In honor of the Ides of April (Tax Day), here are some mentions of Tax Law Magic.
Christopher H. Hanna, who as Adam Gopnik notes is both a law professor and a magician, has published From Gregory to Enron: The Too Perfect Theory and Tax Law, 24 Virginia Tax Review 737 (2005). Here's a link to a prior Law and Magic Blog post. Professor Hanna also published The Magic in the Tax Legislative Process at 59 Southern Methodist University Law Review 649-688 (2006).
Indiana University law professor Leandra Lederman writes about real taxes, virtual worlds and magic circles here.
Attorney Lisa Davis discusses those "magic words" you need to include if you want your organization to be recognized as a legitimate 501(c)(3) corporation.
What tax courts and Article III courts have never recognized as magic words are those phrases or notions that encompass the idea that the Sixteenth Amendment is somehow unconstitutional, or that one can willy-nilly refuse to pay one's federal income taxes on some wild theory or other, or refuse to file one's returns. This area is a minefield and one must tread carefully. That's what recently got actor Wesley Snipes into trouble. Although a jury acquitted him of tax fraud, it convicted him of failing to file his tax returns.
Why do tax resisters claim we don't have to pay federal taxes? One popular argument is that Ohio, one of the states that ratified the 16th Amendment, wasn't actually a state of the United States in 1911. For more "tax protestor" claims that courts have found invalid, see this great page by George Washington Law School's Jonathan Siegel.
