I BEAT THE IRS AT THEIR OWN GAME

What should every American know about the IRS? Well, thank you for having me back, Lara. Basically, that the IRS has to lie to their own computer systems to assess an income tax against someone who doesn't, you know, swear that they owe the money. So that that actually happened to me. So I guess I could start by explaining my own personal story. You know, as you mentioned, I resigned from the IRS back in 1999. And because I concluded, at least preliminarily, that there wasn't a require for me and most Americans requirement for me and most Americans to pay the federal income tax, I stopped filing federal income tax returns. So 1998 was the last year that I filed a federal income tax return. Well, then that when you don't cooperate with the IRS, as I stopped doing, of course, not for some kind of civil disobedience, but simply because, you know, all the research I did indicated that these researchers were correct, that there wasn't a law that made me required to pay the income tax. So 1999 was the first year that I didn't file a federal tax return and didn't file one in 2000, 2001, 2002, all the way up to 2025. Wow. But in the, in the early 2000s, the IRS triggered what they typically will trigger when someone stops filing tax returns. And so that triggering process is to basically create income tax assessments against the person that didn't swear on a tax return, what they owed an income tax. And so, you know, it was, the battle was on, shall we say, to fight with the IRS on a civil basis, as opposed to criminal, you know, there's basically two ways that the IRS can pursue someone largely. And most, most of the time it's civilly with audits and collection measures, you know, rating your bank account or, you know, auditing your bank account and finding out what really happened in your life versus what you put on the tax return. Wow. The other way is criminally, where they actually will try to investigate and prosecute and imprison you. So the IRS started out with a criminal prosecution against me, which I guess I'll set on the table if we have time later. But then they moved to a civil kind of enforcement where the IRS created these income tax assessments against me. And so, because I had experience, you know, fighting on behalf of clients, this time, you know, I was in the breach fighting for myself. And so I did what you're very familiar with, a Freedom of Information Act request and a Privacy Act request for all the internal records that the IRS keeps on their computer systems. They're basically called transcripts. Yeah. And these are, you know, this is written or typed evidence of what goes on in the IRS computer systems. And was this related to you? Those are the documents that you FOIA'd or you write? Not generally. Yeah, no, personally, I mean, I've done it for other people, but the documents that I have in my blog article relate to me personally, like literally it was a personal battle between me and the IRS. And so as I examined with the help of others who had, you know, more experience and information than I did, was able to gather the manuals that the IRS has that define all of these various codes, because these transcripts and computer systems are filled with codes, you know, 150 or TC 914, or things that to the average person, and even to me, don't mean anything unless there's a definition. That's right. And so using these manuals, I was able to decode what the code said about me and about these alleged income tax assessments that the IRS created against me. And so I came to find out that the IRS computer systems indicated that I had filed a form 1040 A, so 1040 A. It's a particular kind of a simplified 1040 form that was that it was in existence for many decades. It ceased to exist, I believe in 2018 and beyond. But for many, many decades, there was a 1040 A form, which is a simplified version of a 1040. So the IRS computer systems, their codes indicated that I submitted a 1040 A form to the IRS, and that I requested the IRS to calculate my income tax liability for me. But you didn't. Well, the problem is that I never filed a 1040 A, and I certainly didn't ask the IRS to calculate my income tax liability for me. So that was completely fabricated. But Joe, what is a 1040 form? What does it say? The 1040 is the typical form that millions of Americans file, where you list your W-2 wages and your Schedule C sole proprietorship revenue and deductions. It's not your tax return? Yeah. The 1040 is basically the tax return that most people are familiar with. So the 1040 A is a simplified version of a 1040. But there's another aspect to the 1040 A form, and that is that you can actually ask the IRS to calculate your tax for you. So these are circumstances that had nothing to do with me, because I didn't file any forms with the IRS, let alone a 1040 A. So who filed that 1040 A in your name? That's another aspect, is where the IRS will code their computer systems as if a 1040 A form exists, but there's no such form. They don't even bother to create the hard copy form that forms the basis for the code. It's like faking votes in an election and not bothering to slip some ballots in that night to match the count, right? Right. And then you're an election denier for noticing. Yeah.