INDEX:

• 1. Preparations By You Prior to the Hearing
• 2. During the Hearing or Deposition
• 3. After the Hearing or Deposition

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This article describes how to use the Tax Deposition Questions appearing here to establish evidence that is indisputably admissible in a courtroom.  The bottom line is that even if you have a proper IRS deposition or due process hearing, if you don't fully and completely adhere to the rules of evidence in your state, you will have great difficulty getting any of the evidence you gather in the process of the hearing admitted into a courtroom so a jury can see it and you can use it during the trial.

As we suggest in the Tax Deposition main page, these questions have been compiled for your use in the following three circumstances:

• For use in an IRS Due Process hearing.  This hearing is instituted by the alleged "taxpayer" using an IRS form 12153 after the IRS has offered an opportunity for said hearing.
• For use in posing conditional acceptance requests as part of the Notary Certificate of Default Method that we document in section 2.4.4.5 of the Sovereignty Forms and Instructions Manual and in step 0.5 of the INSTRUCTIONS in our Sovereignty Forms and Instructions area
• For use during litigation against the IRS or the U.S. government.  Under these circumstance, the deposition would be held as part of the discovery phase and prior to trial.  A notice of deposition is sent to the U.S. attorney representing the government stating that you wish to depose the U.S. attorney and any other government witnesses to answer the questions.

1. PREPARATION BY YOU PRIOR TO HEARING:

Before the hearing or deposition, you must inform the parties to be deposed of the obligation to appear using a "Notice of Deposition" or "Hearing Request".  This notice should be sent via registered mail with a proof of service (proof by a third party that it was dropped in the mail).  Our Sovereignty Forms and Instructions are has sample Proof of Service notice if you need one under FORMS, section 13.  

For either a deposition or a due process hearing, your deposition notice or due process hearing request must include:

1. Notification that the hearing will be electronically recorded using either audio or video instruments or both;
2. That legal counsel and witnesses will be present.
3. That a court reporter will be present.
4. How long the hearing will take.
5. How many questions will be asked.
6. The topic of the questions.

In most cases, it is a bad idea to notify the persons you are deposing of what questions you intend to ask in advance, because this gives them time to be better prepared and to present answers that are deceptive and deflect the focus away from the truth.  However, doing so in this place only degrades the quality of the government response and gives them the excuse that they weren't prepared for the question.  Because of this, you should give them the web address where to find these questions at http://famguardian.org/TaxFreedom/Forms/Discovery/Deposition/Deposition.htm so they know everything that will come up.  This will eliminate any possibility for them to say that they were unprepared.  The downside of this approach is that they may petition the judge for a protective order to stop all discovery.  You can use this as evidence in front of the jury that they are obstructing justice and hiding evidence of government wrongdoing.

You should hire a reputable and experienced court reporting service in advance to do the reporting. Look in the phone book under "court reporters".  You should never try to do the recording or transcription of the hearing yourself, because the court would never accept it as evidence.  The courts generally assume that you have tampered with the record to benefit your position, so it has to be a neutral, professional third party who is bonded or licensed that presents or provides the evidence directly to them without your involvement or the involvement of any intermediate third party.  Judges generally won't tell you this, because they don't want to look like they are playing favorites.  You just have to know.  Court reporting can be expensive.  For an 8 hour deposition, for instance, the fees can range upwards of $1,100.  Ordinarily, the reporter shows up to a location of your choice to report on the deposition.

Prior to the deposition, you should compile a CD-ROM or body of paper evidence containing all the evidence and questions you will be asking.  This will be used during the deposition or hearing to be admitted into evidence on the record.  This body of evidence should contain all of the evidence you will use.  You should never present any evidence during questioning that you aren't comfortable admitting into evidence and giving to the reporter to include in the record of the proceeding.  Make at least three copies of the CD-ROM:  1.  For admitting into evidence to the reporter; 2.  For the deposed party; 3.  For you.

If you assembled this CD-ROM using the downloadable materials featured in the IRS Deposition page, we suggest that you come to the meeting with two copies of the CD-ROM, a laptop, and a projection display for your laptop.  That way, you can put the CD-ROM into your drive and open up the deposition questions on the CD-ROM with your web browser and click through each question and the evidence that goes with it, displaying it on the shared screen as you go.  The questions and the evidence can then be projected onto a screen during the questioning which is in front of the participants for examination.  You should set this whole system up and test it before the hearing to make sure everything works, and if you have any malfunctions, delay the deposition until everything is ready.  The actual CD-ROM that you display on the page is the one that you should submit into evidence at the conclusion of the hearing or deposition, so that you have the live evidence used rather than a copy that could have been tampered with, which would render the evidence inadmissible.

As a consequence, you should carefully study all the questions and evidence you intend to ask during the deposition or hearing for several hours and even days before you attempt to hold the hearing.  Make sure you understand the facts that are being established by the questions, and the you are familiar with the statutes, regulations, court cites, and laws that they discuss.  This will ensure that there will be no surprises or embarrassments during the hearing for anyone but the government. Another reason you want to study the questions and the evidence carefully is that you can claim that you have a personal knowledge of all the laws and facts presented.  This makes the evidence more compelling to juries and it also immunizes you against obfuscation by the government lawyer you will be deposing.

