The View From Here

Schulz stops paying taxes, defies IRS 

By CARL STROCK

I expected it would come to this, and now it has. My friend Bob Schulz of sue-the-government fame and reputation has declared that he will no longer pay his federal income tax. 

In a letter to the IRS dated yesterday, he called the tax "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated by government against the working men and women of America" and said he's all done cooperating. 

What's more, he told me by telephone from his home near Lake George, he is preparing to lead a national campaign urging others to stop filing returns. He will hit the road late this week or early next and drive cross-country spreading the message with the help of some 600 like-minded "coordinators" who have already enlisted in the cause. 

The message is the basic Jeffersonian one of the rights of the People as opposed to over-reaching government, which has been the underlying theme of his activities since he was suing New York state over its devious borrowing practices. It was given new focus earlier this year at a hearing he held in Washington on the legality, or illegality, of the income tax. 

The conclusion of that hearing, you will not be surprised to learn, is that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing the tax, was not properly ratified back in 1913, and the Internal Revenue Service, therefore, has no good foundation in law. The government has been conning us all these years. 

It's a cause that Schulz got onto about three years ago, and he has pursued it since then with the same relentlessness that he demonstrated when he was badgering New York. Since I talked to him earlier he has added to it the notion that the Federal Reserve System is part of the same sinister complex as the IRS. 

"The income tax was instituted to provide lender security and guaranteed profits to this highly secretive, privately owned and unaccountable central banking system that has obtained absolute control over our country and the federal government," he wrote in his letter, sounding, I must say, as if he's gone over entirely to the kook wing of American politics. 

"Most Americans are in a condition of continual economic peonage and slavery to the federal government and the privately owned Federal Reserve System," he postulated.  He said the Federal Reserve thing sounded like a "fringe issue" to him too when he first heard about it, but his own research has convinced him it's legitimate. 

In responding to the perceived conspiracy to deprive us all of our liberty, he does not spare the rhetoric. "We must resort to force," he wrote to the IRS, making clear however that by force he means "a non-violent mass movement."   "An appeal to force and to the Creator is all that is left to us." 

 Of course this will lead to trouble. "The civil strife is inevitable," he wrote. "Let it come! Let it come!"

Does he expect to wind up in prison as a result of his new position? 

"I don't know what to expect," he says, though he obviously does not shrink from the prospect of a legal fight. 

I certainly wish him the best with this battle, though in the meantime I will look to my interests by continuing to pay my own taxes. 

The View From Here presents Carl Strock's personal commentary and appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Strock can be reached at 395-3085. The opinions of the newspaper appear in editorials on the Opinion Page every day.