"Although the jury was not convinced of Cryer's willfulness, the theories he raised in his motions for dismissal have been repeatedly rejected by the courts."
It's been established by the courts in Cheek vs U.S. that willfulness is important.
"Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a tax protester's belief that he was not violating the Federal tax law based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law itself—if a genuine, good faith, actually held belief—would be a valid defense to charges of tax evasion, willful failure to timely file income tax returns, and willful failure to timely pay taxes, even though that belief is irrational or unreasonable. The Court also ruled that a belief that the tax law is invalid or unconstitutional is not based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, and is not a defense."
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...tates (if we're citing Wikipedia these days...)
Tom Cryer didn't argue legality, "Cryer was acquitted on July 11, 2007. Cryer did not make any of his arguments about the legality of the income tax to the jury itself. Instead he asserted that he really did not believe that he owed the taxes, so there was no criminal intent."
Sentientbydesign wrote:
Regarding the unconstitutional Federal Income Tax. I have read about this too. I guess there were 2 or 3 states that needed to give their ok in order to ratify the new Tax. They never did and now people try to use that as a loophole to get around paying FIT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protesters
There is enough info in the first 2 paragraphs to give you a taste of what I'm talking about.
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...ments :
Some tax protesters may cite what they believe is evidence that the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution (removing any apportionment requirement for income taxes) was never "properly ratified" or that it was properly ratified but does not permit the taxation of individual income, or particular forms of individual income. One argument is based on the contention that the legislatures of various states passed bills of ratification with different capitalization, spelling of words, or punctuation marks (e.g., semi-colons instead of commas) (see, e.g., United States v. Thomas[1]). Another argument made by some tax protesters is that because the United States Congress did not pass an official proclamation recognizing Ohio's year 1803 admission to statehood until 1953 (see Ohio Constitution), Ohio was not a state until 1953 and therefore the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified (see Ivey v. United States[2] and Knoblauch v. Commissioner[3] in the referenced article). These arguments have been universally rejected by the courts.
