Been Taken In Or Distracted By Silly (And Irrelevant) Assertions About The Legal Status Of The IRS? Don't be. They're nonsense (and so is most everything else usually asserted along with them, regarding the IMF, the UN, the Queen of England etc.--those who have seen this stuff will know what I'm talking about...)
As is always true in the law, context dictates meaning:
The letter excerpted above is a response to a question about a particular judicial contest, Diversified Metal Products Inc. v. T-Bow Company Trust, et al, in which the Dept. of Justice testified that the IRS is not an "agency of the United States Government"-- a declaration that has been widely bruited about as supporting the absurd notion that the IRS doesn't really exist, is only a part of the Puerto Rican bureaucracy, or similar nonsense. All that was actually meant by that testimony was that within the particular context of this case, due to the nature of the issue being litigated and that of the particular statutory authority being litigated (which contained a standard "for purposes of this section, "agency of the United States means..."" specification), the IRS did not meet the definition of such an "agency".
In most other statutory contexts, though, it does; and the IRS is, in fact, a bureau of the Department of Treasury as AUSA Derbidge observes. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode31/usc_sec_31_00000321----000-.html for language related to the statutory authority of the Secretary of the Treasury to authorize internal revenue activities and offices. |
