Irwin Schiff’s FREEDOM BOOKS, 444 East Sahara Ave., Las Vegas, Nevada 89104 702-385-6920
April 1, 2003
Dear Mrs. Eileen O’Conner,
I am in receipt of the attached DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE, dated March 20, 2003, where you mention my name and the names of two of my friends from Freedom Books in Las Vegas, Nevada, Irwin Schiff and Lawrence Cohen. You said that we pitch “Tax Scams” in your Press Release. Interestingly, you forgot to say the word “allegedly”, in consideration of our due process rights and an opportunity to defend ourselves from such bias and slander, but instead, phrased your allegations as if they were already adjudged. I’ll take your “cue” now, for your comments as phrased lead me to understand that you may indeed already have the “judgment” arranged according to your assertions, so, this may be my only opportunity to respond to your allegations that we “pitch TAX SCAMS”.
The TRUTH is, we are your sacrificial offerings for the D.O.J.’s “2003 taxing season propaganda campaign”. Why don’t you tell the Truth about that much? We already know. Almost everybody knows now, so, when you make public statements like these, you are embarrassing yourself. Government officials are lying to the American Public and have hijacked America’s Courts for cover! I can prove what I am saying.
Your Department accuses me of filing false and fraudulent income tax returns:
By virtue of my CAF Authorization Number issued by the Ogden Service Center, several years ago, I have been representing American citizens in the Internal Revenue Service Examinations Functions, Appeals Functions, and before the Taxpayer Advocate over the course of the past 4 years and as a witness in attendance of approximately 200 such meetings, where the agency has acknowledged me as an un-enrolled return preparer, designation “h” and as a Taxpayer Representative. As recently as today I received correspondence from the Internal Revenue Service proving their recognition of me as Power of Attorney for many people who still have cases pending in examinations and on appeal. No one at the “Service” has attempted to discharge me, nor have they ever barred me regarding the signing of the returns. Your own agency circular states that I may represent people in examinations at the IRS if I have signed their returns and that is the reason I signed the returns. I have been following agency guidelines, and, all Internal Revenue Service personnel have been doing the same in this instance. Neither your Department nor the Internal Revenue Service has sent me one piece of correspondence stating that I have been filing false, fraudulent, or frivolous returns in all of these years. But they have sent me about a thousand other pieces of correspondences, as the Taxpayer Representative for about 100 of my fellow American workers and friends.
Your Department alleges that I mislead or defraud individuals when I state that income tax is voluntary.
When we attend examinations and other meetings and conferences at the Internal Revenue Service, we take the Internal Revenue Code Book to the meeting with us. We place it in the middle of the “examination” table. On every occasion, we ask what law passed by Congress the agent is applying when they ask us to pay the income tax, and, without fail, the agents run out of the room. Then, they call the Security Guard to escort us out of the building. The agents do not even pretend to have a legal basis for what they are doing. IRS agents won’t point to the law when it is sitting on the table in front of them, and when we are offering to pay that tax if they will simply point the law out to us. Are the agents involved not aware of the law, or, do they want to keep the law a secret - when we are offering to pay the income tax if they will only show us our legal obligation to do so?
Irwin Schiff and myself have attended many hearings and other conferences at the IRS. We represent people who are elderly and ill and who may have a handicap, disability or language barrier that would interfere with their ability to defend themselves from illegal IRS practices and procedures.
The job descriptions of the IRS personnel we meet with state that they have extensive knowledge of the Code and the Regulations. The job descriptions also state that they must be able to explain it to the public in non-technical terms so that they will understand it. The agents of the IRS are not doing any of the things outlined on their job descriptions during the course of their correspondence or the interviews they are conducting, but, instead, they are using intimidation and extortion threats, attempting to get people to do what the agents want or wish the Public to do: They want us to “Take their WORD” for it.
