Still Not Eaten by the Leopard Seal
When penguins in Antarctica get hungry, they get nervous. Grouped together on an iceberg, none of them wants to be the first to jump in the water and go fishing — because there just might be a leopard seal waiting for them. There’s nothing in the sea a leopard seal finds more tasty to eat than fresh penguin.
So the waddle (on land or ice, a group of penguins is a waddle; in the water, it’s a raft) bunches together, the ones in the back pushing forward, the ones in the front backing up away from the ice edge. When you see them, it’s easy to imagine these guys in front yelling, “Hey! Stop pushing!” Finally, one or two in the front get pushed in, and the entire waddle freezes, waiting motionless to see their fate. Only when the unwilling pioneers are seen swimming safely with no leopard seal in sight, do the rest of their feathered brethren pour off the edge of the iceberg into the sea and join them.
Ever so often, there will be a particularly brave — or foolhardy — fellow who will jump in the water all by his lonesome without being pushed, figuring he can outswim and outwit a leopard seal. His fate can be grisly. Thus I am a cautious and patient penguin, watching way back in the waddle. For several years now, I have been watching a courageous soul who leaped unafraid into the icy water and remains untouched by a leopard seal.
At first I was sure he was a goner, because he dared the leopard seal to come after him. But it’s been years now, and thousands of penguins have leaped into the water to join him — all of them still swimming free and uneaten. So I thought it was time to tell you about him. His name is Eddie Kahn, and the leopard seal is called the IRS.
Eddie leads a team of experienced CPAs and tax attorneys called American Rights Litigators (ARL). Disdainful of “tax protests” such as 5th Amendment or legal tender arguments that quickly get their advocates behind bars, Eddie and his ARL team looked instead into the structure of federal law.
When Congress passes a law, codified as a statute, it then delegates to a regulatory agency the authority to issue the implementing regulations specifying to whom and under what circumstances the statute applies. These regulations must, by law, be published in the Federal Register. Lacking these implementing regulations, the law cannot be applied and has no force.
Well, it turns out that the implementing regulations for the IRS’ enforcement statutes — things like the requirement to file a tax return and the authority to place a lien — cannot be found in the Federal Register. When queried on this, the Senior Counsel for the Office of the Federal Register, Michael White, replied in writing, “Our records indicate that the Internal Revenue Service has not incorporated by reference in the Federal Register a requirement to make an income tax return.”
What happened is that up until 1972, the IRS and the BATF (the alcohol-tobacco-firearms folks) were part of the same Treasury agency, so the IRS piggy-backed onto the BATF’s enforcement authority with fully published regs in the Federal Register. Yep, the “revenooers” do have full legal authority to go after moonshiners.
But after the two were separated into legally different agencies, the IRS never got implementing regs of its own — because to do so would be to admit they did not have them in the first place. Lack of implementing regulations published under Title 26 — the IRS section — in the Federal Register means that the IRS has no assessment authority, no collection authority, no authority to enforce a lien or seize property, no authority to pursue criminal penalties for failure to file a return or to make a false/fraudulent return.
Eddie and ARL have developed a broad array of sophisticated strategies, based on IRS enforcement statutes and lack thereof, to protect over 4,000 clients from being devoured by IRS leopard seals. I must tell you that I am not one of them. I told you that I’m still playing it safe way back in the waddle. Yet when I see not just Eddie and a few others cavorting in the ocean, but a vast raft of thousands upon thousands, it does give one doubts about the danger.
So if you should have any difficulty with the lovable gentlemen at the IRS, you might consider contacting Eddie and his ARL team. You can reach them at 1-800-882-0248, or by loggin