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March 14, 1993
TAXREB1.ASC
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This EXCELLENT file has been shared with KeelyNet courtesy of a
person who wishes to remain nameless. The details are of his
PERSONAL experiences with the phenomenon currently known as
"UnTaxing" wherein participants follow a specific plan of action
that essentially removes them from participation in the US
government and in the process claiming to make them IMMUNE from the
TAX laws. We have had contact with others who tell us that they
don't use drivers licenses and when picked up and taken to court,
quote specific laws which causes the case to be thrown out post
hast. We were not told the details of the aforementioned legal
quote but a few of these people also act as advocates for others
who wish to challenge the "system".
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Tax rebellion, the early days
My introduction or induction into the tax rebellion in 1978 was like
a non-believer walking into a tent revival. When I walked out 3
hours later I was a believer. I had seen the holy grail and it was
the constitution. Clearly, this was a document written by common men
and easily understood by common men some two hundred later.
Everything was clear, the government was taking us for a ride on the
fast moving train of state and I decided to get off. It would be
some ten years and many thousand of dollars in back taxes,
penalties, and interest before I got back on the train heading for
the cliff.
The group I became involved with was Your Heritage Protection
Association. YHPA was a church founded by a man named Armon Condo.
Armon was a small business man in Garden Grove California. He was
also a student of the Constitution and after several years of self
study concluded that the following was self evident:
The income tax was unconstitutional
Nothing but gold and silver could be made as a tender in
payment of debt
Federal Reserve Notes are not dollars, they are a general
obligation of debt of the United States Treasury
Wages are an even exchange of labor for money, there is no gain
in the exchange.
Using these precepts, he started his organization with the intent in
mind to have the Income Tax Amendment to the Constitution declared
Page 1
unconstitutional. Along the way, thousands of people climbed on-
board this new train and headed for their own cliff. When the train
finally came to a stop in the mid-1980s, several thousand of these
people lost their homes, marriages, and most of what they owned.
I am going to try to chronicle the events as I saw them. Looking
back some 14 years some of the dates and the sequence that events
occurred in may not be completely correct, but for all intents and
purposes, the events actually happened.
Why a Church?
Churches in America have traditionally enjoyed a certain amount of
constitutional protection from the government. The IRS code in
describing the tax exempt status of religious organizations defines
that such organizations may apply for exempt status but are not
required too. What this means is that if you donate large sums of
money to a church and want to declare the deduction you had better
make the donation to a organization that has a tax exempt number.
If you want to start your own church however, there are no
requirements that you apply for official recognition. It is not
difficult to obtain official recognition. All you have to do is file
the appropriate forms. For instance, Ms. Ohara, the well known
atheist used to head a rather large organization in Texas that held
tax exempt status as a religious organization.
Armon used the church as a shield against the state. When I joined
YHPA in 1978, they were reputed to have in excess of 5,000 members
in California and the surrounding states. The total number of tax
groups at the time was suppose to contain some 30 to 40 thousand
people. Many of the groups differed in their approach to opposing
the tax system.
YHPA bought a small self contained shopping plaza in Garden Grove
and set up for business. They ran a small printing shop that mostly
printed their own material for meetings and their newspaper. They
also had their church offices and opened a number of other store
fronts among which were a gold and silver coin shop and a dried food
store. (More on this later.)
YHPA held public and member only meetings. Public meetings were
usually held at small restaurants and would typically draw 100 or
more people. Word of the meetings spread like wild fire in Southern
California. The typical meeting would begin with a salute and pledge
of allegiance to the flag. A warm up man (usually a gentleman named
Dan, I cannot recall his last name) would then take the podium and
get everyone in a good frame of mind. This was usually done by
asking everyone to take a dollar out of their pocket and hold it
up. Everyone with a paper dollar would hold it in the air.
He would then tell them that a real dollar would not burn and if
they thought that they had a real dollar in their hand, then test
it. This usually resulted in several, if not all, of the people
present lighting dollar bills on fire.
This was a great stunt and had everyone laughing. Dan would then
open a small hand book and read the definition of a dollar to
everyone as described by the Constitution.
Page 2
Next, a small rotund man with a bald head and a full curly white
beard would take the stand. His name was Irish Conway. Irish had
charm, a gift of gab, the ability to hold an audience and a style
that would make any of the TV preachers look bad, real bad. He would
start by reading the first and second amendments of the
Constitutions:
"Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of
religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.."