An enormous amount of LAW and other LEGAL evidence supports the position that we must be presented with signed documentation, and very specific papers before we can ascertain the authority for what the agents are doing, and, where Congress and the Supreme Court agree, “The public does not DARE” accept the agent’s word for anything! This is why the Government put in place volumes of Delegation Orders to outline the authority for certain practices and why the Courts have been consistent on the Necessity for Delegated Authority before the Public enters into an arrangement with these Government employees. Your Department’s frustration comes from the fact that there is no legal standing for what these Government agents are doing. So, all that the agent can do is to break the law, then run and hide, and, that is exactly what they do. (I hold the largest collection of audio tape recordings of these hearings in America.)
We ask for the applicable law, but we don’t get to see that. Instead, the agents throw a pile of Tax Court Memos and little souvenirs they have found surfing on the Internet, along with warnings about “Court Imposed Sanctions of up to $25,000.00 more”, if we ask for the law “over there” (in the Courts)– “So, pay our extortion now, or there will be more where you are going,” as they run out of the room and down the hall, like any other bandit. Sometimes, they actually sneer and jeer about the Court’s participation in this scheme against individuals who dare to question authority or to ask for the laws being applied to them.
I attended one Collection Due Process Hearing where the taxpayer had to run after the agent going down the hall to get a badge number for his notes! The meeting did not last 5 minutes. The agent was poised to leave the room as soon as the taxpayer introduced himself as a former United States Department of Prisons Due Process Officer, retired after 20 years. The wife introduced herself as the mother of two boys currently serving in the military in the Gulf War. The agent’s head went down. Immediately, she started dealing her “cards” as fast as she could deal them across the table: Tax Court memo #1, (Davis) #2, (Pierson), where Sanctions were Imposed; a 4340 Form, (That is, the little tiny transcript in codes nobody can understand); and, for the kicker – The Jason Pierce article on Steven Swan who has filed a lawsuit against Irwin Schiff. [1] The agent ran out of the hearing so fast that Mr. Patterson thought that she had a stomach ache and was only leaving to relieve herself. He appeared dazed when I told him that his Impartial Appeals Officer had left the room for good and that this is how they dispense with Due Process at the IRS. The Patterson Case is now pending in the District Court, and they intend to take their appeal of the adverse determination from this “Collection Due Process Hearing” all the way to the Supreme Court. The Patterson Case is one of the “frivolous lawsuits” the government is complaining about and attempting to use against us at Freedom Books because we have helped these fine people to prepare a timely appeal of that hearing thereby protecting them from illegal seizure of their property as provided by law.
We are doing only that which the laws tell us to do. Congress sent us to the Courts with the enactment of the 1998 Restructuring and Reform Act. We didn’t write these laws. Congress wrote them to protect us from abuses such as these. How were we supposed to know that the Courts were going to pretend that an important Act of Congress like that doesn’t count, or was indeed a big joke on American citizens to make them feel safe? The laws have told us to do certain things and to ask for specific documents and proof, which is what we have done. Why not admit that this whole Act of Legislation was a frame-up? IRS agents in concert with the Courts are using it as a new trap to tack on additional interest and penalties; and, now, Court sanctions, while uttering a host of other fraudulent conveyances as they do these dirty deeds. So, you see, we know that all your Department could do at this time was to come around with Search Warrants and guns to steal our evidence and files hoping to cover up for these crimes, and with the possession of the stolen evidence - to move by Restraining Order to shut us down like bullies.
The IRS agents threaten that they will ruin people financially, seize their paychecks, Social Security Benefits and other retirement income, and they use other non legal verbiage to press their “power”, which you and I both know doesn’t even exist. Not in the law, that is. What exactly is it that Congress and the Senate do if IRS agents and judges make law? I mean, if this is all for the “show”…and LAW is what IRS agents say it is – not what Congress says - don’t you think the $56 Million dollars your Department is complaining about that Freedom Books has allegedly cost you is peanuts, “small potatoes” - compared with what the Government could save by simply closing down that “show”?
