Arthur L. Farnsworth is an American politician and convicted tax protester. Evidence found by the government in Farnsworth's case helped the government indict actor Wesley Snipes on tax charges.
The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters and conspiracy theorists who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and believe that they are therefore not subject to any government statutes or proceedings, unless they consent to them. The movement, which appeared in the early 1970s, is American in origin and exists primarily in the United States, though it has expanded to other countries: the freeman on the land movement, an offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement with similar doctrines, emerged during the 2000s in Canada before spreading to other Commonwealth countries. In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) describes sovereign citizens as "anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or 'sovereign' from 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 income tax in the United States 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 at the age of 87. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that Schiff died on October 16, 2015.
Richard Michael Simkanin was a tax protester who was imprisoned after having been convicted on twenty-nine counts of United States federal tax crimes.
The Montana Freemen were an anti-government militant Christian Patriot group based outside the town of Jordan, Montana, United States. The members of the group referred to their land as "Justus Township" and had declared their leaders and followers "sovereign citizens" no longer under the authority of any outside government. They became the center of public attention in 1996 when they engaged in a prolonged armed standoff with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Robert Barnwell Clarkson was an American tax protester in South Carolina.
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.
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.
In 1984, Sun Myung Moon, the founder and leader of the Unification Church, was imprisoned in the United States after being found guilty by a jury of willfully filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy. Church members and supporters stated that the prosecution was politically motivated, discriminatory, and unfair.
Eddie Ray Kahn is an American tax protester. Kahn is currently in prison for tax crimes, with a tentative release date of 2026. Kahn founded the group American Rights Litigators and ran the for-profit businesses "Guiding Light of God Ministries" and "Eddie Kahn and Associates." According to the U.S. Justice Department, all three organizations are or were illegal tax evasion operations.
The Federal Correctional Institution, Herlong is a medium-security United States federal prison for male inmates in California, opened in 2007. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also includes a satellite prison camp that houses minimum-security male offenders.
William Terrell Hodges was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
The 861 argument is a statutory argument used by tax protesters in the United States, which interprets a portion of the Internal Revenue Code as invalidating certain applications of income tax. The argument has uniformly been held by courts to be incorrect, and persons who have cited the argument as a basis for refusing to pay income taxes have been penalized, and in some cases jailed.
The redemption movement is a debt-resistance movement and fraud scheme which is primarily active in the United States and Canada. Participants allege that a secret fund is created for every citizen at birth, and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim this fund to pay bills. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor kits. Such tactics are sometimes called "money for nothing" schemes, as their aim is ultimately to extract money from the government by using secret methods. The name of the A4V scheme is also commonly used to refer to the movement as a whole.
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.
Guardians of the Free Republics, active around 2010, was a group based in the U.S. state of Texas regarded as being part of the sovereign citizen movement. The group was associated with Sam Kennedy, a talk-show host, and with Clive Boustred, a British-born conspiracy theorist living in California. The group was described as having an anti-government ideology.
Sean David Morton is a self-described psychic, ufologist and alleged remote viewer who has referred to himself as "America's Prophet." Until legal troubles led to his incarceration in a federal prison, he also hosted radio shows, authored books, and made documentary films about the paranormal. In 2010, Morton and his wife were charged with civil securities fraud. The director of the New York regional office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stated that "Morton's self-proclaimed psychic powers were nothing more than a scam to attract investors and steal their money." In 2016, Morton and his wife were indicted on Federal tax-related charges, and were found guilty in April 2017. He served a Federal prison sentence.
The Federal Correctional Institution, McKean is a medium-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Pennsylvania. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. An adjacent satellite prison camp houses minimum-security male offenders.
Glenn Richard Unger, also known as Dr. Sam Kennedy, is a former child star and convicted tax defrauder associated with the antigovernment Redemption movement.
Robert Edward Barnes is a lawyer and founder of Barnes Law LLP, a Los-Angeles-based law firm.
