Gather round, tax kooks, and listen to the tale of Wesley Snipes. He’s the guy who didn’t pay his taxes while raking in millions, and then tried to collect $7.4 million in tax refunds. Now he’s going to jail for three years thanks to a federal District Judge who doesn’t care much for tax protesters and their zany theories.
His celebrity could raise attention about tax defiance and deter protesters, said Assistant Atty. Gen. Nathan J. Hochman of the Justice Department’s tax division.
“The three-year sentence Mr. Snipes received today sends a loud and crystal-clear message to the tax defier community that if they engage in this illegal conduct, they can and will go to jail,” Hochman said.
Despite Snipes’ claims that he was taken advantage of, Hochman said the actor was a “disciple” of the tax defiance movement who understood that his actions were illegal.
“It’s more than just an accident. It occurred on numerous occasions over many different years,” Hochman said. “This wasn’t an innocent victim of ‘jackals.’ This is someone who willfully and knowingly participated.”
Before his sentencing, Snipes told the judge that his wealth and celebrity attracted “wolves and jackals like flies are attracted to meat,” and he called himself “well-intentioned but miseducated.”
The cunning greed-monger defended his morally bankrupt plot to defraud taxpayers, saying: “I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance.”
Snipes was convicted on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file tax returns for 1999-2001. His former “tax advisers,” Douglas Rosile and Eddie Ray Kahn were respectively sentenced to 54 months and 10 years in jail.
The decision is a tragic setback for Tax Dog, and a reminder to always pay your taxes.
Wesley Snipes sentenced to 3 years in prison [L.A. Times]
(AP Photo/Phil Sandlin)
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@ClayS:
Because we don’t chop peoples hands off for stealing, or drag them outside the court house and shoot them on the spot.
Wesley Snipes effed up big time. Strike One. And he got belligerent about being an ass-hat. Strike Two. And … he let Other People handle his philosophy, his payments to the IRS, his books and his requirement under the Law. Strike Three. That’s so dumb its evolution in action.
However …
We can pay off his [Hamilton's] debt in fifteen years, but we can never get rid of his financial system.
- Thomas Jefferson, to Dupont, 1802
He who has the gold, rules. Do not forget that, people.
In context to the current inevitable aftermath of an orgy of borrowing, which the taxes you pay, pay for the vig for Congress to borrow …
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the “business cycle”) the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
- Thomas Jefferson
Now, the folks who took advantage of sub-prime mortgages are so flamingly dimwitted that I again have to use the phrase Evolution In Action. That said, are you aware that every two years the State Of National Emergency must be voted on (House of Reps and always in the dead of night), and continued in order to maintain the charade of a private scrip as contrasted to legitimate Constitutional currency? And, though I am a profound believer in the strongest most bad ass military we can muster – at all times – that Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution calls for a Navy in perpetuity, but only avers a two year period for an armed land force, the army unless we are at war?
How does Congress get around this, since the Founding Fathers considered an armed standing military to be a far greater threat to our liberties than anything else?
Answer: two year terms of National Emergency. Then, they borrow currency from the Federal Reserve to pay for that military. Which your witholding pays for.
Notwitshstanding all that, again … I am all for a stunningly bad ass military that can whip the entire world in time for tea.
But … if the way they’re giong about it was Constitutional and legitimate, why are we not amending the Constitution and continuing with this charade of two year re-ups of National Emergency?
Because .. the power to tax is the power to destroy. And the power to tax is the power to control your behavior and the behavior of the marketplace. The military is a bonus. Money and arms and economy tied together. Or, the business of America, is business.
And you pay for it, despite what our Founding Fathers sought to create.
Flame me some more. I’ve got lots of ammo.
@BlackFlag55: Thomas Jefferson pretty much lived in a fantasy world, died in debt, was incapable of making a living, and to top it off, had slaves and had sex with his slaves. He also hid on his mountain instead of fighting for his country.
Alexander Hamilton fought for his country, made money, but was generous, understood the idea of capital and liquidity, hated slaverly for both morale and economic reasons, understood that this country’s future was in industry and finance and helped establish the foundation that has made this country an economic powerhouse. Meanwhile, Jefferson was a failure at growing grapes for wine too.
@VikingP77: Don’t call someone an asshat that you don’t know asswipe. Was there any country that had an income tax in 1787? Is there any modern country that does not have an income tax or VAT tax today? Do you like throwing grenades around like a troll, or are you trying to say something sensible?