Don’t you believe the American public has a right to know if it is as the IRS agents say: That they have the guns and, therefore, we will pay now or pay later because they have the whole 3rd-party racket wrapped up in fear, as well? They have control over our paychecks by threatening our employers; our bank accounts by threatening our bankers; and, America’s judges by threatening with the consequences of past illegal Rulings made by the Courts. The agents clearly know that they are operating in open violation of the laws as written by Congress and a host of other rules and regulations regarding procedures and conduct. The transcripts and tapes of these hearings prove that the agents are unrelenting in their abusive tactics. The United States Tax Court, The United States District Courts, and, State Courts have been hijacked now in this process. It bothers the “Government employees” involved in these cases that we won’t play the game, of “Let’s Pretend”. “Let’s pretend there is a law”, to be exact!
I do not doubt that there is a great deal of screaming going on in the background at your office over our appearances in Appeals functions at the IRS and in the Courts. The decisions handed down so far in these cases are very embarrassing for the people involved on the Government’s side. It is getting worse and worse for them. The entire racket is being exposed so fast and so brilliantly by people the Government assumed had been properly put to sleep. Many American citizens are waking up, digging for the truth - and they are doing it in all directions at once. When they were downsized and lost their jobs, they were freed up to find the truth. You can’t really blame us for that. We didn’t cause them to lose their jobs.
We are not just a bunch of hippies anymore. We are truck drivers, farm wives, students, active and retired military personnel, real estate brokers, doctors, dentists, police officers, bailiffs, firemen, former IRS Agents, and, now, even a few lawyers. The Chicago University, Graduate School of Business asked for permission to use a couple of Irwin Schiff’s books for this year’s curriculum. This has got to hurt. But, we are not the bad guys. We did not write the laws, your rules and regulations, publications and circulars outlining and asserting “Our Rights as Taxpayers”, Congress did that. We did not participate in the re-writing of the Internal Revenue Code in 1954 when all of the mandatory language regarding the income tax and powers of the Internal Revenue Commissioner were removed.
We tried to stop you from wrongfully prosecuting and jailing people for a crime that does not even exist called income tax evasion, but Courts would not allow Irwin Schiff to testify.
We made a proper Petition for Redress of Grievance last year. We all showed up for the Truth-In-Taxation Hearings. We, the “Tax Scammers”, were there, but members of Congress and IRS Senior Executives and the Justice Department did not show even though they had committed in writing to come. Instead, they ran and hid for two solid days as we broadcast our coverage live over the World Wide Web. The media locked themselves up along with our Government Officials who had all previously committed in writing to be in attendance. (This is all available at www.givemeliberty.org.) Do you want us to believe that when your Department, The Department of Justice, had every leading income tax protestor in the country in one room for two solid days in Washington, D.C., begging for your appearance, that you would not have come if you had the answer to our question: “What LAW?” You could have exposed us all in one fell swoop in front of the whole country, when we were paying for the Internet coverage in your own neighborhood. – The “income tax” Freedom Movement would have been wiped out with the production of that one law: The law requiring us to pay the income tax. Your Department could not have sent a messenger to deliver the law that requires Americans to pay income taxes? Why wouldn’t your Department move in to arrest us and hang us when we were there in your own town? If mainstream media really believed what they print and broadcast – that we are the “Tax Cheats” – Why didn’t they send cameras and note-takers to record this obvious opportunity for the Government to produce the law and to arrest every one of us for our “Tax Scam pitch” on that spot? What was the reason, the sense, in waiting another year running around the country with your team of “IRS POLICE”, terrorizing citizens with Search Warrants, Raids, Restraining Orders and Guns, and tying up the nation’s Court System in the process to litigate these so-called Tax Scams one at a time? How do you explain this to the citizens who watched The Truth In Taxation Hearings, and, those who are only finding out about it at this time? Your Department cannot hold any of us culpable in this matter – Your Department should have shown up with the law.
Irwin Schiff conducted two Freedom Now Seminars in Washington, D.C. that week. He invited Attorney Henry Darmstadter from your Department to attend these Seminars, but he refused to come.
