Belief About The Law As A Defense in Criminal Cases
In criminal cases, the law distinguishes between beliefs about constitutionality of the tax law from other beliefs about the tax law:
- A defendant's good-faith belief that he is not required to file a tax return is a valid defense to the element of willfulness, and the belief need not be reasonable if actually held in good faith. It is not, however, within the prerogative of the taxpayer to make a personalized finding of constitutionality. Thus, a good-faith belief that the tax laws are unconstitutional does not constitute a good-faith defense....
See also Cheek v. United States.
Read more about this topic: Tax Protester Arguments
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“The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Barry Goldwater (b. 1909)
“Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)