A few minutes prior to the hearing, ask for the ID's of all the participants and preferably photocopy those IDs.  You will use this at the start of the meeting to admit into evidence and get into the record.

2. DURING THE HEARING OR DEPOSITION:

Start the deposition by introducing each participant with their full name and organization on the record.  Include the court reporter as well in this announcement.  Say that you have photocopied their ID's and would now like to admit into evidence copies of their IDs for the record.

Next, do the oaths.  Have everyone stand and raise their right hands with their left hand on the bible and state:

"I  ___________(their name) do solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God."

Next, state the purpose of the deposition:

"The purpose of this deposition or hearing is to offer the government an opportunity to establish fact and evidence in support of the notion that  I, ____________(your name) am a 'taxpayer' as legally defined and that I therefore have a legal liability to pay the tax or penalty alleged by the government to be owed by me.  Pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 556(d), the moving party has the burden of proof, which means that the government, in this case, has the burden to show that I am a 'taxpayer' and that I have a legal liability to pay the tax.  There are many rules and laws shifting the burden of proof to 'taxpayers' to prove nonliability.  Notwithstanding such laws, a person such as myself must first be 'taxpayers' before such laws even apply or the revenue laws in question have any jurisdiction whatsoever.  I declare under penalty of perjury that such laws do not apply in my case since I claim that I am a 'nontaxpayer'."

Before we get too heavy into the questions, I would like to make one fact crystal clear.  The purpose of this meeting is to satisfy the due process requirements of the U.S. Constitution under the Fifth Amendment, by offering me, the accused, an opportunity to examine and question both the witnesses and the evidence against me.  The term "due process" is defined as follows in Black's Law Dictionary:

Due process of law.  Law in its regular course of administration through courts of justice.  Due process of law in each particular case means such an exercise of the powers of the government as the settled maxims of law permit and sanction, and under such safeguards for the protection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the class of cases to which the one in question belongs.  A course of legal proceedings according to those rules and principles which have been established in our systems of jurisprudence for the enforcement and protection of private rights.  To give such proceedings any validity, there must be a tribunal competent by its constitution—that is, by the law of the creation—to pass upon the subject-matter of the suit;  and, if that involves merely a determination of the personal liability of the defendant, he must be brought within its jurisdiction by service of process within the state, or his voluntary appearance.  Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 733, 24 L.Ed. 565.  Due process of law implies the right of the person affected thereby to be present before the tribunal which pronounces judgment upon the question of life, liberty, or property, in its most comprehensive sense; to be heard, by testimony or otherwise, and to have the right of controverting, by proof, every material fact which bears on the question of right in the matter involved.  If any question of fact or liability be conclusively be presumed [rather than proven] against him, this is not due process of law.

You will note that the above definition specifically states that presumption is the antithesis of due process.  The reason for this requirement is clear:  Our system of jurisprudence is based on innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  This means that absolutely everything must be proven or shown and nothing can be assumed or presumed, including the alleged status as a 'taxpayer', a "U.S. citizen", or a resident of the 'United States' defined in 26 U.S.C. §7701(a)(9) and (a)(10).  Any other approach would be a violation of due process of law and would produce an unconstitutional deprivation of rights and property.

Without meeting the burden of proof to establish my guilt beyond a reasonable doubt using law and evidence, my innocence must be assumed under our system of jurisprudence and your claims and allegations about any alleged liability on my part shall be presumed to be without excuse or justification, which means they are unlawful and illegal and represent a tort and criminal trespass upon my God given Constitutional rights.

"Unlawful.  That which is contrary to, prohibited, or unauthorized by law.  That which is not lawful.  The acting contrary to, or in defiance of the law; disobeying or disregarding the law.  Term is equivalent to “without excuse or justification.”  State v. Noble, 90 N.M. 360, 563 P.2d 1153, 1157.  While necessarily not implying the element of criminality, it is broad enough to include it."  Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, page 1536

The Supreme Court said on this subject

"A statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men and women of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application, violates the first essential of due process of law." [Connally v General Const. Co., 269 U.S. 385 (1926)]

If you therefore find yourself in conflict with or lacking understanding of any of the issues discussed at this deposition, and must answer to any of the questions 'I don't know', or "I disagree but don't have any evidence to support my belief", then in the absence of any claims and evidence by you contradicting the evidence, you will be presumed to:

1. Consent to an affirmative answer to the question  AND

2. The idea that the law discussed in the question is "void for vagueness or unenforceable" because you can't objectively and convincingly prove that I have violated it.

