolster another…

Turning to the subject of withholding, the author sets forth one of his fundamental, and fundamentally incorrect, positions regarding tax reporting. Having erroneously concluded that the term “employee” includes only government employees (and a few selected others), the author concludes that “this kind of withholding only applies to the pay of federal government workers”…

The positions advocated in Cracking the Code have routinely been rejected, with its author being criminally convicted and its adherents being sanctioned.

I could go on, but I think you get the point; I’m certain Mr. Waltner gets the point. While he only received a $2,500 sanction, he has other Tax Court cases in the pipeline. I also suspect that others are using arguments in Cracking the Code. They may want to rethink that. As Judge Buch stated, “And future litigants are on notice that the positions advanced in Cracking the Code are frivolous and relying on those positions may result in sanctions.”

Case: Waltner v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2014-35

Is the IRS Time-Barred From Imposing a Penalty on a Frivolous Amended Return?

Monday, September 17th, 2012

The IRS is allowed to impose a penalty on the filing of a frivolous tax return (Internal Revenue Code Section 6702(a)). Today, the Tax Court looked at a taxpayer who filed a normal tax return, but then filed an amended return where she claimed she wasn’t a “person.”

Well, we’re all people (I hope), and the petitioner, one Marla Crites, also said that wages aren’t taxable (helpful hint: they are taxable). When the IRS imposed a $5,000 penalty on the frivolous amended return, she asked for a Collection Due Process Hearing. Ms. Crites filed four amended returns (not one), and they all appear to have said that she wasn’t liable for tax. At the CDP, the Appeals officer upheld the IRS. She then went to Tax Court.

I’m not going to go over the arguments that wages aren’t taxable, or that she’s not a person; neither argument is worth any time. Nor is her argument that an amended return isn’t a return under IRC Section 6702; the Tax Court (and other courts) have held that it is.

The interesting issue is whether the statute of limitations time bars the IRS from imposing a frivolous return penalty on an amended return that the IRS does not process. The Tax Court notes,

As the Commissioner observes, penalties under section 6702 do not have a readily observable statute of limitations. The section penalizes not just frivolous “returns”–and even here Congress was careful to penalize not just returns but “what purports to be a return”–but frivolous “submissions”. It would be odd if penalties keyed to “submissions” had somehow to be tied to the limitations period for tax that is supposed to be shown on a “return”…

But let us assume–and here we are expressly assuming without deciding–that Crites is right that the filing date of her “return” is the key date. She had two returns, and the one that the Commissioner wants to punish her for is the amended return that she sent the IRS in October 2008. He assessed the penalty in July 2009, well within three years of her submitting it.

The IRS then asked the Court to impose a penalty for filing a frivolous case at the Tax Court. I hope Ms. Crites looks carefully at the last line of the decision:

…[T]his is Crites’s first trip to Tax Court, and by submitting the case under Rule 122, she did save us the burden of trial. And one of her arguments, the statute-of-limitations issue as applied to frivolous amended returns, was one we had not yet addressed and was not itself obviously frivolous. We will therefore exercise our discretion not to sanction her under section 6673.

This time.

Case: Crites v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2012-267

IRS Publishes Annual List of Frivolous Tax Arguments

Monday, March 7th, 2011

As many times as I say don’t submit a frivolous tax argument to the IRS, some Bozo will do so. For those Bozos who want to try something new, the IRS has kindly published its list of frivolous tax arguments that have already been used.

The IRS included only 72 pages of frivolous arguments. I’m sure the Bozos out there can come up with some new ones so that the IRS’ list next year will reach 77 or maybe even 80 pages!

Seriously, it’s a whole lot easier to just pay your taxes. There is an income tax and frivolous arguments don’t work.