“You would think a little light bulb would go on in their head and they would say, ‘Why in the heck is everybody else paying taxes?’ ’’ said Peter R. Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who is now a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Washington. “There are people who are peddling this stuff. It’s a way to get people to believe something that’s too good to be true.’’
A 3,000-word manifesto posted on a website registered in Stack’s name rails against the IRS and accuses the agency of ruining his life. Stack’s bitter feud with the IRS apparently drove him to commit suicide Thursday by slamming his single-engine Piper PA-28 into an Austin office building where the IRS has offices.
Stack’s writings suggest he was part of a loosely organized movement that dates to at least the 1950s. Some believe the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to levy income taxes, was not legally ratified; it was ratified in 1913.
Others believe that paying taxes is purely voluntary. Still others believe in fictional loopholes that would exempt large groups of Americans from paying taxes if they were only in on the secret.
Tax opponents aren’t limited to antigovernment militia members living off the land out West. Stack was a 53-year-old software engineer in Austin. Others include movie star Wesley Snipes and a decorated police detective in the nation’s capital.
“They’re fairly prevalent,’’ said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups. “We’ve had a right-wing tax protest movement going back several decades now. They were very hot in the 1990s, but they are very much still out there.’’
The center has documented five plots against the IRS or its agents since 1995, including one that year to blow up an IRS office in Austin. Potok said he was unsure if it was the same building Stack crashed the plane into.
In 2006, a Utah man was accused of threatening IRS employees with “death by firing squad’’ if they continued to try to collect taxes from him and his wife. The man, David D’Addabbo, pleaded guilty to one charge of threatening a government agent and was sentenced to five months served.
