Stack was upset that §1706 did precisely what it was designed to do: Deprive him of the chance to exploit independent contractor status to avoid paying taxes through non-filing or through the understatement of income, overstatement of deductions, and avoidance of income tax withholding.
In spite of the overwhelming advantages attendant to employee status, Joe Stack desperately wanted to be treated as an independent contractor for one simple reason: It would have made his tax protesting easier.4
Footnotes:
¹ We have met many taxpayers who worked as independent contractors for years without so much as a peep of protest until they realized, ex post facto, that it might have better for them to have been treated as employees. In our experience, workers tend to be content with their independent contractor status until one of the following happens:
They get fired or quit
They get hurt on the job
They get sued for something they did while on the job
They need a bank loan (and employment verification)
² If Stack had been an independent contractor and was subsequently “fired” by his principal, my hunch is it would have taken him less time to file a claim for unemployment compensation than it takes Apolo Ohno to finish short track.
³ Indeed, §1706 was included in TRA ‘86 because the CBO had estimated that the government was losing up to 30% of taxes because independent contractors were either not reporting all of their income on their tax returns or were claiming fraudulent or questionable deductions against that income.
4 Like all tax protestors, Stack knew that once the IRS had collected his taxes through payroll withholding it would never give it back to him based on previously refuted tax protestor arguments. Consequently, his only chance of avoiding taxes was to control his own tax payments and then use his frivolous arguments to evade or at least defer paying taxes.
Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12In the midst of fast-moving events in Syria and in the shadows of tyranny, oppression, lethality and massacres practiced by the Syrian regime, the Nation of Islam has been stabbed once again. Another waterfall of Muslim blood has been shed without any humanity. These stabs have been hurting the Muslim nation often and raise many questions about our disbanding and enemy's plots and plans from all sides. In the past weeks, Muslim advocates have been exposed to a gruesome massacre after being attacked by a Buddhist group that killed many Muslims. The media have posted terrible images of the victims of this massacre. The Myanmar government turned a blind eye, and it seems that they agree with the criminal killers. Things did not stop at this massacre but transcended to burn homes and farms of a large number of Muslims and killed dozens by fire. All this happened with the help of police junta Buddhism. On July 10, 2012 a curfew was imposed on villages that was inhabited by the Muslim minority, then the Buddhist groups covered by the Myanmar government started a campaign of ethnic cleansing and religious preference that killed 100 Muslims and injured about 300 people and burned nearly a thousand homes. Also, in this awful campaign they have been targeting scientists, doctors and intellectuals. Away from these events and tension, the main thing that everyone knows is that the Muslims there have been suffering for decades from the oppression and persecution of Buddhists via systematic violations. The group of Buddhists are committed against the Muslims there at different intervals, and force displacement, removal of citizenship, and the sophistication in the torture and "ethnic cleansing." Unjust arrests and the demolition of mosques and Islamic schools have deprived Muslims from the lowest human rights.
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