You better polish up those “To Wong Foo” pumps girl! You gettin ready to find out why Johnny Cash wrote “Ring of Fire”!
Gee, not a single substantive point.
Pay up, now. We’ve got to fund illegal wiretapping and a war of choice. Not to mention a couple of “bridges to nowhere.” Those things ain’t cheap!
@wdnobile:
Um, this a blog, not the nytimes.
Finally some justice served, and I hope they don’t let him out in 6 months due to “good behavior”. So many celebrities think they can get away with not paying taxes or writing them off and it’s about time someone of his stature got put in his place.
@BlackFlag55: You’re still liable for taxes on imputed wages, which would include any income paid in a private currency. Not that they’d let you use one anyway–just ask the Liberty Dollar folks.
Incidentally, the Liberty Dollar was really just an MLM scam preying on ignorant libertarians. The “tax protester” lot are all scammers too. As a pretty hardcore libertarian myself, I run into this kind of BS all the time.
You pay taxes because you are a US citizen or resident and are supposed to obey the law of the United States. This talk about Federal Reserve currency is ridiculous. If your employer tried to pay you with a car or gold, instead of cash, you would still have to pay income taxes on it. You can pay with private currency (like company scrip, etc).
And the tax protesters (where do these people come from?) like to bring up Tom Cryer, who was acquitted of criminal charges of tax evasion. Completely irrelevant example. Tommy Cryer still had to pay back the taxes with penalties, and his tax theories were soundly rejected by the courts. The reason he was acquitted of the criminal charges was the Cheek defense, so basically Tommy was too dumb to realize that he was breaking a law and he had no idea he was doing something illegal. Without intent, there is no criminal act (but there still is civil liability). For obvious reasons most juries don’t accept this defense.
If you pay federal taxes, you are complicit in murder. It’s simple. It is black and white.
Your tax dollars buy bombs that kill innocent people and children, along with all sorts of secretive black opps shenanigans that cause all sorts of misery around the world.
By willingly paying your taxes, and not committing a moral act of civil disobedience to try to force the government to return to the rule of law and the Constitution, you are knowingly guilty of being an accomplice to mass murder. Remember: they can’t arrest everybody.
The highest law of the land is the Constituion. If the leaders do not follow this law, why should we continue to obey the laws saying we have to give them money?
You are morally responsible for your actions. The only moral way to continue to live in America and pay taxes is if you are using your income to try to fundamentally change things somehow, to create something better, to rein in the economic and military empire, to return America to it’s original vision.
If you are staying in America and paying taxes just to continue to enjoy a high level of consumer satisfaction, knowing the great evil those dollars are being funnelled to, you are morally on the level of an unprosecuted serial killer.
And for those who might tell me to leave the country if I feel that way – I did. I am far away. It kills me to leave the country I love, but it seems like it is beyond saving at this point…these twin cancers called Government and Corporations have reached a terminal stage.
Dera MPJones – of course you have to pay taxes on any income from whatever source derived. That’s what it says at the Sixteenth Amendment – The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. You misrepresent the point.
If you’re a Libertarian then you should know the many and varied arguments pertaining to these points.
It’s easy to get confused about these matters because much of what is written about taxation is a honey trap. Written and distributed by those working to keep the confusion going.
But it is undeniable that when our money was worth something, and not fiat, we had a different nation. Once the capacity to inflate and deflate an artificial currency was brought into being the amount of malfesance, skullduggery, dishonesty and violence done to maintain that false currency is nothing short of frightening.
But then entire books are devoted to this subject.
I will end with this …
Upon the occasion of this upstart and brash United States of America printing its own currency without cost of interest and further, backed at par with gold and silver, the following opinion letter appeared in the London Times by the Exchequer of the Bank of England -
“….if that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”
@zyodei:
“Your tax dollars buy bombs that kill innocent people and children, along with all sorts of secretive black opps shenanigans that cause all sorts of misery around the world.”
That’s unbelievably stupid logic.
The people have pretty much zero control over what the government does. If they take my money and then use it for some nefarious purpose, I am in no way at fault. By your logic, I’m guilty of murder if a thief steals my wallet and then uses the money in it to buy a gun, then kills someone with that gun.
@Micromegas
Well, when the thief is pointing a gun at you, demanding your wallet, and you know for a fact he will use your money to finance further mayhem…do you willingly hand it over, to avoid trouble, or do you put up some resistance?
@micromegas
A better analogy than a thief would be..is a small business owner who regularly pays the local mafia protection money to keep their shop from being smashed up morally responsible for the guns that money buys? I would argue they are, if there is any way to avoid it.
