Legal defense against paying taxes for supporting terrorist? The United States has undoubtedly supported many questionable groups over the years including groups now designated as terrorist organizations. If someone decided they did not want their tax dollars to fund terrorist, nazis, mercenary groups, etc., would this be a viable defense in court regarding the non-payment of taxes?
The first point that is already well-established in law is that there really is a legal requirement to pay taxes, not just federal income taxes, but taxes in general. On rare occasion, there is a legal dispute as to whether something is a tax (Obamacare) or whether a particular authority is allowed to levy such a tax. Let us assume that the tax in question is legally levied. Some taxes are independent of any specific intended purpose (e.g. federal income tax, state sales tax). Some are for a specific purpose (Medicare tax, the taxes that are local school levies). Even when a taxing authority corruptly but legally misdirects the funds designated for a specific purpose, you are still required to pay the tax. It's not that a tax law could not be written which allows a person to refuse to pay a tax if they judge that the revenues are being misdirected, it's that the law-makers did no cripple the tax law with such a provision. As far as I know, no taxing authority anywhere allows a person to refuse to pay a tax is they disagree with the use of the taxes, which is to say, taxation is mandatory, not voluntary. If it is voluntary, it is known as a &quot;contribution&quot;. You are allowed to contribute to some governmental purpose, you are required to pay taxes. You can't overcome the requirement to pay taxes on First Amendment grounds (being forced to support something that you don't like). The IRS has a FAQ that addresses the First Amendment argument, with a mass of supporting court cases (US v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252; Jenkins v. Commissioner, 483 F.3d 90; US v. Indianapolis Baptist Temple, 224 F.3d 627; Adams v. Commissioner, 170 F.3d 173; US v. Ramsey, 992 F.2d 831; and so on).
Unless there is a law or regulation against it, it is legal. However in a big government it can be practically impossible to determine whether something is legal. For example, nobody even knows how many criminal statutes have been promulgated by the U.S. federal government. And that's nothing compared to the volume of executive regulation and judicial case-law that determines whether something is illegal. I.e., in practice determining that something is legal is a bit like proving a negative. Furthermore, if you look long enough some argue that you can probably find some law under which almost any action could be considered illegal. Note also that even if it is not against the law, it could be proscribed by contract (read your Terms and Conditions!), and breach of contract is in general &ndash; but with an astonishing number of exceptions! &ndash; illegal.
Article 8 is pretty clear. The fact that it is recommended to extend the draft to women indicates that there is a conflict needing resolution. A relevant case before the European Court of Human Rights ruled on this and found the law to violate articles 14 and 8 of the ECHR. They identify an exoneration from the tax under the Military-Service Exemption Tax Act sect. 4. Reading the judgment could be helpful (maybe you know the case). What I get from it is that there are a bunch of situation-specific details that could be applied (e.g. you have to first complain formally in-country before going to ECHR), and issues of disability level and the distinction between disability and illness. This gives a model for anyone to attempt to resist the tax, but only a change in the law will get rid of it.
The Code defines "Source of income" as: lawful, verifiable income paid directly to a tenant or paid to a representative of a tenant. There's nothing to suggest that the occupation is a relevant consideration otherwise. What it would mean is that if the occupation of a person is relevant to their source of income, it would be illegal to discriminate on that basis. I would consider occupation distinct from source of income - I could (but don't) have a family trust that is my source of income, and my occupation is volunteer work. My occupation is very clearly not my source of income.
Yes, and this is very common - Cuba, North Korea and Iran are often excluded. Mind you, this is from a US perspective. The banned country may have other ideas about the legality of the ban under its laws. But if you weren't planning to do business with that country anyway, that's not exactly going to hurt you.
The US has jurisdiction because the systems that the accused allegedly attacked are in the US. To use an example with older technology, you can't escape criminal liability for defrauding someone in one country simply because you did so through the mail or by telephone from another country. The UK and the US have an extradition treaty. The UK might refuse to extradite the accused; in that case the US would most likely complain loudly. If too many extradition requests are refused on one side, the other side might start limiting cooperation in any of several areas.
There is, of course, no way to tell how the Court would deal with such a case today. This is not a frequently litigated issue, with lots of case law. I note that in the case you link to, the court limited the statute to false claims made "with a fraudulent purpose". This normally means that the claimant is attempting to secure an improper financial or materiel advantage. In the United States v. Tandaric case, the person convicted had falsely claimed to be a US Citizen on an employment application for a company which did not hire non-citizens, and so gained a job through this false statement. He could have been convicted of ordinary Fraud. The court has not been as protective of Fraud under the First Amendment as it has been of speech generally, or even of false but non-fraudulent speech. I am not at all sure if the court would overturn this law in a similar case today. Edit: In the United States v. Achtner case, the court wrote: But we agree with the District Court that the representation of citizenship must still be made to a person having some right to inquire or adequate reason for ascertaining a defendant's citizenship; it is not to be assumed that so severe a penalty is intended for words spoken as a mere boast or jest or to stop the prying of some busybody, ... This seems to dispose of the example in the question of a neighbor who is merly inquiring as to the character of the area, or perhaps from simple curiosity, and a false speaker who seems to get no direct benefit or advantage from the falsehood. Both linked cases involved false statements made to employers or potential employees, during wartime at that, with the false speaker's employment apparently at stake.