Are we supposed to believe that you have the law but that you want to keep it a secret? What would be the point of that? Many people learned about the Truth-In-Taxation Hearings over the past year. I believe that many people will not file 1040 Forms this year until they hear the Government’s answer to the question. We didn’t tell them not to file. They decided to handle their concern in this fashion when your Department failed to show in answer to our Redress of Grievance Petition, and as a result of the way IRS agents are re-working the 1998 Restructuring and Reform Act to fit their desires. The citizens of this country feel responsible to follow the laws as written and to protect the integrity of this important Act of Congress and challenge the integrity of America’s judiciary by taking the lawbreakers to Court. What else can they do? Fake reality?
Please read what Congressman Cleland of Georgia had to say about this intolerable situation.
CONFERENCE REPORT ON THE IRS REFORM AND RESTRUCTURING BILL (H.R. 2676) (Senate - July 14, 1998)
Mr. President, I support, 100 percent, the public's right to know when a federal agency abuses a taxpayer, and I support the public's demand for a remedy to that intolerable situation. I was extremely proud to have been chosen to serve as a member of the conference committee on the IRS bill. Chairman Roth, Vice Chairman Archer, Senator Moynihan, Congressman Rangel, and the remaining conferees from the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee did yeoman's work in crafting one of the most significant acts of the 105th Congress--the IRS Reform and Restructuring bill.
This is groundbreaking legislation which recreates the IRS and puts in place dramatic changes which will make the agency more accountable to the American taxpayer. This bill revives the original purpose of the Internal Revenue Service: to collect tax revenue while providing the assistance and service taxpayers deserve.
Most importantly, taxpayers will receive overdue rights under the IRS Reform and Restructuring Act. Under the new law, the burden of proof will lie with the IRS, and taxpayers' rights in recovering civil damages as a result of unacceptable collection practices by the IRS will be expanded. …
Congress told us to ask for certain documentation before we offer to pay the taxes or penalties the IRS agents are attempting to impose and collect from us. They told us in the laws to ascertain the authority of the agents making determinations, sending out notices and imposing penalties against us. We are entitled by law to see the determinations made and the agents’ authority for doing so with a supervisors’ written declaration. These are brand new laws, enacted by Congress to protect the Public from IRS abuses. We have never seen this kind of documentation. Further, Congress said that we “may raise any relevant issue with respect to the unpaid tax including challenges to the existence of the underlying liability”. Why would they say that, if they did not want us to do it? Further, Congress described the “impartial Appeals Officer” who must “conduct an impartial investigation”, and make “an impartial determination” on these matters. Is it your Department’s contention that, (as an acceptable substitute), snotty, mean, and sarcastic thieves and thugs good at hit- and -run extortion tactics should fill that job description? Or, are we supposed to pretend that we don’t know these new laws and hand over our property because IRS agents want it? Should we fake reality, so that we can help you to pretend that the 1998 Restructuring and Reform Act does not apply when it has not been repealed?
The Supreme Court and many other Courts have consistently ruled that we are taking a risk when we do not ascertain the authority of agents who purport to work for the government before entering into an arrangement with them. This explains why the Internal Revenue Manual provides for 43 different numbers of Delegations of Authority in one chapter alone. I do not have time to count how many times we find the necessity for Delegation Orders in the Statutes, Regulations, Federal Register and a host of Court decisions as mentioned earlier. When we go to the IRS, or write to the IRS, asking for the Delegation Orders for such important matters as audits, deficiencies, collections, levies and liens…we are never afforded even one copy of anyone’s Delegation Order. Our County Recorders, Banks, Employers and other third parties that the agency “delegates” to carry out these illegal seizures cannot obtain a copy of a Delegation Order, either. And this is why we are coming to the Courts. The agents are not authorized to be doing what they are doing. What would be the point in hiding the authority from us? The laws and rules say that we have to ask for the Delegation Order and those agents must produce them. That’s it, until Congress repeals all of those laws, (or, until your Department brings out the bright shiny guns.)