He would then progress through a reading of several articles of the
Constitution then conclude with one or more stories of atrocities
committed by the servants of the people, the IRS (the Infernal
Revenue Service) as reported by any number of newspapers. "The
government has gotten away from us." he was fond of saying, "and we
have to take our government back from the bueraRATs." The catch
phrases at the time were bueraRATs and banksters.
By the time Irish was finished, usually 40 minutes or so, he would
have the majority of the people in the room ready to march on the
Federal Building in Los Angeles. Twenty to thirty percent of the
people at any given public meeting would be ready to sign up. The
fee for joining YHPA was $25 Federal Reserve Notes (referred to
FRNs) a month. For the fee, YHPA would give you a subscription to
their newspaper (nominally priced at $25 per year) and legal
assistance to represent you at the IRS or Franchised Tax Board (the
FTB) in California.
I had attended a meeting in the spring of 1978 and thought that the
group was "on to something" but didn't want to put myself or my new
wife at risk. We had just moved into a house and all I wanted to do
was to work and save some money. I told a coworker about the group
the following fall and he attended a meeting by himself and joined
that night.
Within a week, half of the people I worked with had joined. I
attended a meeting the following week and my wife was so taken with
the concept after hearing it a second time that it was a done deal
by the time the meeting was over.
At the time I was self employed, working as a computer software
consultant, as were most of my circle of friends. When quarterly
filing time came around none of us filed returns. Looking at the IRS
instructions of who must file, it was obvious that no-one had
received any dollars (remember, nothing but gold and silver coin
shall be made a tender in payment of debt), and just as obvious, our
labor was an even exchange and thus, there was no gain or income.
I coasted along through the rest of 1978 and 1979 with a smug
feeling that I knew the TRUTH. The truth is a very strange thing.
Everyone and every group have their own version of the truth. That
is really the only truth that I am aware of . If that were not true,
then the Jews and Arabs, the Catholics and Protestants, Hindus and
Moslems, and the various sects of the Christians would all be
getting along.
Anyway, I believe that what happened to me was the same as what
happens to someone who under goes a religious conversion. I was
secure in my faith of the Constitution.
Page 3
"We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are
created equal and endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights."
Surly, these words were as divinely inspired as any in the bible or
other document inspired by God. I was later to find out that the
government really didn't give a damn about what I or anyone else
felt about or though they knew about the constitution.
It was during this time that I met the acquaintance of a Mr. William
Drexler. Bill Drexler had, according to the organization, and
stories printed in the YHPA newspaper, been the youngest Federal
Magistrate ever appointed. After reviewing the law for years from
such a lofty perch, he resigned from Government service because he
saw the light of the Constitution and realized that the PEOPLE were
being screwed.
When I met Bill, he was the head Bishop of the Church of Christ. He
was at least as convincing as Irish when he spoke. He was a large
man (tall and wide) and presented an impressive figure. Bill
started speaking at the members only meeting and presented yet
another program. He was prepared to setup a church under the Church
of Christ name for anyone for the sum of 500.00 FRNs.
What did this do for you? Well, it bought you a number of things:
a set of documents that you had notarized and filed showing
that you were a real church,
ordination as a minister in the Church of Christ,
and Bills advice on what to do if the Feds or the State came
after you for what ever reason.
Bill's organization was based in San Diego and he normally drove up
to Orange County for meetings twice a week. Once for the YHPA
meeting (Thursdays) and once for the meeting of the inner circle of
the Church of Christ. His organization was so over swamped with
applications that he began franchising other ministers so that they
could sell church packets.
The minister selling a church would receive 50.00 and the Bishop
would received the other 450.00. Everything fair and square. What
was almost humorous about the whole home church movement was that
most of the people who formed churches actually became fairly
straight laced Christians.
Groups of home churches would make treks to Mexico on the week ends
and deliver food and clothing to the homeless in Tiajuana. Several
groups came together and bought land in Mexico and started
orphanages. So all in all, I guess Bill Drexler actually was a
driving force that did some good.
Anyway, the tax movement began spreading across the country.
Different groups with difference philosophies began springing up in
most major cities. Several newspapers were created and people
started joining the movement. We knew that when twenty or thirty
percent of the people rebelled, the government would be forced to
abolish the immoral income tax and go back to a Constitutional
consumption tax. What the movement didn't count on was the
resourcefulness of the state governments.
