Five reasons you don't owe income tax, dammit! The most heartfelt beliefs of the "tax honesty" movement.

• Author: Doherty, Brian

Here are some of the core arguments against the legality of the income tax one finds in the tax honesty movement. Devotees probably would regard them as oversimplifications. This is certainly not an all-inclusive list.

1) The IRS declares in various documents that the income tax is "voluntary." And in Flora v. U.S. (1960), the Supreme Court announced, "Our system of taxation is based upon voluntary assessment and payment."

2) In Brushaber v. Union Pacific (1916), the Supreme Court declared that "the conclusion that the 16th Amendment provides for a hitherto unknown power of taxation" is "erroneous," and thus the 16th Amendment did not give Congress any taxing powers it did not already have. Hence, an unapportioned direct tax such as the income tax still cannot be legal. (Most mainstream readings of this extremely hard-to-follow decision say the Court meant Congress always had the power to levy an income tax, and that it was merely the question whether it should have to be apportioned that was at issue.)

3) Income, for the purposes of the tax code, should not be understood in any "common sense" way but only as defined by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in Merchant's...