I guess my real point was taking issue with the tone of the article…bashing him for refusing to take part in this whole corrupt system. He might be guilty under the law; under natural morality, it’s ambiguous.
A rule to live by, that has many implications: “I will not be held by any contract I did not agree to.”
snoop-blog: Wow, you must be smoking something. Not paying taxes is un-american, I suggest you go look at history, it’s as american as apples pie, think boston tea party.
Has Al “Rent-a-Riot” Sharpton weighed in on this yet?
@Landru: You are not of the body! (sorry couldnt resist)
ok i’m going to protest by not paying my taxes, and to top it off, i think i’ll burn a couple american flags while i’m at it. after all it is a free country. maybe later we can all go crash the funeral of an iraqi victim and bash the family as part of our freedom of speech.
@CharlieInSeattle: boston tea party? are you serious? that has nothing to do with this. that was colonies against great britian. not americans, against america. it wasn’t the american governments taxes we were prostesting.
and had more to do with starting our own nation than tea taxes. it was a message that we weren’t part of their government anymore.
what some of you talk of is way more anarchy than protest. of course the system is corrupt. but it’s not because we pay taxes. taxes are a necessary part of society. if you want libraries, hospitals, schools, jails, etc, than you need to find a way for everybody to split the cost. the biggest flaw in our system, is that not everyone gets off their lazy butts to vote. it’s a proven fact, that the lower class makes up the majority of non-voters, yet complain about rich getting richer. VOTE!! maybe if everyone voted, it might break this 2-party system and open it up to more serious options.
@ClayS: because of the severe shortage of labor farms. Joe Arpaio’s working on it, though.
@forgottenpassword: So, what exactly does an elf look like? I’ve never seen a real one – only artist’s renderings of fictional creatures.
@zyodei: As a former Federal employee, I ran into jokers like you all the time. The “I pay your salary” sentiment never got old. The simple fact of the matter is that your money (if you think of a physical dollar bill) may not go to paying for things that you perceive as immoral. They may go to something that someone else thinks is immoral.
That’s the beauty of this country. It’s not a totalitarian regime where everyone must think and act the same. It’s a place where we can all live together, and express our ideas freely. That is, as long as we keep putting into the kitty for the “common good”.
@zyodei: I guess my real point was taking issue with the tone of the article…bashing him for refusing to take part in this whole corrupt system. He might be guilty under the law; under natural morality, it’s ambiguous.
If he really was standing up for some moral principle, why did he eventually agree to pay all those back taxes when faced with a real threat of jail time? Do you really believe that Snipes was “refusing to take part in the whole corrupt system”? Because everything I’ve seen and read points to him simply being greedy and trying to avoid paying his fair share.
A rule to live by, that has many implications: “I will not be held by any contract I did not agree to.”
Indeed. And anyone who does not agree with the social contract under discussion here (i.e., that you have an obligation to pay your taxes) is free to do exactly as you have – go live somewhere else.
But people like Snipes who want to take advantage of all the great things in this country while doing everything in their power to avoid fulfilling their end of the bargain are nothing more than selfish children. Selfish, whiny children when they get caught and punished.
@humphrmi: Yes, this criminal record will look bad and he’ll be unable to get a job because of the criminal background check…
@snoop-blog: if you want libraries, hospitals, schools, jails, etc, than you need to find a way for everybody to split the cost.
It is important to note that our FEDERAL tax dollars don’t provide any of those services. All of those are provided by state and local services, which are generally useful. The federal govt. might give your local police M-16s, but they don’t pay their salary.
VOTE!!
And what good does voting do if you are given the choice between two stooges, which is usually the case? And how many lives must be destroyed while we wait for an honest third party to rise up?
If you really think the biggest flaw in our system is that not enough people vote, you’re not paying attention.
@TinyBug
Granted, Snipes may well not be a hero, I haven’t been following the case. But, well, I can think of many more deserving criminals still wearing striped suits who should be bashed first.
But the great things in this country are not created by the government, but by the people. The Federal government does more to destroy the truly great things than to protect them.
And anyhow, where is it included in any idea of “social contract” that the responsibilities of the government include mass murder overseas?
Finally…
What if you want to enjoy the natural beauty of America and not support murder? What is the solution then? Should everyone with a conscience just leave?
I have no problem with Snipes going to jail but justice for one should be justice for all. How much did Leona Hemsley owe the IRS, how much days she did in jail. What about those ENRON thieves, did they do one day in jail.