What Irwin Schiff, Larry Cohen and I do is bring people the law and show them how to use it to protect themselves. No doubt, this has been “bugging” your Department for some time. The Court should be interested to hear that your Department has never called to talk to me. I have corresponded with Charles Rossotti’s Office, Paul O’Neill’s Office, Patrick McDonough’s Office, (these, and other National Executive Offices) - by telephone and by mail, leaving my home telephone numbers on the message machines…Do you want me to believe that you could communicate with me with various correspondences for over four years and not include as much as a little blurb or statement about my so-called “tax scam pitch”? And, I believe that this is why the “IRS POLICE” raided our bookstore on February 11, 2003 to steal the evidence to support these facts. Your department knew that we had a truckload of evidence to prove that you are not moving to the Court with clean hands. We can prove that the IRS and your Department has done everything it can think to do to stall and to mislead and to “play” with the truth-seeking and law abiding Public keeping these fine American citizens in a “rat’s maze” of paperwork while avoiding our question: “Where is the Law?”
What have you said about what we were doing before the Temporary Restraining Order issued? Before seeking the Restraining Order, the worst you ever called us was “Silly”!
The Government is afraid of Irwin Schiff. We understand that fact more and more every day. This means that he’s got a chance to end the charade. When your Department has to hit him from so many fronts all at the same time, you reveal that Irwin Schiff has got a “shot at it”. That he could end the income tax in America, not that it really exists. This is why we stand proudly behind him, and are pulling for him now as you take this bizarre approach to shutting him up and his business down.
On February 11, 2003, about 25 armed Special Agents of the IRS came to our premises in Las Vegas, and took over our bookstore from the hours of 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., when they raided, vandalized and ransacked our operation and where they took the transcripts of the hearings so that we would not be able to present the information to the Courts proving the true nature of our work, and to defend ourselves against illegal activities executed by the lawless Internal Revenue Service, and, now, your Department in the issuance of this instant Temporary Restraining Order, banning our sign, “WHY PAY INCOME TAX WHEN NO LAW SAYS YOU HAVE TO?”, and, the book, “THE FEDERAL MAFIA: HOW THE GOVERNMENT ILLEGALLY IMPOSES AND UNLAWFULLY COLLECTS INCOME TAXES”, and all instruction material relating to the Exempt W-4 Form and the “0” Return.
How convenient for you that you have such a big army with guns and all of those powerful friends in the judiciary to help you out as they do: Rejecting Rules of Civil Procedure; hiding the fact that you have no law; and, slap by slap, redesigning the law through erroneous Court decisions. This is good warfare. (“Shock and Awe”?) It is clear that the truth-seekers and freedom lovers have your Department “on the ropes”. We are very much aware of what you are up to here, but we won’t “ turn tail and run”. We are continuing to face you as we have always done, carrying the law and speaking the truth.
Mrs. O’Conner, please issue a PRESS RELEASE explaining how your Department overlooked our alleged Tax Scam and, in fact, “played along with it” for more than a decade; and, how the Government issued over $700,000.00 worth of refund checks as a result of zero return filings. (More evidence the “IRS POLICE” stole during the raid.) And while you are celebrating the “honest taxpayer’s victory” as you call it, have you thought to explain why your Department had to go to such great lengths to shut us up and our livelihoods down? Can you explain to the “honest taxpayers” why it is that you spent so much of their hard earned wages on fancy cars, guns, special “IRS POLICE” jackets, high-tech imaging equipment, countless man hours and a U-Haul truck; not to mention all of the Attorneys and clerks working on all three of these cases going on all at once? Such risky and expensive operations and litigation in the Courts; flying your Attorneys to Las Vegas from Washington, D.C. on a regular basis; when it would cost practically nothing to bring a perjury charge in a Criminal Court against Irwin Schiff or myself? Prove perjury, and you’d wipe out all zero return filers; don’t you think so? Perhaps you’d like us to fake reality here again and accept that you could charge us with perjury and get it over with quickly, but you enjoy batting us around, like a cat with the mouse. Why would two “Special Agents follow me all of the way across town and pull in behind my car in my driveway, when I was coming home from the IRS? Why wouldn’t they simply stop me in the “Service Center” lobby or in the parking lot? (I wasn’t running!) Why did they want to follow me all the way to my house to approach me and to read me a Miranda Warning? Do you folks do this part for “kicks”?
