Tax Update Blog: Permalink

« Previous · Tax Update Blog Home · Next »

FAST-DRIVING, USA TODAY AD-BUYING AL THOMPSON CONVICTED ON 13 TAX COUNTS

January 31, 2005

The TaxProf has posted another roundup of big media tax stories, where we learn that Al Thompson was convicted on 13 tax charges in a federal courtroom in California.

You may remember Mr. Thompson for leading the California Highway Patrol on a high-speed car chase when the Feds came for him. In a move that appears, in hindsight, to have been ill-advised, he had purchased an ad in USA Today boasting that he didn't pay taxes or withhold taxes for his employees.

From the New York Times account (registration required) of the case:

Mr. Thompson, who acted as his own lawyer, argued that he had not willfully violated the law and contended that he had been charged with a crime because "the I.R.S. was misapplying the law."

Mr. Thompson's attitude, and that of other protestors, brings to mind a story we heard about a federal district judge here in Des Moines. The judge, goes the story, was told by a pro se tax protestor that he didn't have jurisdiction to try the case -- that somehow he wasn't a "real" judge. The judge is said to have replied to this effect:

Well, perhaps you don't believe I am a judge. But the man behind you is a federal marshall. He thinks I'm a judge. The bailiffs think I am a judge. The appeals court and the Supreme Court think I am a judge. And the warden at the penitentiary thinks I am a judge. As long as they think so, it doesn't really matter that you don't.

The judge believes the IRS correctly applied the law, too.

      Bookmark: del.icio.us • Digg • reddit