A.L.E.R.T.
(America Law Education Rights & Taxation)

12-22-2001
The Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission
by Gordon Phillips

Communications received from those new to the constitutional revival movement -- and to the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship in particular -- often display various misunderstandings about the purpose of the Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission which the Fellowship makes available for the use of its members. The purpose of this essay is to explain the affidavit's use and implementation. 

In addition to other functions which will be covered below, the Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission revokes the citizen/affiant's voluntary act of having applied for a Social Security Number, or, if applied for on his behalf by a parent or legal guardian, of having acquiesced over the course of his life to the use of that number for a wide variety of private, commercial, business, government and tax purposes.

A new correspondent recently asked "Do I have to send in this affidavit in order to stop using a SSN?" The short answer is: No. Since there is no requirement for a citizen to apply for, obtain or use a SSN for any lawful reason whatsoever, including for employment, obviously there can be no "requirement" for the citizen to submit the affidavit in order to stop using the number. 

Another common question is : "Once I have submitted the affidavit, can I ever use my SSN again?" Again, the answer is: No. Once the citizen has submitted the affidavit, he finds himself in the legal position of one who never made application for a SSN in the first place, thereby severing all ties to the use of a SSN under any circumstances. 

The primary purpose of the affidavit is actually for criminal defense purposes. Now, lest you, Dear Reader, should dismiss the likelihood of your ever becoming ensnared in a criminal tax trial, think again. As Ayn Rand explained in "Atlas Shrugged", when enough laws have been passed, everyone is eventually guilty of something at all times. 

Have enough laws yet been passed in America to cloak everyone now breathing with the likelihood of some type of unwitting criminal behavior? What about with regard to tax issues? Have you read the entire Internal Revenue Code recently? Then how would you know whether you've unwittingly evaded entire CATEGORIES of taxes on past returns? Remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse (unless, of course, you're above the law, like Bill Clinton). 

The affidavit has been perfected since first implemented by the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship in 1984. In the early years, it would occasionally receive misdirected and/or non-responsive "responses" from the Department of the Treasury or from various offices of the IRS, claiming that it raised "tax protester" issues or constitutional questions which the government chose not to deal with. 

Nothing could be further from the truth as even a cursory reading of the document will reveal. To my knowledge, however, there have been no responses or rebuttal from the IRS/Treasury in recent years to any submission of the affidavit by a Fellowship member. How could there be when it plainly speaks the truth?

A common misunderstanding is that you can "revoke your SSN." However, that is incorrect. Revocation applies, not to the revoking of a thing, but of an act. You can only revoke an act that you have personally committed, and then only an act committed voluntarily. That is why you cannot revoke "your" SSN. You can, however, revoke the act of applying for one.

You also cannot revoke an act committed by another person. The act committed by the Social Security Administration is the assignment of a SSN upon application. That's what they're supposed to do. You apply, and they assign. Of course, as stated earlier, there is no requirement for you to apply in the first place. They just don't tell you that. Shhh ... it's a big secret.

Another reason why you cannot "revoke your SSN" is that it's not yours to revoke. The Social Security Administration has an inventory of one billion SSN's (9 possible placeholders occupied by integers ranging from 0 to 9 = 10 to the 9th power). They assign a fresh one to each new applicant -- "your" very own serial number, thereby placing you in the same category as concentration camp inmates. When you die, they retire "your" number. The sooner you die, the less benefits must be paid out, but planned population reduction is a subject for a different essay.

Contrary to popular belief, SSN's are NOT automatically assigned to newborns in hospitals. The parents grant their consent on signed release paperwork authorizing the hospital to initiate the application process. But there is no requirement to sign this paperwork. I explain this in great detail in my audio cassette "How To Have A Free Baby". Since the release of this tape, many dozens of American babies have escaped from as many American hospitals as unenumerated and unregistered little citizens.

Obviously, applying for a SSN is a voluntary act. Were it otherwise, your arm would have to be wrestled down to the table top and your signature forcible extracted from you (which would of course be no signature at all). Seen in that light, everything you have ever signed your entire life is, and can only be, voluntary. Make a mental list sometime and think about it.

A voluntary act such as the aforementioned application for a SSN can be revoked if the circumstances surrounding the application process were tainted by fraud, as will be explained below. There is never a statute of limitation on fraud.