Why mess around with all of the Code Sections that don’t even apply to us? Why not go criminal? Just a guess on my part, but, could it be that in a criminal case, you can’t get one of your buddies on the bench to issue a Summary or Declaratory judgment at the snap of your fingers, absent a trial? Would you have to give us a trial, first, where the burden of proof would be on your Department?
Are you simply afraid to face us, and most particularly, Irwin Schiff? Why else would the Government use such overkill against a 75-year-old man running a little bookstore with about 4 employees? Your Department is “hunting for Bear”! (Just so you know, we know.)
Perhaps your Department budget has too much in the way of surplus funds. If so, why are you complaining about the $56 Million dollars allegedly attributable to the works of Irwin Schiff? (Or, are you using us to get free trips to Vegas and to justify your jobs?) Are there any Supervisors in The Justice Department questioning you, regarding whether or not you ever attempted to inform us about how we are in violation of the income tax law? That is where civilized people would start. Civilized people wouldn’t shake my hand, act courteous to my face, send me letters over the course of 4 years, and then storm me with guns, ransack my personal belongings, stalk me, and conduct surveillance on me when I visit them at their own place of business up to nine times in one week. If you want to hear what I have to say, why not simply allow me to speak at the IRS, where your Department has the opportunity to impeach me and expose the “Tax Scam” in front of my “victims”?
Why do you feel the need to hide on my telephone lines and send undercover agents “wired for sound” to our store? I have been begging to show you what I have found, but you don’t want to meet with me. When I visit the IRS with other citizens, I am not allowed to speak, in violation of law. By way of “Memorandum”, all recorders are now banned in the Appeals meetings today, in violation of law. Recently, one American taxpayer was told that he cannot bring a witness to his “Due Process hearing” to take notes. What’s next? - Will you be blindfolding us before we enter the building? Why wouldn’t the agents at the IRS or that work in your Department want to sit down with me to see all of my evidence and to record it? I would gladly hand it over to you, but you don’t want to receive it that way, do you? You’d prefer to rob me; rifle through my private papers; to scare me; to bully me; and, to see if you can make me run.
Why wouldn’t you want to approach me? Would that make too much sense? Be too easy? Too cheap?
This little article is just the “tip of the iceberg” with respect to the information I will share with the Court and in front of the gallery of Court Watchers. You may have our “conviction” already wrapped up, as it sounds in your Press Release, but you won’t be able to keep my testimony off the record. Eventually, your Department will be exposed for what it really is, and all of your illegal prosecutions and imprisonments will come back to haunt you. And, that is what you are afraid of, and why you are coming at us so violently and viciously. We have already exposed you. Irwin Schiff’s case has exposed you – Discovery has proven that he was wrongfully convicted, and all you can do to avoid this truth coming out is to attack him the way you are moving now and to rig the judicial process! The Court has already bent the rules on time and discovery and everything else in your favor, and I will probably be denied my right to speak. So, I am saying this now: Mrs. O’Conner, who is breaking the law and scamming the “honest taxpayers” – You or me?
I believe that you owe all of your “honest (income) taxpayers” and “the rest of us” American taxpayers an explanation on the points I have raised in this answer to your Press Release.
Thank you for your attention to and consideration of this very important matter. I look forward to hearing your response.
Sincerely,
Cynthia L. Neun
–The article is not true on a number of grounds…but, regardless- to present an article about Steven Swan and Irwin Schiff when the IR Code is on the table and the person politely asks, “What law are you applying here?” reveals the truth: “We have the propaganda machine, the Courts are in on it, and, if that doesn’t work, we have the guns!” Or, “The law is what we say it is, take it or leave it.”