The above assertions are based on the findings of the U.S. Supreme Court, which clearly stated on this subject that the burden of proof belongs squarely in the camp of the government who is seeking to establish my liability for tax:

“Keeping in mind the well-settled rule that the citizen is exempt from taxation unless the same is imposed by clear and unequivocal language, and that where the construction of a tax law is doubtful, the doubt is to be resolved in favor of those upon whom the tax is sought to be laid.” 
[Spreckels Sugar Refining Co. v. McClain, 192 U.S. 297 (1904)]

You can now proceed with the hearing.  We recommend going through the questions on the CD-ROM in the order they are presented.  If you choose to do any questions within a section, we recommend that you do ALL the questions, because the sequence they are in helps to build a foundation for each succeeding question.  Asking out of order destroys the foundation and makes the questions meaningless and irrelevant and therefore difficult to get admitted.  For instance, if you are going to ask any questions about "Taxable sources", then you should ask ALL of the questions in section 11 of the deposition questions.  The Acrobat files on our IRS Deposition page are designed so that all the hotlinks work inside the file, and as you go through each question, you can click on a hotlink and go directly to the evidence.  You can then hit the back button to go back and ask the next question.  We also give you a contents in the Navigation pane to make your way around.  If you get lost at any time, just hit the HOME key and go back to the questions, and then page down to the question you were at.  The questions occupy the first pages in each of the Acrobat files we provide in case you get lost.

Your should try to lay a foundation for each question.  Establishing a foundation means establishing the source of the evidence that the question is based on and its authenticity, and offering the person deposed an opportunity to refute the source or authority or accuracy of it.  If the person deposed is alleged to have produced the evidence in question, then you should introduce that piece of evidence by saying: "Did you write or produce this document?"  That way, it is authenticated as to its source so that there is a chain of custody from you to him, and that it is connected in some way with the issues being litigated.  A good place to learn about the rules of evidence are the Federal Rules of Evidence.

When referring to a specific piece of evidence, you can use the filename as the "Exhibit Number".  For instance, the first Exhibit listed in question 1.3 would be "Exhibit 1.3a".  The second item would be "Exhibit 1.3b".  You can tell the filename by looking in the lower left corner of your browser window when your mouse pointer is directly above the specific piece of evidence you are referring to.

3. AFTER THE HEARING or DEPOSITION:

It will generally take two or three weeks for the court reporter to assemble the preliminary transcript of the hearing.  They will generally publish a preliminary transcript that isn't signed which also doesn't have an affidavit attached with the transcript.  Attached to the your copy of the transcript will be a master index of every word used in the deposition, showing the page and line where a referenced word appears everywhere in the transcript.  This index is very useful to you in locating relevant testimony, and generally, the deposed party doesn't get a copy of this index, which puts him or her at a distinct disadvantage.  The purpose of the preliminary transcript is to offer the parties an opportunity to review and correct any errors.  The corrections appear on an attachment sheet signed by the correcting party.  However, the original transcript isn't modified based on the comments.  The original transcript also won't have an index.  If you asked for the transcript in electronic form from the court reporter before the draft is produced and delivered, you will also get a set of discs or a CD-ROM containing the electronic version of the transcript, usually in *.TXT format.  This you can search electronically and use to cut and paste into your pleadings prior to trial or hearings.

IMPORTANT:  If you do an IRS or government deposition using the questions on this site, it is very important that you scan in the affidavit page and zip the scanned image up with the electronic edition of the transcript and email the zip file to us.  That way we can turn it into an Acrobat PDF file and post it on this site for people to read and review the government's answers.  This will allow our esteemed readers to better prepare for their own depositions or due process meetings in the future, and provide valuable evidence for use in the litigation of our readers.

You, as the person calling for and paying for the hearing, have the right to the finished transcript from the reporter, and the electronic version of it, along with the index of it.  The deposed party also usually has a legal right to get copies of the paper but not electronic transcript, but it generally costs them several hundred dollars to do so, which the reporter charges them and does not forward to you.

What you do with the finished transcript is extremely important!  Valid evidence needs a documented chain of custody in order for most judges to be willing to admit it into evidence at a hearing or trial.  For instance, once the completed transcript is finished and an affidavit of the reporter is attached, the transcript has to be delivered to the court somehow.  If you pick up the transcript and attached evidence yourself and deliver it to the court during the hearing, then the judge will assume you tampered with it an won't allow it to be admitted.  However, if you have the court reporter mail it directly to the clerk of the court via registered mail, requesting that it be given directly to the judge prior to the next hearing, then you can get it admitted into evidence because there is no possibility that it has been tampered with by a third party.  Such technicalities are ever so important to ensure that the evidence you gather can be used and admitted by the judge!  The judge will try to use every excuse in the book to protect his extortionist cohorts in the IRS and the DOJ, so you don't want to give him any basis to make trouble for you and undermine your case!

If you goof and take the finished transcript directly to the court yourself, and the judge won't admit it into evidence, then keep in mind that you can always go back to the court reporting service and ask them to send another certified copy directly to the judge via registered mail.  They keep the transcript originals on file for seven years usually as required by law and you can always go back and pay for another copy to be delivered directly by them to the judge.