April 15^th has come and gone, and you know what that means. Either you’re recovering from a hangover caused by celebrating Seth Rogan’s birthday, or you were likely stressing to meet the IRS deadline to file your income taxes – unless you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who choose not to.

This is a subject that immediately raises contentions, especially among those who feel resentment towards so-called “tax dodgers”. It’s not surprising that those who choose to pay the income tax would naturally feel an acute irritation toward those deemed by the corporate media as “tax cheats” who refuse to “pay their fair share,” creating a void that must be filled in by everyone else.

Indeed, a hailstorm of media hatred followed the announcement that Oscar winner Emma Thompson and her husband Greg publicly declared their refusal to pay another penny in income tax until justice is served to the thousands of HSBC tax dodgers who have laundered billions of dollars in Mexican drug cartel money.

But Thompson’s ultimatum is just another chapter in a long fight, and exemplifies an ever-growing movement that continues to challenge the preconceived norms about what income taxes are actually designed to do. Such ranks are filled with the likes of IRS whistleblowers, accountants, and lawyers, alongside peace activists who have ceased filing income taxes on the grounds that they refuse to fund America’s illegal wars around the world.

However, if my father pays more income taxes than Exxon-Mobile, it seems obvious that something is drastically wrong with this system. I’d bet my bottom dollar that if you’re reading this text, you’ve likely paid more income tax over the course of your life than Boeing, General Electric, and Verizon combined; because Boeing, GE and Verizon consistently pay zero income taxes.

But I suppose the irritation toward so-called tax dodgers is easy enough to understand. After all, why do they think they can avoid their social responsibility to pay their fair share – right? Doesn’t that just mean the rest of us have to work harder? Isn’t it hypocritical for anyone to rely on the same government services we all pay for, if they evade their responsibility to contribute to them? 

This might seem logical, but Income Taxes do not contribute to government services. Not one little bit.

We know this is the case from one of the most striking testimonies on this subject, which, believe-it-or-not, was voiced by the government itself, within the findings of a White House panel known as the Grace Commission. Joseph Peter Grace was appointed by President Ronald Regan in 1982 to identify waste and inefficiency in the US Federal government. Grace requested that members of his commission “be bold” and “work like tireless bloodhounds, leaving no stone unturned in their search to root out inefficiency. Unfortunately, their conclusions were so shocking that the report has been buried, and most have never even heard of it.

The Grace Commission’s final report submitted on January 15^th of 1984 concluded:

“… all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government… 100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt “

“Interest on the federal debt” might be the most important phrase we can take from this.

Exactly zero percent of our Income Taxes fund our government…We’ve only had the Income Tax since the 16^th Amendment’s fraudulent passage in 1913, which just happens to have been the same year that the Federal Reserve came into existence. Prior to that, Americans kept 100% of their earnings, going all the way back to 1776. There was no IRS. There was no filing deadline on April 15^th. In short, there was no tax on labor.

And while it might be tempting to assume that because America’s government was smaller back in the day, it cost less and therefore didn’t have any need for an income tax until the 20^th century when the whole thing became more complex.

But contrary to this notion, America’s national budget was actually rather hefty prior to 1913. America financed schools, colleges, roads, railroads, subways, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and many other services and institutions, just like we do today. And these costs were, relative to inflation, as significant in many respects as they are today.

So how did America fund all of those programs prior to the income tax? -prior to 1913? Well it clearly wasn’t through Income Taxes because they didn’t exist. The truth is that Income Taxes only fulfill the interest payments on the debt our government owes to the Bank it’s indebted to. America’s money is loaned at interest by a private Bank called the Federal Reserve Bank – a bank that is provably private as it lists unnamed shareholders on it’s website – shareholders who earn dividends based on the interest payments. The money that’s loaned to our government is loaned with interest attached to it, which means America has to pay that money back, plus interest, to the Federal Reserve Bank.