Rescission pertains to signatures. To rescind is to withdraw one's signature, thereby rendering it a legal nullity -- i.e. as if never executed in the first place. The affidavit rescinds one's signature from the following:

(1) From SSA Form SS-5 "Application For Social Security Account Number";
(2) From past forms W-4, "Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate";
(3) From all past 1040 forms;
(4) From all other IRS tax returns ever filed by the citizen/affiant which were not required by written law to have been filed in the first place.

The affidavit also invokes Title 5 of the United States Code at section 556(d), which states that the proponent of a rule or order has the burden of proof. The affidavit challenges the Secretary of the Treasury's jurisdiction on the basis of constructive fraud, one of many legally defined types of fraud in which the citizen/affiant is not claiming that a particular individual or individuals defrauded him, but rather that, based upon concealment, misinformation, disinformation, and misrepresentation of the truth and the facts, he was led to believe by the government that certain legal requirements existed to file certain returns and to pay certain taxes, when in fact they did not.

Of course no red blooded, made-in-America citizen alive today with, as of September 11th, an American flag (made in China) freshly rippling from his car antenna (made in Japan) can possibly imagine the government doing such a dastardly and immoral thing as to willfully and serially commit hundreds of millions of individual acts of constructive tax fraud, perpetrated over a period of many decades, by deliberately leading generations of innocent citizens into believing total falsehoods about their tax liabilities and requirements.

That would be unthinkable. Which is why U.S. attorneys (made in law school) don't want jurors being exposed to this affidavit. Jurors can get funny ideas in their heads when they learn the truth.

The affidavit is approximately eight pages long and written in clear, expository English so as to be readily understood (in the worst case scenario) by twelve possibly "dumbed-down" citizen/jurors, all educated by the same government that first allowed them to graduate from high school with a sixth grade education, and has now impaneled them to decide your fate as an indicted "tax protester".

For a truly frightening experience, stick your head out the front door and look six houses in either direction. Imagine one adult from each household sitting on your jury. Now try to envision their individual understanding of the Constitution, jury nullification, the rights of man, etc. Imagine the deeply entrenched mind set you would have to overcome in those twelve brains. Frightening, isn't it? Wouldn't YOU like to be as well prepared as possible for this eventuality?

In examining its construction, the affidavit is seen to be notably absent all traces of Latin, Greek, Middle English, complex parallel sentence structure, deeply nested subordinate clauses, wild theories, untested arguments, patriot mythology, subliminal suggestions, dangling modifiers or legalese mumbo jumbo supposedly designed to dazzle a juror with its brilliance. 

I only mention this since many such artifices are still employed today by a variety of Internet gurus in their affidavits and other paperwork, the theory apparently being that the more complex and abstruse the writing style, the more impressed will the juror be. In fact the precise opposite occurs when the juror be thinkin' that the wool be bein' pulled over his eyes.

The affidavit is sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, certified mail return receipt requested, on three separate occasions over a period spanning 180 days. 

MAILING #1 -- The first mailing of the affidavit is accompanied by a cover letter to the Secretary, instructing him to take notice thereof and to forward a copy to other agencies as may be necessary. We know that a copy is forwarded to the Social Security Administration. When the certified "green card" (return receipt) comes back from the post office signed by the Treasury, it serves as prima facie evidence that the Secretary or one of his delegates did actually receive and take notice of it. 

MAILING #2 -- After 90 days the member sends the affidavit a second time with a new cover letter giving the Secretary an additional 60 days to respond. This second affidavit is also sent certified mail return receipt requested. The second signed green card comes back from the post office.

MAILING #3 -- A third and final copy of the affidavit is sent to the Secretary via certified mail with yet another cover letter, giving him a final 30 days to respond. Again, a third green card comes back, serving as proof that a third attempt was made by the citizen/affiant to communicate in good faith about the issues raised therein. 

Because, as stated earlier, there is no longer any response to the affidavit from the Secretary, misdirected or otherwise, over the above entire 180-day period, it would be clear to even the most educationally challenged juror that the citizen/affiant/defendant who went to such extraordinary lengths to communicate his understanding of the law to the highest executive branch tax official in America, yet received no response or rebuttal, had therefore exhausted every possibility in establishing his lack of willfulness -- that he was in fact a sincere and reasonable person who, rather than hiding and hoping that he would never hear from the Secretary, was in effect "leading with his chin", saying "come out, come out, wherever you are!"

