[SolarCross]

I've just had brain wave for a kind of direct action that is particularly suited to Libertarians. It is inspired by the PPI claims that are going around at the moment. PPI for those that don't know stands for Payment Protection Insurance and it is (or was) a financial product sold on top of loans and other credit agreements. Well I suppose someone must have taken a claim to court that PPI constituted a fraud or was otherwise mis-sold and the court ruled in the claimant's favour. Now a precedent is set anyone who claims that they were misold PPI can take that claim direct to the lender and be pretty sure that they can get redress without even going to court as the lender won't have much expectation of winning in court.

Could something similar be done to challenge the lawfulness of taxation? And in the process get some or all of the tax you paid returned...

Some suggestions: -
- Make sure to take your claim to a common law court where the verdict will come from a jury not a judge.
- Focus on one specific tax rather than the whole gamut; it will only confuse the case and if you win the other taxes will be taken care of by precedent anyway.
- If you are in the US don't even bother trying to challenge a federal tax or you will end up on the presidential kill list. Stick to state level or lower to start with.
- In principle tax could only be lawful on a contractual basis (it would be just extortion otherwise) so challenge it on the basis of a faulty contract. You could try to assert it is extortion (and that is what most people believe is the basis of tax) but governments generally use various underhanded dubious contracts to legitimise taxation so that is what you have to challenge first. If you win on that then tax can only be extortion and a subsequent criminal case filing the charge of extortion will be on surer ground once it is established in law that tax is not genuinely contractual.
- Make sure any representatives you use are on board with the libertarian cause to minimise the chance of them 'throwing' the fight.

[Eran]

In principle tax could only be lawful on a contractual basis (it would be just extortion otherwise) so challenge it on the basis of a faulty contract.

That is your weakness. A tax is lawful on a constitutional basis, not a contractual basis.

In other words, a tax is lawful as long as it was:
1. Adopted in a constitutionally-valid way, and
2. Doesn't violate other constitutional principles.

Taxes aren't "just extortion". Rather, taxes are socially-accepted forms of extortion.

[SolarCross]

Isn't a constitution basically just a kind of contract? A contract needs offer, acceptance, understanding and consideration to be valid.

[Eran]

No, of course it isn't.

A constitution is a set of rules (more or less specifically defined) governing political action (i.e. legitimised aggression).

The element of individual voluntary acceptance is essential for both the legal and moral case for a valid contract. That's why fraud invalidates contracts - at least one of the parties didn't voluntarily accept the contract.

The element of individual voluntary acceptance is absent from a constitution. That is why anarchists don't treat it as morally valid.

[SolarCross]

Right but that is what I thought might be useful to prove in court. A common law court is a scientific evidence based process for discovering natural moral law. Contracts of one kind or another, oaths, pledges, agreements, etc pre-exists by a long way the contract law as discovered by the common law ages ago. What common law did was through its evidence based process discover what constitutes a contract and what makes it valid in a moral sense. The idea is in common law that there is a natural moral law that exists undefined by the human mind but can be discovered and described by the common law method. Perhaps it is time constitutions and statutory law were subjected to the same process to see if it is contrary to the natural moral law or not. I think it is contrary and you do too and I suppose any anarchist thinks it is contrary and good many other people have their doubts so why not put it to the test?

[mikema63]

The government has helpfully solved you problem by having tax courts which a priori accept taxation as legitamate and not subject to review.

[Eran]

I am no expert, but I expect there have been cases in the early days of Parliament asserting its authority to make laws.

That authority must have been tested in early Common Law cases.

One of the fundamental principles of Common Law is deference to precedence. It seems to me that the precedence of deference to Parliamentary law is now far too strongly-enshrined to be changed.

[SolarCross]

Okay you are probably right that existing common law courts have been too heavily co-opted and comprimised by the powers that be to be able to conduct such a case properly but common law's authority doesn't come from governments it comes from the integrity of the process with which it discovers law so we could make our own common law court in which to hear the case. In a way that is what we are doing on this forum.. on the case of tax and government some of us (eran, mikem, myself and others) have been serving as the prosecution and others like pants and mal are serving as the representatives of the defence, but what is the verdict? We do have a jury too.. everyone who reads our posts but they haven't returned a verdict except when they join in as prosecution or defence.. which is messy. So why not do something a little more formally with a proper process that will return a definite verdict?

[Eran]

I like the spirit of your suggestion. In generally when arguing here, I know that I have zero chance of persuading the other side. I might be able to provide people who agree with me with some ammunition (I certainly learned a lot from the arguments of other libertarians). But often what I have in mind is an objective, open-minded referee.

Unfortunately, I don't think many of them are around, though I might be wrong.

Would anybody reading these words consider themselves an impartial referee on the question of the legitimacy of taxation, for example?

[SolarCross]

Okay the role of the judge in common law court is mostly just a referee, making sure the players play honestly, fairly and by the rules of the court. His other role is as expert on the accumulation of law data (precedent) for the benefit of the jury. The jury of course are random people pulled off the street so while they are supposed to have a moral sense with which to discover law they aren't expected to know anything about the accumulated data from previous cases that might be relevant, the judge is there to help fill in the blanks. The judge needn't be impartial in his personal feeling but he should be professionally impartial in how he guides the court process.

If we did want someone impartial on the idea of government and tax then a minarchist would be an obvious choice since he is already philosophically inbetween anarchist and statist.

The project would be really nice if it could be televised and on youtube..