Summer of the Tax Protesters?

Bannister Tax Protester and former IRS agent Joe Bannister was acquitted yesterday of all charges by a federal district court jury in Sacramento. Tax Analysts reports:

A former Criminal Investigation (CI) Division special agent who left the IRS in 1999 over disagreements about the validity of the federal income tax, Banister was exonerated of conspiring to defraud the IRS and of helping Cencal Aviation Products proprietor Walter A. "Al" Thompson file false returns for tax years 1996-1998. Thompson was found guilty of tax evasion and failure to withhold in January 2005 and was sentenced to six years in prison.

Other big tax protestor cases scheduled for trial this summer include:

Larken Rose (section 861 shtick) in Philadelphia in July
Irwin Schiff (pay no income tax shtick) in Las Vegas in August

For more details, see here. See Quatloos for critical views of Messrs. Bannister, Rose, and Schiff.

About the Author

Paul Caron

Paul Caron was named Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean of Pepperdine University School of Law on June 1, 2017. Dean Caron joined the Pepperdine faculty in 2013 after serving as the Dorothy and Leonard Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law in the spring semesters of 2010 through 2013. He served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Pepperdine in 2015-2017. Before coming to Pepperdine, he was Associate Dean of Faculty and Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

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