United States v. Sullivan | |
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Argued April 27, 1927 Decided May 16, 1927 | |
Full case name | United States of America v. Manley Sullivan |
Citations | 274 U.S. 259 ( more ) 47 S. Ct. 607; 71 L. Ed. 1037; 1927 U.S. LEXIS 25 |
Case history | |
Prior | 15 F.2d 809 (4th Cir. 1926) |
Holding | |
The Fifth Amendment does not bar prosecution of criminals for failing to file income tax returns based on ill-gotten gains. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinion | |
Majority | Holmes, joined by unanimous |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. V; Revenue Act of 1921 |
United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927), is a United States Supreme Court case that allowed prosecution of criminals for income tax evasion notwithstanding the Fifth Amendment. [1]
The case also served as the legal test for prosecution of Al Capone for tax evasion by Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt. Willebrandt theorized illegally earned income was subject to income tax, and she tested her theory using Sullivan. Once the theory was found sound, she moved to prosecute Capone in 1931. [2]
In the 1920s, during the Prohibition Era, the successful prosecution of prominent organized crime bosses was nearly impossible because of witness intimidation and the lack of written records. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, then an Assistant Attorney General in charge of enforcing the Volstead Act, recognized that the figures publicly led lavish lifestyles but never filed tax returns and so might be prosecuted for that failure without testimony being required about the specific crimes that enriched them.
The first person prosecuted under that theory was Manley Sullivan, a South Carolina bootlegger. Sullivan's lawyers argued that filing a tax return on illegal income would amount to self-incrimination and so he was therefore protected by the Fifth Amendment.
Sullivan was convicted in federal court, but the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision on Fifth Amendment grounds. [2] [3]
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote for the court. He noted that the Revenue Act of 1921 provided that gross income includes "gains, profits, and income derived from... the transaction of any business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever."
Although the 1913 version of law had included the word "lawful" before "business," Congress removed the word "lawful" in 1921. Holmes rejected the Fifth Amendment argument by saying that a defendant who believed information required on the tax form to incriminate him could raise that issue on the form but could not simply refuse to file. Holmes dispatched another objection:
It is urged that, if a return were made, the defendant would be entitled to deduct illegal expenses, such as bribery. This by no means follows, but it will be time enough to consider the question when a taxpayer has the temerity to raise it.
Many criminals (and others) have since been prosecuted for tax evasion. In particular, Al Capone was convicted in 1931. [4] [5]
Publication 17 of the Internal Revenue Service still notes that "[i]ncome from illegal activities," including money from dealing illegal drugs or bribes received, must be included in the declaration of one's income. [6] [7]
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.
Tax noncompliance is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a government's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the illegal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term "noncompliance" is used differently by different authors. Its most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States.
Irwin Allen Schiff was an American libertarian and tax resistance advocate known for writing and promoting literature in which he argued that the way in which the income tax in the United States is enforced upon individuals, as a tax on one's time or wages, is illegal and unconstitutional. Judges in several civil and criminal cases ruled in favor of the federal government and against Schiff. As a result of these judicial rulings Schiff was in a hospital prison serving a sentence of 162 months at the time of his death.
A tax protester, in the United States, is a person who denies that he or she owes a tax based on the belief that the Constitution of the United States, statutes, or regulations do not empower the government to impose, assess or collect the tax. The tax protester may have no dispute with how the government spends its revenue. This differentiates a tax protester from a tax resister, who seeks to avoid paying a tax because the tax is being used for purposes with which the resister takes issue.
America: Freedom to Fascism is a 2006 American film by filmmaker and activist Aaron Russo, covering a variety of subjects that Russo contends are detrimental to Americans. Topics include the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the income tax, Federal Reserve System, national ID cards, human-implanted RFID tags, Diebold electronic voting machines, globalization, Big Brother, taser weapons abuse, and the use of terrorism by the government as a means to diminish the citizens' rights.
Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 382 U.S. 70 (1965), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on November 15, 1965, that persons believed to be members of the Communist Party of the United States of America could not be required to register as party members with the Subversive Activities Control Board because the information which party members were required to submit could form the basis of their prosecution for being party members, which is a crime, and therefore deprived them of their self-incrimination rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of conspiracy arguments asserting that Congress, the courts and various agencies within the federal government—primarily the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)—are involved in a deception deliberately designed to procure from individuals or entities their wealth or profits in contravention of law. Conspiracy arguments are distinct from, though related to, constitutional, statutory, and administrative arguments. Proponents of such arguments contend that all three branches of the United States government are working covertly to defraud the taxpayers of the United States through the illegal imposition, assessment and collection of a federal income tax.
Elmer Lincoln Irey was a Postal Inspector, United States Treasury Department official and the first Chief of the Internal Revenue Service Intelligence Unit, that would later become Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). Irey led the investigative unit during the federal tax evasion prosecution of Chicago mobster Al Capone.
Mabel Walker Willebrandt, popularly known to her contemporaries as the First Lady of Law, was an American lawyer who served as the United States Assistant Attorney General from 1921 to 1929, handling cases concerning violations of the Volstead Act, federal taxation, and the Bureau of Federal Prisons during the Prohibition era. For enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, the prohibition against the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, she also earned herself a nickname “Prohibition Portia”.
Frank John Wilson was best known as the Chief of the United States Secret Service and a former agent of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue, later known as the Internal Revenue Service. Wilson notably contributed in the prosecution of Chicago mobster Al Capone in 1931, and as a federal representative in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.
Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the United States federal law enforcement agency responsible for investigating potential criminal violations of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes, such as money laundering, currency transaction violations, tax-related identity theft fraud and terrorist financing that adversely affect tax administration. While other federal agencies also have investigative jurisdiction for money laundering and some Bank Secrecy Act violations, IRS-CI is the only federal agency that can investigate potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code, in a manner intended to foster confidence in the tax system and deter violations of tax law. Criminal Investigation is a division of the Internal Revenue Service, which in turn is a bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution creates several constitutional rights, limiting governmental powers focusing on criminal procedures. It was ratified, along with nine other amendments, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
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Taxation of illegal income in the United States arises from the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, enacted by the U.S. Congress in part for the purpose of taxing net income. As such, a person's taxable income will generally be subject to the same federal income tax rules, regardless of whether the income was obtained legally or illegally.
Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85 (1968), was a United States Supreme Court decision interpreting the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution's self-incrimination clause. Haynes extended the Fifth Amendment protections elucidated in Marchetti v. United States.
California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424 (1971), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that providing personal information at the scene of an accident does not infringe on one's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of constitutional arguments asserting that the imposition, assessment and collection of the federal income tax violates the United States Constitution. These kinds of arguments, though related to, are distinguished from statutory and administrative arguments, which presuppose the constitutionality of the income tax, as well as from general conspiracy arguments, which are based upon the proposition that the three branches of the federal government are involved together in a deliberate, on-going campaign of deception for the purpose of defrauding individuals or entities of their wealth or profits. Although constitutional challenges to U.S. tax laws are frequently directed towards the validity and effect of the Sixteenth Amendment, assertions that the income tax violates various other provisions of the Constitution have been made as well.
A tax protester is someone who refuses to pay a tax claiming that the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Tax protesters are different from tax resisters, who refuse to pay taxes as a protest against a government or its policies, or a moral opposition to taxation in general, not out of a belief that the tax law itself is invalid. The United States has a large and organized culture of people who espouse such theories. Tax protesters also exist in other countries.
Tax protester arguments are arguments made by people, primarily in the United States, who contend that tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid.
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