BLOGDIAL : We are the best

“A Punch In The Gut”
In December of 1996, you didn’t want Special Agent Joe Banister knocking on your door. A visit from Banister, a criminal investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, usually meant that you were in big trouble; money laundering and tax evasion were his beat, and – like most IRS agents – he always got his man.

But it was in that month that Banister flipped on his radio and heard something that changed his life. His favorite radio host, Geoff Metcalf (then a personality on KSFO) was interviewing a woman who claimed the income tax system was illegal, the IRS had no authority based in law and that filing the dreaded 1040 every year was a completely optional procedure.

“I was taken aback by what I was hearing,” says Banister. “I’d always thought Geoff Metcalf was on the level and now he’s having this kooky lady talking about these crazy subjects like the income tax being voluntary.”

Intrigued by the discussion and hell-bent on proving Metcalf’s in-studio guest wrong, Banister ordered several of the anti-tax booklets the woman was selling. His intention was to disprove her ridiculous claims and set the record straight. But what followed surprised even Banister.

“I truly expected that I would get the information and I’d be able to dismiss it very quickly. I believed that this stuff can’t be true,” he recalls. “So I began reading, researching, taking trips to the law library and investigating her claims. I expected with the next turn of the page, I’d say, ‘Oh, there’s the baloney.’ And it’d be done. But after months and months of research, I started to abandon the hope that I was going to find something that was going to pierce these issues.”

After a year and a half of fact-finding, Banister was persuaded – some might say confused – by a tidal wave of legal analyses, statutory dissections and judicial reviews that suggested, often vaguely, that the income tax was illegal. Disillusioned, the husband and father of two then did the unthinkable: He resigned from his $80,000 a year job at the IRS.“My whole life – the accounting degree, working for a Big Eight [firm] at KPMG, my CPA certificate, working for the IRS – everything professionally revolved around the income tax and its legitimacy,” says Banister. “I never even questioned it. It was like getting a punch in the gut, it was just devastating.” [...]

“Income tax represents the greatest program of organized extortion,” said Schiff in a telephone interview from his Las Vegas headquarters. “The government is involved in blackmail. When you deal with the government, you’re dealing with organized crime!” [...]

http://www.thewavemag.com/printarticle.php?articleid=24785

CREDIT FRAUD IS NOT IDENTITY THEFT

Ouch!