Page 4
Being an engineer and a self employed consultant, I and many other
consultants in the movement, were very results oriented. We new we
were on to something. And the something was that the government had
stolen the country and the Constitution from the people. Recapturing
the government away from the bureaucrats and returning it to the
people was going to be our revolution.
We had the Constitution on our side and when everything went down we
were going to make sure that the elected officials and the
bureaucrats paid. We could see trials for crimes against the people
taking place and the Nuremberg defense was not going to work. It was
obvious that the IRS was seizing property without due process and we
were going to stop it.
Early 1979 brought with it several seizures of accounts and property
of members in the YHPA and other organizations. The interesting
thing that we saw however was that the news media pandered to the
IRS. If you want to know what the government attaches real
importance to, watch what happens to a person arrested for murder.
The government will fall all over themselves in order to protect
that persons rights.
They will provide them with an attorney, allow them access to law
libraries, and in the case of Randy Craft (a serial murderer in
Orange county California) provide them with computers and a private
investigator.
Get yourself in Dutch with the IRS however, and you can have your
bank accounts seized, your property taken away, and find yourself
out on the street without a way to make a living.
What would typically happen is the IRS or the FTB would target
someone in order to make them an example. Their bank accounts would
be seized, their house and cars seized and sold at public action.
About that time they usually found themselves out of a job. In
California a large percentage of the people worked in the Aerospace
industry. A word in the right place would usually result in a tax
protester being laid off while the company was actively hiring.
Husbands and wives in the movement would usually come to an impasse
when the prospect of being on the street was present. My
observations of people attending the meetings was that wives were
much more militant than husbands. But what actually happened was
that when someone went to the labor camp at Lom Poc (the Federal
honor farm in California), it was usually the husband.
Mom and the kids went off and found another Dad. I also figured out
the strategy of the FTD and the IRS. They would not confront the
organizations head on in court. That could set the stage for
national publicity and would only allow the tax protesters to get
their message out to the population as a whole.
The element of failure was much too great for that. What they did
was go after people in the tax courts where the judges were
appointed by the IRS. In order to refute IRS charges and claims
against your assets, you first have to exhaust your remedies in the
regulatory courts (those courts run by the IRS).
Page 5
After that, you could go to the civil courts and sue to recover what
ever the IRS stole from you. Sounds fair, right? Wrong.
The thing that was wrong with it that as soon as you set foot in the
tax court, you have no assets. When the Feds get through with you,
you would have to get major financing to buy a stamp from the post
office. Get hit in an auto accident and Larry Parker will represent
you for free based on a projected settlement. Get hit by the IRS and
no one will represent you unless you can pony up a substantial
retainer.
Consider this, at 150.00 per hour, a 15,000 retainer only buys a
hundred hours of representation. That's less than three weeks worth
of work at 40 hours a week.
About this time a gentleman from Arizona whose name I do not recall,
came on the scene. His program said that instead of not filing a
return, as opposed to the program that YHPA had, what we should be
doing is filing fifth amendment returns. If you examine the bottom
of your tax return you will see that you are swearing under the
penalty of perjury that everyone on the return is correct and true.
What happens if something on the return is not true? Right, you can
be charged with perjury which carries about a 14 year term. The
theory behind the fifth amendment return is that you are invoking
your fifth amendment rights against self incrimination. The problem
with this theory is that the courts have held that a fifth amendment
return is the same as not filing a any return.
Several people received free room and board at Phoenix and Lom Poc
for following this program.
Early in 1980 my wife and I sold our house in California and moved
to northern Arizona for a number of reasons. I commuted back into
California each Monday morning and returned home to Arizona on
Thursday or Friday night of the same week. Over the course of four
years I ran through four cars and a wife.
Our problem started in 1982 when the state of California levied
against the company that I was consulting with. I know, they can't
do that. But the fact of the matter is that they did. What happened
to the YHPA organization that had been collecting a twenty-five
dollar membership fee for the previous four years?
Well, they had given several hundred thousand dollars to two
different groups of lawyers who really did nothing but posture in
front of the bench. In fact, one of the lawyers who had been
receiving money from the organization for several years withdrew
from one of the cases when the IRS started auditing him.
Did he feel obligated to return the money he had been taking for the
previous two years? Right, get real. The lawyers are only a small
degree more or less honorable than the IRS.
So there I was on my own. A friend who was being attacked at the
same time found an elderly gentleman by the name of Art Porth. Art
had a small tax organization in the San Gabriel area of Southern
California. Art had been fighting the income tax laws since 1930.