It is a long-established principle of American jurisprudence under the Rule of Presumption that an unrebutted allegation stands as true and correct, until and unless rebutted on point. That is the reason why all IRS correspondence must be responded to in a timely manner, lest the presumption hold that the person addressed as "Dear Taxpayer" is in fact a legally defined "taxpayer" possessing a legal requirement to file and pay.

Failure on the Secretary's part to respond to the affidavit over three separate mailings spanning a period of six months establishes reasonable belief that the government in fact has no rebuttal. Therefore, the allegations and claims made by the citizen/affiant stand as true and correct, thereby creating a reversal of presumption that he ever was a "taxpayer". 

The only way the Secretary of the Treasury could re-establish jurisdiction over the citizen/affiant would be to reply via rebuttal affidavit, addressing specifically point-by-point the issues raised in the Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission. But the government is never going to do this. No way, José. The question becomes: If the government couldn't (or wouldn't) answer before, does it want to answer now, in court, under oath, with the jury considering every word, every paragraph, every page? Remember, a longer trial favors the defendant.

Simply understood, the affidavit becomes just another piece of admissible exculpatory evidence -- part of an evidentiary foundation illustrating the defendant's good faith belief that he did not with premeditated criminal intent commit the crime of "willful failure" to file a particular tax return or to evade a particular tax.

In this sense it can accurately be said that, while the affidavit is addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury, it is in fact WRITTEN to the twelve potential jurors, good and true, who may one day be called upon to judge the citizen/affiant's sincerity (lack of "willfulness"). The same jurors who were educated by the government as mentioned earlier and have now been carefully selected to favor conviction. Are you beginning to understand?

Please note that the affidavit has no bearing whatsoever on civil matters. Just as there are two sides to a fence, there are two sides to the law: CIVIL and CRIMINAL.

CIVIL - All IRS audit, deficiency, lien, levy and seizure notices are civil in nature, even if the agency's behavior is often far from civil (sorry). All IRS claims of taxes due and owing are likewise civil. Civil applies to money and property. This is all of your "stuff". 

For a light overview of this subject, consult comedian George Carlin's hilarious routine. Or listen to the 2001 Diamond Rio country music recording titled "Stuff". The chorus goes: "Stuff, stuff. Stack it on, stack it on up. Never gonna' ever get enough. Oh, oh, it's mine and it ain't worth a dime. Stuff, stuff, spreadin' like weeds. Draggin' me under in an endless sea of stuff, stuff. Oh there ain't no end. Gotta' get a bigger place so I can move in. More stuff." You get the idea. Great tune.

Bear in mind that neither the Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission nor any other correspondence sent to the IRS can be absolutely depended upon to stop the unlawful plunder of private property by IRS agents and officials bent on revenue enhancement. Remember: THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS THE MONEY. 

There is no perfect punctuation or magical grammar in existence -- in this affidavit or any other document that man could write -- that will stop an IRS agent eager to attain his weekly plunder performance bonus so he can pay down his VISA card from levying on a bank account or wages, seizing property, demanding books and records, and so forth. Remember: HE NEEDS THE MONEY.

However, collections matters are happily moot and of no concern to one who owns nothing titled in his own name. Blood floweth neither from stone nor turnip, nor can collections be obtained from the penniless. Two examples of unfortunate legal pauperism would be a homeless person sleeping over a warm grating, or a Rockefeller sleeping in a warm mansion. Neither owns anything.

CRIMINAL - Criminal applies to charges resulting from a criminal investigation leading to a Grand Jury indictment or U.S. information, then arraignment, then trial. While the filing of a return is a civil matter, signing under penalty of perjury provides testimony which can then be used to launch a criminal investigation. 

As has been stated here many times, because conviction for "willful failure to file" is a misdemeanor while conviction for "tax evasion", fraud, etc., is a felony offense that can only stem from the filing of a signed return, signing and filing can readily be seen by any discerning individual to be far more dangerous than not filing anything.