NAL, but I used to work for the IRS. GS-0592-08, AUSC W/I CSCI (for non-feds, that means General Sector, series 0592 grade 8, Tax Examiner, Austin Service Center, Division -&gt; Wage &amp; Investment, Section -&gt; Collections Services and Compliance Operations. Yeah, no joke.) And I wanted to add some insider insight to help clarify some of the thoughts already shared here. First off, I feel like clarification is needed because lay people get especially confused about this very, very easily: the IRS is an agency exactly like the FBI, except the IRS falls under the US Dept of Treasury and the FBI falls under the US Department of Justice. Like all federal agencies, both the FBI and the IRS exist to enforce federal law. They're both law enforcement agencies. And again, the difference is the kind of law they enforce: the FBI enforces federal criminal law. The IRS enforces federal tax law. The IRS does not need (and wouldn't accept, not that the FBI would try - completely different jurisdictions) any help whatsoever from the FBI in enforcing tax law, including criminal tax law. The IRS does not disclose tax information; the confidentiality of taxpayer information is more intense than HIPAA. Literally nothing short of an act of Congress or a certain breed of court order can compel the IRS to disclose federal income tax information. (Not going to get into charitable orgs in this answer, but even then, the IRS doesn't make those filings public - the orgs themselves do, public self-reporting is a requirement of maintaining their tax-exempt status.) The FBI didn't get Al Capone; the IRS did. For tax evasion. Anyway, in answer to the OP's question: THE IRS IS NOT ACTUALLY CONCERNED WITH THE ORIGIN OF THE INCOME AS LONG AS YOU PAY TAXES ON IT. Anything and everything beyond federal tax law falls outside the IRS's scope. Which is why uou can write quite literally anything you want on line 80 (or whatever it is these days) of your 1040A (occupation) (technically, as long as you don’t perjure yourself, not that anybody's counting.) It's pretty much just a footnote anyway. As a tax preparer, you can skip it, and even if that line weren’t specifically, explicitly protected by the 5th Amendment, it wouldn't matter if it weren’t, because the IRS does not disclose federal income tax information with any other agencies or organizations under any circumstances. As long as whatever you put there is factually accurate - if you fill it out at all. You can answer in Klingon; nobody cares (unless you write something funny, which we actually appreciate btw ;) ), because it's not necessary to process your return. Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and accurately list all amounts and sources of income I received during the tax year. Declaration of preparer (other than taxpayer) is based on all information of which preparer has any knowledge. &quot;Sources of income&quot; means &quot;all the money you got paid, as best as you could record it&quot; - if you got paid cash waiting tables (tips) or slinging heroin, the IRS doesn't care as long as you report the income. You can write &quot;slinging heroin&quot; (it's the IRS, not the DEA) but tax preparer would probably pick the code for &quot;inside sales.&quot; When the IRS participates in joint task forces, it is because the IRS's ability to track money is second to none (and even then, IRS involvement in task forces are usually related to terrorism.) The IRS occasionally assists other agencies with criminal law enforcement efforts, but the IRS doesn’t prosecute them and doesn’t involve confidential tax information in them. For example, as far as the IRS is concerned, if you embezzle a hundred grand and then launder it, the IRS’s criminal jurisdiction they’d be pursuing you for would be underreporting (and probably tax evasion.) If you embezzle a hundred grand, but file and pay your quarterly withholding (I never worked in Underreporter but I'm pretty sure fraud would be considered self-employment since by definition it's off the books) you’re in compliance with the IRS’s criminal jurisdiction. And yes, you have the right to itemize deductions, but not every expense is necessarily allowable - for example, some expenses have limits on how much can be deducted. So even if an expense was related to earning income, it doesn't mean you can necessarily claim it, or all of it; gas mileage driving to places you rob at gunpoint, sure - bullets? I guess if hunters or game tourism or shooting ranges / instructors can deduct bullets, a hitman could too, but I’d expect to get flagged for audit to see how much of what is actually permissible. But even if some or all of those deductions ended up being disallowed and you wound up with a balance due, as long as the IRS determines that you were not intentionally seeking to avoid or circumvent tax law, it wouldn’t be a criminal [tax] matter. I'd have to look, but if parking tickets aren't allowable, I strongly doubt bail, fines, restitution, etc. in conjunction with being criminal convictions associated with earned income would also not be allowable. The only way other agencies would gain visibility into this would be if someone were dumb enough to go to court at the conclusion of an audit, at which point the tax situation would become a matter of public record. To illustrate the lengths to which the IRS seeks to facilitate voluntary taxpayer compliance in meeting their obligations, when I was at the IRS in the mid-2000s, there was a program for drug dealers to file quarterly withholding as self-employed using a sort of special sticker book provided by the IRS to use in lieu of receipts. If a professional tax preparer or tax planner were assisting someone who discloses, or starts to disclose that this is actually illegal source income - the tax preparer just puts in a code for whatever comes closest to describing the occupation that earned the most income and the taxpayer doesn't have to be specific as long as they are not untruthful. (Honestly, you really can write whatever you want. Nobody cares. People put stuff down like &quot;pirate&quot; and &quot;bridge troll&quot; as well as stuff like &quot;slinging heroin&quot;, &quot;bookie,&quot; &quot;racket,&quot; &quot;al qaeda&quot;, etc.)