From: DennisLeeWilson-Ariz-Wyo Sent: 6/11/2003 8:21 PM
I copied this interesting tidbit about the 16th Amendment from Gary North's Reality Check newsletter:
If you'd like to subscribe to Reality Check (no charge email) click the following link (TANSTAAFL):
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/sub/GetReality.cfm -------------
What very few Americans know is that the income tax amendment was never actually passed by the voters. There were major irregularities in the amendment's voting procedure. The government wanted that tax in 1913, so the irregularities were overlooked. The Attorney General announced that it had been passed by the voters. Not for another seven decades did anyone go to the original sources, state by state, to see if the amendment had been legally ratified. Bill Benson, a former tax collector for the state of Illinois, did the spade work, collected 17,000 documents, and co-authored a book that showed that the 16th Amendment had not been legally ratified. The book, THE LAW THAT NEVER WAS, came out in 1985. It immediately was dropped down the memory hole. Professional historians, who should have done the work two generations earlier, ignored the book. If you're curious, click through:
http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com
This historical fact does not mean that the tax laws are not going to be enforced, as always. It surely doesn't mean that a jury will uphold you if you stop paying taxes. No jury will believe Benson's story. No jury is going to let you off the hook when they know they are forced to pay. It's a matter of envy.
Any attempt to use legal technicalities to overcome the lifeblood of the modern welfare State will fail. The courts are not going to overturn the entire modern economic system, with its faith in salvation by legislation and taxation. Our taxes are the judges' bread and butter.
Bill Benson doesn't pay income taxes. But he spent time in prison, where he almost died, as part of his one-man protest. He also has what you and I don't have: officially certified records of each state's voting in 1912. 
