The following is an adaptation of a note I sent to a Solari Action Network member today.
Dear Sam:
I thought I would send some thoughts regarding your questions about a possible tax protest.
There are two former IRS agents who are very capable who may be able to help you determine which specifics will be appropriate in this situation. One is Sherry Jackson. The other is Joe Bannister. I believe Sherry offers consulting services. I have not met Joe and don’t know what services he offers.
After seeing Aaron Russo’s documentary, America: From Freedom to Fascism, I have become convinced that the time is now to gather some serious legal and tax expertise to see how we can create a legal mechanism to escrow taxes. The federal government is violating the laws regarding the management of tax and tax supported resources. Trillions are missing. The government refuses to produce audited financial statements. It seems to me that to continue to pay money into a criminally managed system is not lawful.
There is a secession movement in Vermont and a number of other states. One way to do this might be to combine the two. I wrote an article several years ago called The Solari Solution about the possibility of citizen led “place based” tax reengineerings:
The Solari Solution, by Catherine Austin Fitts, Scoop Media, May 1, 2003 (also archived here)
One option is to pay any taxes immediately due, and then to invest your time and resources to gather such expertise for a serious discussion of what mechanisms we as citizens can create to enforce the laws regarding tax money. Your time and knowledge is too valuable to get bogged down dealing with these issues individually — better to invest in building a powerful and serious constituency behind you that could grow into many people withholding and reengineering tax flows with you.
Given how many people depend on government checks and how many of us enjoy the benefits of lawful government expenditures, I have always felt that just not paying taxes would fail to be a politically effective tactic — it would divide neighbor from neighbor. How about, for example, if we instead said something like the following:
We are concerned that the government’s ability to fund Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and other programs is in question because it is spending money and accruing debt and liabilities outside of the law. So we are going to create an escrow here in this place. We, the citizens of this place, pay you, the federal government, $X in taxes and you, the federal government, pay us $Y in benefits. We will simply take care of implementing the benefits ourselves. So we will not send you $X and please do not send us $Y. Meantime, we will send you something for our share of the national debt when you have (for example):
- gotten the missing $4 trillion back,
- proved that you are not engaging in securities fraud,
- cleansed fraudulently issued securities from your books,
- produced accessible audited financial statements organized by agency and by congressional district, including all purchases and contracts with corporations,
- initiated a plan to reduce and eliminate public debt,
- initiated a plan to implement sound currencies issued by the US Treasury,
- returned all sensitive data on citizens and government financial data to the control of the government with no access by private corporations.
For the latest on securities fraud, see the piece from the Financial Times about the black hole in the US accounts we have listed under the key documents in our revised Missing Money Articles & Documents web page. We have also added links on money missing in Iraq. The mysterious death of Phillip Merrill, former Chairman of the Ex-Im bank, may be connected to money missing in Iraq (see articles on Merrill’s death in Top Picks of June 26 below).
A local escrow of taxes could combine the assertion of the law with respect to tax money with participatory budgeting and the proper management of of government resources. For example:
The Experience of the Participative Budget in Porto Alegre Brazil, MOST Clearing House Best Practices Database
It could also combine an ability to reengineer all the flows in a place that are currently feeding the tapeworm — including currency, bank deposits, government purchases and credit, and investments — including in the very institutions that are serving as depository for the US government and are legally responsible for missing money and fraudulently issued securities. Why is everyone in your neighborhood banking at Citibank, Bank of America and JP Morgan-Chase, when those corporations are responsible for $4 trillion missing from your government? It is a lot easier to impeach the big banks from your checking account than to impeach a President who will be replaced by someone else who must do what the big banks tell them to do.
I am delighted to see you thinking along these lines. All healthy solutions will require management of the federal financial mechanism in a manner that generates a positive return on investment, by place and system-wide, and that addresses liquidation of the debt created to make it possible to keep a negative return on investment system going for many years.
Best,
Catherine