That last sentence should, of course, not be construed as legal advice. No indeed. Not under any conditions imaginable. It is merely an observation that those who do sign and file under penalty of perjury(*) often thereby place themselves in the DIRECT PATH OF FAR GREATER HARM THAN THOSE WHO FILE NOTHING. But, please, don't infer anything from that offhand comment.

(* all returns must be filed with a jurat clause -- i.e., under penalty of perjury, making the "filing a statement vs. a return" wild theory just that. The truth is that you could file a return on a grocery bag if signed under penalty of perjury)

The government's contentions in all criminal tax trials are three-fold: 

(1) That the defendant had in the past filed tax returns and then suddenly stopped. The U.S. attorney will have blown up to poster size and placed on a rolling easel before the jury photocopies of the defendant's past filed tax returns, allegedly "proving" that at one point in time the defendant was "one of us", and now is non-fair-share-paying, deadbeat, no-good tax cheat, thereby throwing the burden of payment onto the backs of the poor jurors and their hard-working family members. This typical play of "class envy" accompanies all such tax trials. It's the standard "dog and pony" show. Of course, anyone who has stopped filing would gladly raise his right hand, swear to the fact, and save the government the cost of a trial. 

But, then again, the trial isn't about honesty, economy and the righteous administration of justice in the first place. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. The true purpose of the trial is widespread media exposure to pillory the victim and panic the lemmings into filing, the law be damned.

(2) That the defendant had income. Although Congress has assiduously avoided defining "income" at all costs, the fact is that the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed on numerous occasions that "income" is a corporate gain or profit severed from capital, and not "everything that comes in" as the IRS would have everyone believe. 

Of course most Americans who think "I'm an honest person with nothing to hide, so why should I be concerned about privacy?", conduct their personal and financial affairs as if living in the proverbial "glass house" -- with the curtains flung wide open and their pants down around their ankles, routinely exposing their most private affairs for all the world to see. Why not? They're honest Americans with nothing to hide.

Like Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of crumbs out of the forest, they generate a long paper trail of cancelled bank checks, cash receipts, credit card statements, W-2s filed by employers on wages, 1099s received from third parties and so forth. This trail of crumbs will be easy for even the most skilled IRS agent to follow. 

This behavior makes it an easy matter for the IRS to compile a composite computer-assisted profile of the individual's entire financial past, usually accomplished in five minutes flat from a computer terminal, while enjoying a coffee and a donut. Therefore, it would be foolish for the defendant to inform the court that he had earned nothing on which to live, regardless of the definition of "income" as defined within the law.

(3) That the defendant acted "willfully", meaning with clear, criminal, pre-meditated intent. In other words, so the government argues, the defendant knew there was a requirement to file a return, yet he willfully decided not to, with premeditated intent to shirk a known legal duty. 

However, the burden of proof here is on the government, not on the defendant. In order to convict, the jury must decide that the defendant knew what he was doing and acted willfully. The defendant's defense consists of all documents, paperwork, letters, correspondence, etc., which had been generated in the past and sent to the IRS, and which therefore could be brought forth into the trial as material evidence to show the jury beyond any reasonable doubt that the defendant had in fact acted with a clear conscience and did not knowingly violate any legal requirements under the written law. 

The Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission is instrumental in showing the defendant's sincerity, understanding of the law and good faith intent. It serves two primary purposes.

PURPOSE #1 -- It puts the Secretary of the Treasury (whose authority is delegated down to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue) on notice of the understanding of the citizen/affiant living and working within the 50 States of the Union, even if only recently acquired, as to his actual legal duties and requirements under the written law. 

For example, one of the opening paragraphs addresses the FACT that the tax imposed by Congress under the Internal Revenue Code at section 1 is a tax on the taxable income of some unspecified "individual" who, upon further examination into the tax regulations, is discovered to be one with certain qualified FOREIGN sources of income only. Whoops.

PURPOSE #2 -- It also reverses the burden of proof and shifts the presumption back to the government. You see, the citizen who has studied the law and, as a result of his new understanding, decides to stop filing tax returns, is presumed by the IRS to be a "taxpayer" (a one-word legally defined term). The non-filing is deemed by the government to be an error of OMISSION rather than one of COMMISSION. 

