Regarding The "ALL UPPER CASE" Fallacy
There is a persistent misunderstanding within the ranks of the "tax honesty" community involving the rendering of names in all upper case letters. In large part, I believe this to be a tribute to Irwin Schiff's success in disseminating his view of the "income" tax scheme.
Fundamental to Schiff's perception of the scheme is his belief that the legal meaning of the term "income" is confined exclusively to 'corporate profit'. This belief leads to the conclusion that when efforts are undertaken to impose the tax on American natural persons, it is because a presumption is being made that such Americans are not natural persons at all, but are actually artificial persons-- that is to say, corporations. The common bureaucratic practice of rendering personal data such as names and addresses on forms in all upper case is seized upon as evidence of this presumption, because, although no statute, regulation, or other evidence to this effect has ever been unearthed, the legend had arisen that such a rendering is only legally appropriate for artificial persons.
There are rules in some jurisdictions specifying that the names of corporations are to be rendered on legal documents in all upper case-- but such rules do not prohibit or preclude the same practice in regard to non-corporate entities, or imply anything about such entities when their names are rendered in the way corporate entities must be. A law that says all battleships are to be gray does not mean that everything gray is a battleship.
(Some specific discussion of the 'corporate profit' misunderstanding can be seen at www.losthorizons.com/tax/misunderstandings/corporateprofit.htm, and material addressing certain related misunderstandings associated with the terms 'person' and 'individual' can be seen at www.losthorizons.com/appendix.htm).
The "income" tax scheme does not rest on the presumption that Americans are corporations, of course-- if it did, anyone hauled into a courtroom to defend themselves against allegations of failure-to-pay or failure-to-file would simply furnish the court with an affidavit challenging the obviously ridiculous presumption, and walk away with an easy victory. Nor is there any deep and nefarious meaning to the use of upper case letters on bureaucratic forms-- a practice embraced by most American pharmacies just as much as by federal agencies. Not being a bureaucrat, I can not definitively explain this practice, although I think I can sensibly speculate that it is done for the simple purpose of eliminating the possible confusion of a lower case 'l' for an upper case 'I'; or a lower case 'q' for a lower case 'g'-- if not just to speed up or simplify the clerical process.
In any event, the simple fact is that the 'upper-case' practice is by no means universal-- even within government taxing agencies. It is my hope that by demonstrating this, those who have been distracted by this red herring and the underlying notion which it serves, and will be inspired to re-evaluate their perceptions of the "income" tax scheme and seek out a more accurate understanding.
What follows are scans of relevant portions of several documents which have come into my possession. All were created by either the federal Internal Revenue Service, the federal Social Security administration, or the Michigan Department of Treasury. Were the "all upper-case" theory true, the addressee names on all of these documents would be rendered that way. I realize that this is not a huge number of examples, but really, it only takes one.
I'm going to make the following scan of a document sent to 'Cracking the Code...' reader Darrell Williams the last in this presentation, because the correspondence itself merits a few comments. This document consists of an admission by the federal government that, despite its explicit assertions that Darrell owes a considerable sum in "income" taxes, the government cannot (or, at least, will not) withhold his money in the face of his demand for its return.
The money involved was seized from Darrell by a levy on his earnings, shamefully honored without question or protest by the company for which he works. However, Darrell, armed with the confidence that comes from actually understanding the truth, demanded a hearing regarding the government's claim. In response Darrell was sent the letter from which the following image was scanned, announcing that the government declines to participate in any hearing and will instead return Darrell's money (see a scan of the refund check below)-- while nonetheless closing with an insistence that he still owes well over $14,000 in federal "income" taxes. Darrell informs me that he has since filed appropriate documents correcting the erroneous evidence on which these asserted liabilities were based.
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