Tax Protester Constitutional Arguments - Seventeenth Amendment

Seventeenth Amendment

An argument raised in the case of Trohimovich v. Commissioner is that the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was not propertly ratified, and that all laws passed by Congress since the year 1919 (which was not the year of ratification) are invalid. The Trohimovich case involved a criminal contempt charge against the taxpayer in connection with a failure to obey a subpoena to produce books and records needed for the trial of the case. The United States Tax Court stated:

The petition in this case, while rambling and lengthy, appears to rely primarily on arguments that neither the Internal Revenue Service nor this Court has authority to determine petitioner's tax liability because the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which changed the method of electing senators to the U.S. Congress, was improperly proposed and/or adopted, and therefore all laws enacted by Congress (and the Senate) subsequent to at least 1919 are invalid. This included the Internal Revenue Code and the legislation which established this Court.

The court rejected the taxpayer's arguments, and ordered that "he be imprisoned for 30 days as punishment" for criminal contempt in failing to obey court orders or subpoenas.

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