In other words, if the citizen/affiant has been filing tax returns for many years and suddenly, based on his new understanding of the law and the realization that he is not required to file after all, in fact STOPS filing, the IRS computer will continue to expect the return to be filed because the presumption has been created, through prior filings, that the IRS has jurisdiction over the "taxpayer" who then, presumably, has a requirement to continue filing, ad infinitum, until death. 

This is the very reason why the IRS mails a return to those who filed the previous year. Stop filing, and they stop mailing you future returns, thereby sparing innocent trees.

The affidavit has already been instrumental in gaining a jury acquittal on charges of willful failure to file or tax evasion by more than one member of the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship. Fellowship member, Donald Paul, of Kentucky was acquitted in 1995 of willful failure to file a tax return as featured prominently on the front page of a past issue of "Reasonable Action", the Fellowship's members-only newsletter. 

During Mr. Paul's trial, the increasingly agitated U.S. attorney waved the affidavit around the court room, claiming it was a dangerous, anti-government screed. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. It's actually a very nice letter to the Secretary. The jury requested that copies be brought in to the deliberation room, AND THEY READ IT. Whoops! They promptly acquitted Mr. Paul, after which several jurors inquired about the Fellowship. The government hates it when that happens.

Other past issues of "Reasonable Action" have dealt with the government's reluctance to challenge the affidavit in court. For example, one Fellowship member was offered a plea bargain by the U.S. attorney at the "eleventh hour" just before trial if the member would recant the affidavit and denounce the Fellowship. The member refused to do so and the government dropped the charges. Had the member "knuckled under", he would have set a precedent in "case law", effectively neutralizing the affidavit's future use by other members in similar circumstances. Please drop to your knees and ask God's blessings for these unsung anonymous heroes, every one.

Suffice it to say that the best and brightest within the employ of the federal government may be reluctant to go into court and debate in great detail before a jury, paragraph by paragraph, point by salient point, the type of cogent and potentially embarrassing FACTS laid out in this affidavit.

This is not to say, however, that the affidavit is a "Silver Bullet", that the mere mailing of it to the Treasury guarantees that the IRS will never mount a civil or criminal attack against the citizen/affiant if they really want you badly enough, or that its use invokes a magic cloak of immunity, invincibility or protection. Security like this exists only in Disney movies, not in the real world when your own government is a scofflaw that NEEDS THE MONEY.

Since the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship is a closed, First Amendment association which exists for the mutual aid, assistance, support and education of its members, the affidavit is made available to members only lest the argument be raised that the Fellowship is providing legal advice and services for the general public without a license.

The reason the affidavit is not made available for downloading or reprinting from the Fellowship's and Independent Representative web sites is that there are no doubt many individuals who, afflicted with "bumper sticker" thinking and prone to patriot mythology, would simply photocopy, sign and send it in, believing they had thereby "untaxed" or otherwise "freed themselves" from the income tax and the IRS, not having the faintest glimmer of a clue as to what they were doing, nor any ability to intelligently discuss the principles raised within the affidavit, or to argue it in a court of law should that every prove necessary. 

Although the Fellowship prepares this document for its members, it is the member's own individual personal responsibility to understand and argue it should the time and circumstances ever require such.

It may not be a bad idea for the individual who has already stopped filing, or plans to stop, to submit the affidavit (assuming, of course, that he understands its lawful use and sincerely believes in the validity of its implementation) given the existence of four very important and politically pervasive financial factors: 

(1) The government needs the money; 
(2) The government will always need more money in the future; 
(3) The government needs everyone to send in their money; 
(4) The government cannot afford (literally) to have past cheerful donors learn the truth.

To take advantage of the affidavit and other correspondence and paperwork provided by the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship's casework and paralegal departments under power of attorney, one would need to be a member of the Fellowship. This is not a solicitation or enticement to membership, but merely to inform the reader that the Fellowship provides these services for members only. 

For further information, visit the home page at http://www.informamerica.com and follow the links to the download page. There you will find several FREE REPORTS as well as a ZIP file titled "SAPF Toolkit" containing a plethora of information about the purpose, mission, history and benefits of membership in the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship. Those with questions about membership are welcome to e-mail me at gordon@informamerica.com.