Tax Protester (United States)

Tax Protester (United States)

A tax protester is someone in the United States who refuses to pay a tax on constitutional or legal grounds, typically because he or she believes that the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Tax protesters are different from tax resisters, who refuse to pay taxes as a protest against the government or its policies, not out of a belief that the tax law itself is invalid.

Tax protesters raise a number of different kinds of arguments. These include constitutional arguments, such as claims that the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was not properly ratified or that it is unconstitutional generally, or that being forced to file an income tax return violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Others are statutory arguments suggesting that the income tax is constitutional but the statutes enacting the income tax are ineffective, or that Federal Reserve Notes do not constitute cash or income. Yet another collection of arguments centers on general conspiracies involving numerous government agencies.

Legal commentator Daniel B. Evans has defined tax protesters as people who "refuse to pay taxes or file tax returns out of a mistaken belief that the federal income tax is unconstitutional, invalid, voluntary, or otherwise does not apply to them under one of a number of bizarre arguments." An illegal tax-protest scheme has been defined as "any scheme, without basis in law or fact, designed to express dissatisfaction with the tax laws by interfering with their administration or attempting to illegally avoid or reduce tax liabilities."

Some tax protesters refuse to file a tax return or file returns with no income or tax data supplied.