It’s like when someone obtains a car loan for 10 grand and has to pay back 12. Except the government borrows way more money and has to pay back way more interest. In fact, the Federal Reserve collects, on average, $36 million an hour in interest from the American people. And that’s where Income Taxes come into play. They’re not really taxes per se. They’re interest payments, and like all other interest payments, they disappear into the polyester pockets of our beloved bankers.

Of course, any diligent economics professor might interject at this point and say, “Well now wait a minute here – interest is how banks make their money; that’s how they stay in business.” Of course this is true. No argument there. When I pay the bank back 12 grand for a 10 grand loan, that extra two grand that I pay them is how the bank pays the salaries of their employees, keeps the building running, and – oh yeah – fills the stock portfolios of those who own the bank. Oops. That’s where this becomes a bit problematic, and if one is willing to follow the money, it’s easy enough to see how it’s corrupt as hell.

America is supposed to have a National Treasury. But our treasury has operated under “Emergency Powers” since the great depression (which, consequently, was caused by the very banking institutions that benefited from the crash).

What a coincidence.

Which brings me to the issue of collateral. When someone walks into a bank for that aforementioned ten-thousand-dollar car loan, the bank ask them to put something up as insurance to ensure they’ll pay the loan back – that’s known as collateral. But then, if the US government is loaned every penny it spends, then what has our government put up as collateral?

We the people; you and I and everyone we know are the collateral to keep this financial farce floating forward.

Again, it’s important to understand that this happened during the great depression. In 1933 the country was broke. In turn it was forced to take out huge loans from the same Federal Reserve bank that caused the depression in the first place. And we were all put up as collateral, through, what was at the time, a brand new invention; birth certificates.

Despite what most of us might think about them, Birth Certificates today exist as an integral component of our financial system. That’s why your birth certificate looks like a bank note – because it is a bank note. It will even say it somewhere on the edges, which you may observe are designed with the same webbing you see on the back of your one dollar bill. If you don’t believe me, feel free to take a look at your own birth certificate. Mine says, “Midwest Bank Note Company.”

Do you know what’s printed on yours?

Prior to 1933 there were no such things as Birth Certificates. They didn’t exist. I don’t mean to suggest that we didn’t keep records of birth prior to 1933. Certainly, the Live Record of Birth was (and still is) a standard slip filled out upon a newborn’s arrival into the light of day. But it was not a “certificate,” which is a critical distinction because certificates are defined by our laws as “warehouse receipts.” But why would you keep warehouse receipts on people…unless you considered them to be “human resources?” And in this case, they’re also certified bank notes. And because they’re bank notes, they’re worth big bucks; approximately $750,000 per certificate.

Three quarters of a million dollars? Now you might be thinking, “Three-quarters-of-a-million dollars? Sweet! I’m rich! All we have to do is cash these babies in and I’m driving a new Tesla!”

But unfortunately for all of us, we can’t just cash in our birth certificates because they don’t really belong to us. They’re about us but they don’t belong to us. We’re required to have them because we can’t get work without them, because we’re required to compete with each other for sustenance and accommodations; the physical slavery of the plantations of yesteryear required the slaves be housed and fed; the economic slavery of today requires us to feed and house ourselves. Slavery never ended. The plantation owners realized it was expensive to feed, house, clothe and provide medical attention to their workers, and decided it would be a better idea to simply give everyone a dollar-fifty an hour and make them provide for themselves.

Nevertheless, this all might beg the question: if these birth certificates don’t actually belong to us – if we cannot benefit from their actual monetary worth – then who do they belong to? Well it’s a bit byzantine, but the primary beneficiaries are the shareholders of the the private, Federal Reserve bank. That figure of three-quarters of a million dollars is how much the average American is estimated will pay in Income Taxes over the course of their lifetime. That means that our financial system considers most of us to be little more than chattel.

In this way, birth certificates differ little from the deeds that plantation owners used to keep on their slaves.

