INSTRUCTIONS:  2.7.  Learn courtroom etiquette, how to do legal research, and how to debate

Related research:

In the tax field, ignorance is NOT bliss: it is SLAVERY!  We warn you throughout this book to not take anyone’s word for it and to question and verify everything you can, including what is in this book.  It’s a necessary step in your empowerment and growth and progress toward personal sovereignty.  We also do this because there is a massive amount of legal DISinformation in the tax freedom community that is readily available, especially on the Internet.  Naively using or believing this information without validating and verifying its authenticity and relevance for yourself can and will get you into a LOT of trouble, not to mention very quickly destroy your credibility in a courtroom and with both the judge and the jury.  Beware!  Some of this disinformation is planted on the Internet deliberately by the government to mislead or sabotage efforts to end the income tax.  Most of the disinformation, however, appears to be needlessly caused by a combination of the following causitive factors:

  • Legal ignorance or inexperience of the author.
  • Inability to use the law library to look up court cases and do legal research on what is presented BEFORE using it in court or administratively against the government.
  • Did not follow our suggestion in section 3.5.1.5 earlier and sign up for an online legal research service such as Versuslaw.com.  You must do this if you are going to be properly equipped to do battle with your enemy.
  • Laziness in validating information sources.
  • Procrastinating doing research until the last minute, when you are under the gun and the time available to do detailed research is very limited.

The time to prepare for war is long before the war starts and when you are not under the gun.  You should daily be training your mind, building your information arsenal, and sharpening your sword for battle so that when the battle starts, you can have the right weapons in the waiting and strike swiftly and decisively to defeat your opponent before he even knows what hit him.  As we say in the Navy:

“He who sweats most in peace bleeds least in war.”

If you believe everything that people, and especially the government, tell you or everything you read on a website about taxes, then you’re headed for BIG trouble eventually.  The government loves incompetent opponents because they make sitting ducks in the courtroom.  They are easy prey for extortion and plunder, both by the IRS and the legal profession.  We want to spare you this anguish and keep you from becoming an easy target by replacing fear and ignorance with knowledge, wisdom, faith, and discretion.

A very important initial step in achieving sovereignty is visiting and familiarizing yourself with your local law library.  You need to become as good as you can at doing legal research.  Below is a list from the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) of Federal Depository Libraries that have all the federal and state laws, regulations, and court cases on file.  Find one near you and pay them a visit for at least a solid month of weekends if you can:

You should do this field trip BEFORE you begin your administrative war with the IRS, ask for a refund, or receive your first Notice of Deficiency, if possible.  Your efforts to educate yourself will be apparent to the IRS clerk reading your letters and may cause them to believe that you will be such a "high maintenance "taxpayer” that they will just leave you alone and go for the low hanging fruit instead:  the next poor ignorant sucker who hasn’t read our book or done anything to prepare himself for battle.

A good place to start is to go to the beginning of this book in the Table of Authorities and look up several references from each of the categories below:

  • Constitution provisions
  • Statutes
  • Regulations
  • Cases
  • Other authorities

If you find any errors in our Table of Authorities, please let us know so we can fix them promptly.  In order to look up legal references, you must understand legal abbreviations and how case and authority cites work.  Chapter 6 of this book is the best place to learn the basics of federal tax litigation, what a legal cite is, and how to do legal research.  Below is a link to an alphabetized list of most of the major legal abbreviations which we have prepared and posted on our website for your reuse:

We have also prepared a list of online legal research sources at the link below:

Both of the previous two links appear in our Sovereignty Forms and Instructions Online under “LEGAL REFERENCE” in left window at:

If you are having trouble locating certain authorities, ask the Reference Librarian at your local law library, who knows where to find most types of legal resources.

What good is all the knowledge and research skill in the world if you don’t know how to organize or explain what you know or defend it in an argument with an “arrogant asshole” lawyer opponent?  After you have mastered the above, you will therefore also need to polish your debate skills.  A good place to start is on a tax researcher group on Yahoo or MSN.  There are a lot of tax attorneys lurking anonymously on these boards who just love arguing and sharpening their sword.  Another good place is to engage debates via email at famous anti-tax protester sites.  The lower left hand corner of our Tax Freedom and Litigation page has a list of these anti-tax protester websites at:

You can also join a Toastmasters in your area to sharpen your debate and public speaking skills.  You need to learn to feel comfortable speaking in crowds so that you will feel comfortable in a courtroom.  You can also form a tax research group in your area by standing up a website and holding twice monthly meetings.  Hold mock trials and help each other out at the meetings by sharing research and forms.  You can also watch CourtTV on your cable network.

Another very good way to learn is to watch the professionals at work.  Take several days off work and go to your local federal courthouse.  Arrive early and examine the docket.  Sit in on a several tax trials and hearings so you can learn courtroom etiquette.  Dress so you look like an attorney and carry a briefcase around so they will mistake you for counsel.  This is your camouflage for undercover operations in enemy territory.  Start up a chat when the hearing ends before the lunch hour.  Introduce yourself to every judge and attorney in every courtroom so they will recognize you and know you by name.  They won’t know what hit them when their number comes up later and you are sitting opposite them in the courtroom.  Tell them you are “clerking” for another attorney, which is true, and that “attorney” is the one you will become after they teach you the ropes with their “On-The-Job” training in front of you!  The person that future “attorney” will be representing is the artificial you, your “legal twin”, the all caps fictitious “taxpayer” version of you that the IRS refers to when they correspond:  "JOHN DOE".  While at the courthouse, ask judges what they think of the attorneys you watched litigating when lunch recess begins and the people are filing out.  Then go to the clerk’s office and check out the case file on some of the cases you want to watch BEFORE the hearing.  It’s very educational.  After you find some of the best attorneys at work, check out the casefile for some of the cases he is working and photocopy some of his pleadings to get ideas on how to make your own templates for various types of pleadings.  That’s what we do: Fight fire with fire!  Use your opponent’s own work against him.  Set your sights high and learn from the best, and do it for free!  How can anyone compete with that tactic?

Lastly, you must become skilled at using a word processor, and internet browser, and a computer.  Our favorite word processor is Microsoft Word, which was used to write this book and which is indispensable when creating correspondence and legal pleadings.  We cover buying your computer earlier in section 3.5.2.4 and how to secure your computer later in section 3.5.3.1.