His premise was that the revenue codes were unconstitutional. He had
Page 6
been thrown in a mental institution by a federal judge in the mid-
1950s.
The reason, the judge declared that Art was insane in manners
concerning the income tax. It took his wife over six months before
she managed to find another federal judge to issue a writ to get him
out of confinement. Anyway, Art was having some small success in
having the wolfs called off of some people. The Feds began targeting
Art's group when their numbers began growing and Art eventually left
program when his health finally failed (at the time I met Art, he
was seventy five years old.).
During this time I discovered that the State of California was much
more viscious than the Federal Government when it came to taxes. In
fact, we discovered that the IRS would inform the state that you
were under suspicion. Because the State of California was constantly
in need of money, they would go after you with a real vengeance. The
State went after me and hounded me from one consulting contract to
another.
I found out later that they would talk to people at my last contract
in order to find out where I went. Why would someone inform on a
coworker? Simple, they were threatened with an audit if they did not
corporate.
One contracting agency was so dirty with their own tax situation
that they actually contacted the FTB and offered me up in exchange
for some consideration concerning their case.
About this time another friend came back into the system. His
accounts had been levied against, his house was under a seizure
order and one of his cars had been stolen by the IRS. He found a
former IRS agent that was at the time running a tax consulting
business. The agent negotiated a deal with the agency and my friend
filed his back returns and went in hock to make the penalty
payments.
I found a lawyer that helped me in the beginning but fell on her
face several years later. My attorney arranged for yet another
former IRS agent that now had a big time accounting firm in Newport
Beach California to prepare my returns.
Additionally, she located a small company that had for all intents
and purposes gone out of business with a carry forward tax loss
amounting to twenty some thousand dollars.
The owners could not because of their own tax situation, use the
loss. I bought the company for about two thousand dollars in cash
and used the carry forward to offset some penalties and interest.
The way the tax game works is that if you owe any taxes and make a
payment, the payment goes against old taxes, not current taxes. This
works to the IRS advantage because you wind up taking a long time to
pay off the 10% penalty and 10% interest per year compounded (that's
really 20% a year).
It took me from 1983 until 1988 to pay off the back taxes and
penalties. The IRS had my account spread around three different
offices. I went through a similar deal with the state of California.
Page 7
At one time the state had been listed as armed and dangerous. My
attorney had that taken off of the computer. If I had been stopped
in traffic during this time I would have had some real fun with the
cops.
Was all of this worth it? Well, I know what fighting for principal
is all about. I know what stress will do to a marriage. I know what
driving 80 thousand miles a years will do to you. I know a hell of
lot about hindsight. What did I gain?
Well, the YHPA organization advised people to take the tax money
they saved from being in the program and invest it in property or
precious metals to guard against the coming collapse of the country.
I saved some twenty thousand dollars a year for about three years
and invested it in Arizona property, weapons, food and tools. What
have I got to show for it? Not a damn thing. My former wife enjoyed
the fruits of the movements and now owns a house in Kingman Arizona,
six or so acres of property on the Big Sandy river with some
improvements, several hundred ounces of silver, and a lot more.
I walked away from the marriage after she asked me to leave with a
leased car, some personal weapons, and my clothing.
The cost of my coming back into the system amounted to about a
hundred grand paid to the state and federal governments spread over
five or six years in addition to paying normal taxes during that
time. Additionally, I paid close to twenty grand to attorneys and
accountants. I currently have a new family and am working toward
trying to rebuild what I lost during that period of my life.
Would I advise someone else to enter a program to avoid paying
taxes? Well, if you want to feel like fighting for a good cause, go
for it. But keep your eyes open. If the leaders of any movement tell
you that they are doing this for the good of the country, then ask
them why they charge any more for the program than printing and
living costs.
Armon Condo was not making a great deal of money from YHPA, but
several other people in the program were. I will write another paper
detailing what happened to Armon Condo and Bill Drexler and their
fortunes later.
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We ask that you please SHARE this file with anyone you know who is
considering getting involved in such a process as UNTAXING.
Although there is probably great validity to the claims, there are
currently insufficient numbers of people willing to get involved to
make the attempt worthwhile when one takes into consideration the
above examples of concerted government harassment.
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If you have comments or other information relating to such topics
as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page.
Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
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If we can be of service, you may contact
Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
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