Through this elaborate system, which does a brilliant job of keeping us ignorant of the fact that we’re anything but free, our central banking system has cleaned up in their task of extracting wealth from the country through the parasitism of interest; usury.

I find it decidedly appropriate that according to the Gnostic scriptures, compounded interest just happens to be the highest sin, worse than murder, worse than rape, worse than coveting your neighbor’s oxen. According to the Gnostic, Usury can earn you a place at the lowest and most terrible of the hell realms.

We can see how the World Bank and International Monetary Fund extract wealth from third world countries through similar schemes. John Perkins wrote extensively about this in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, describing this very process with regards to how the World Bank and IMF put entire countries in debt. And those banks are ultimately owned and run by the very same beneficiaries who own the Federal Reserve.

But Perkins isn’t the only one speaking out about this. He’s a drop in an ocean of voices. Over the past two decades, several former IRS agents have taken whistle blower status to shed light onto this, exposing such things as, for example, the fact that there is no way to file an income tax without violating your Fifth Amendment right that’s supposed to protect you from testifying against yourself, and that an unapportioned tax on labor is, in fact, completely unconstitutional – a fact corroborated by our very own Supreme Court.

And this isn’t just speculation. In 1894 the US Supreme Court actually ruled that an unapportioned tax on labor is unconstitutional. Despite the fact that it was declared unconstitutional, the 16^th Amendment to the Constitution was passed later on down the line to legitimize the scam of fleecing the American people. To this day, ardent supporters of the status quo, fawning economics professors and government authorities continue to insist that the 16^th Amendment grants the power to unconstitutionally levy an income tax on the private labor of American citizens.

There’s only one problem with that: The 16^th Amendment never legally passed the ratification process. The number of states needed to ratify the Amendment was never met; a fact repeatedly corroborated by modern case law.

As it turns out, the fraudulent passage of the 16^th Amendment was so problematic that another series of lawsuits prompted yet another Supreme Court ruling, determining that the average American is not required to pay the tax, because the 16^th Amendment’s powers only extend to corporate gains earned from corporate activity. After its passage, the Supreme Court ruled that the 16^th granted no new powers of taxation. So if you didn’t have to pay the income tax prior to the fraudulent passage of the 16^th Amendment, you didn’t have to pay it afterward, and that applies to the vast majority of us.

This is the dirty little secret and the reason why refusing to file with the IRS is completely within your legal rights. It’s also the reason why they rely on intimidation and scare tactics to enforce it.

There is no law that requires the average American to pay income taxes. No statute exists in the code that requires you to file with the IRS.

And if you’re wondering why people sometimes go to jail for refusing to file with the IRS, you may begin to see (if you haven’t already) how our government seems illegitimate, does not operate in the interest of the people, and has functioned to perpetuate the interests of a series of increasingly fascist organizations composing the so-called “deep-state” which relies on intimidation and coercion to secure their bottom line.

It just might be the most organized crime syndicate in American history. And it has become so outrageously powerful precisely because it flies the flag of the stars and stripes. They dress themselves up in the very symbol of the so-called free world that’s supposed to fill our hearts and minds with the prestige of the shining city on a hill. That facade of legitimacy is paramount because otherwise we might start associating them with mafia thugs who threaten to burn you for not paying your protection money. And they can get away with anything because they enjoy a monopoly on force. They have more guns and they enjoy using them. They have what it takes to take what you have.

They also know that if too many people begin to see through their legal fiction, we all might stop filing income taxes and the scam would end. So they have a vested interest in perpetuating the lie. In the words of John Turner:

“The IRS fears the public gaining a knowledge of how their scam works.”

You know what’s interesting about John Turner? He’s not a tax cheat. He’s not a deviant. He’s not a conspiracy kook. He’s a former IRS Criminal Investigator.

Many activists and journalists have tried to talk with the IRS directly about these problems, including many prominent employees of the IRS itself, such as John Turner. But the IRS stonewall just about every inquiry that comes their way. In the words of another former IRS agent, Sherry Peel Jackson:

“[the authorities] can’t answer because if they did, the American people will know the whole thing is a fraud.”

And in the words of IRS Special Agent Joseph Banister:

“Rather than pulling up a chair they pull out a club.”

In summation, the IRS are the lackeys for the Federal Reserve Bank, to collect interest payments on the federal debt owed by our government, who’s put all of us up as collateral after they went bankrupt in 1933. But that still doesn’t explain how we actually fund the government. We still have libraries and schools, roads and highways, special interest groups and entitlement programs, welfare and social security, Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention the most inflated military budget of all time. So if Income Taxes aren’t paying for any of this, then what is?

There exist countless other forms of taxation that Americans pay every single day: Automobile Registration, Building Permits, Court Fines, Parking Meters, Gasoline Taxes, Toll Booths, Traffic Fines, Marriage Licenses, Medicare and Social Security, Hunting and Fishing Licenses, Property Taxes, Inventory Taxes, Real Estate Taxes, Road Usage taxes, Septic, Estate, and Capital Gains Taxes, CDL License Taxes, Accounts Receivable Taxes, Utility Taxes, Workers Compensation Taxes, Tobacco and Liquor Taxes (aka “sin taxes”) and in most states there is also a Sales Tax.

I could go on but I think you get the point. The cost of everything goes up while wages stay the same. This is the story of our enslavement, and it’s killing us one dollar a time.

By this measure, when we include the Federal Income Tax into this grotesque mix, it appears that, according to the calculations of several accountants I’ve spoken to (who would rather remain nameless for the purposes of this piece) today’s average American pays 64% of their total earnings into various tax collection schemes. But that’s more than four-times the relative tax rate that contributed to the American Revolution, sitting about about 15% of total earnings.

Taxation without representation?

Today we’re paying more than four times the ratio of our earnings relative to what colonists considered so outrageous that the country declared outright war against their masters.

So what prevents Americans today from the kind of outrage that inspired a Revolution two centuries ago? Well for starters the world is a very different place; we’ve experienced the Industrial Revolution, the Civil Rights movement, women’s suffrage, two World Wars and the internet age since the late 18^th Century. We should also consider the fact that there is no longer a physical frontier. It was perhaps much easier to stage a Revolution when the Atlantic Ocean physically separated one side from the other. And because the lines were clearly defined, when the British imposed taxes, Americans recognized the exploitation for what it was. Today many Americans honestly believe in the unquestionable authenticity of our tax system here at home.

But if major corporations pay nothing with regards to income tax, what are they doing that the rest of us aren’t doing? Why would a major corporation be exempt from paying any tax whatsoever? What is it about HSBC that allows their clients to become exempt from filing like the rest of us?

Major corporations and the government lackeys they employ like to think of themselves as exempt – because they are. They proved as much in the opening hours of Obama’s first term, when they bestowed upon themselves the charming expression “too big to fail.” This really translates to “too big to jail,” which should tell us something about who owns – and therefore runs – the levers of power. Washington D.C. remains as impotent as ever when it comes the wielding of real authority. As Mayer Amschel Rothschild once famously proclaimed:

“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!”

This is why the IRS will never send SWAT teams into the headquarters of HSBC or Exxon-Mobil, or General Electric. Those corporations own the politicians who direct policy for the IRS. It’s the literal definition of fascism; the merging of corporate power with state power.

And all the while, these same corporate pirates deny the people the wages we deserve, and then sell our wages back to us with bank loans that we have to pay interest on, while they avoid paying interest on the huge loans they force the government to borrow in their need to perpetuate endless growth, ecocidal insanity and perpetual war.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can ask questions. We can demand answers. We are permitted to express ourselves. We are allowed to challenge the conditions of this arrangement. The only question that might stand in the way of this movement gaining real traction is, do we have the courage to do so?

Gabrielle Lafayette is a journalist, writer, and executive producer for the Outer Limits Radio Show.