Jimmy's Report on Tax Court Appearance

Regarding Tax Court in Tampa, FL on November 17:

  1. Not ONE court watcher that I invited showed up despite sending out 2 alerts regarding it to a large patriot email list. RBC says: club members will show up because they know you. People who do not attend meetings will not show up to support you.
  2. We ran into a gentleman about 2 weeks before court. His initials are J. R. We had initially met him 3 years earlier. He's from Florida and is an avid researcher regarding taxes. He came to court with us and was to be our clerical assistant sitting with us at each hearing.
  3. The docket was called at 10 AM and Judge Wells accommodated us by having our hearings one after the other. My son’s first at 3PM, mine, and wife's right after that.
  4. Before our hearings, the District Counsel (DC) asked who J. R. was. We said our assistant. When the hearing started we had every law and statute (piles of books) opened up on the table. Our intent was to make the DC show us the law or statute she relied on to make her assessments and we would review it in the law and refute it and have that on the record. (RBC does not recommend this method.)
  5. Before the Judge came in for my son’s hearing, the DC walked over to our table and asked again who J. R. was and who he was with. J. R. said he was our clerical assistant and was with advocates for judicial reform. At this point, DC immediately walked over to the judge’s secretary and whispered something in her ear. The secretary got up and went into the judge’s chamber for a minute or so and then returned.
  6. The judge came in and the first thing he did (because we were all sitting at the petitioner’s table) was to ask J. R. who he was. He then told him to take a seat back in the courtroom. Then he told me and my wife that our hearing was later and said for us to go and sit in the courtroom area also. That left my son all by himself at the table with piles of books (IRM manuals, Federal Statutes, court case cites, etc.).
  7. My son got nowhere initially because the judge kept overruling him whenever he objected to DC’s statements and her entering of so-called evidence. My son continually asked the judge to have DC site the code or statute on which assessments were made and the judge said that he knew the law and would decide it. (RBC does not recommend this.)
  8. DC produced a witness (Mr. S. from an insurance company). DC made the point that the witness was in charge of the 1099's and the income stated on them for my son. My son now cross examined the witness (and things got very interesting). He asked the witness many questions such as: Do you sign the checks? Do you personally know of the income that is put on the 1099's? Is this all done on computers? Do you ever have technicians fix glitches in the computer system and how often?....etc.
  9. Then, came the most interesting questions he asked the witness: Do you know that the 1099-Misc Form is a True Tax Class 5 document according to the IRS and that a True Tax Class 5 document is for Estate and Gift tax reporting? Were you aware that you were reporting True Tax Class 2 income on the wrong document?
    At this point, the judge just sat there listening intently to this exchange of questions and answers and never stopped it from continuing to the end. The witness’s answer was that he didn’t know he was using the wrong document because this is what the IRS told him to use and he was told to do the same by his predecessor about 10 years back when he took the job. At this point my son’s hearing ended.
  10. When my hearing and my wife’s came up, we both asked for the code or statute that allowed the DC to make her assessments and got nowhere. The judge basically said are you using the same defense as your son and snickered at us. (RBC does not recommend this)
  11. The judge then said he would make his determinations at 9AM on Thursday. That meant that My son, my wife, and I, would have to drive another 300 miles to be there on Thursday.
  12. On Wednesday, the day before we were supposed to return for the determinations, I decided to call the Tax Court to make sure nothing had changed. To my surprise, I was told that the judge had changed the date and time to Wednesday at 11AM. Well, here it was Wednesday about 9AM and there was no way that we could now get together and drive up to Tampa in time to hear the judge give his pronouncements. He pulled a sneaky little trick with this change of day and time.
  13. Since then I have been checking the Docket sheets for all of us on line and they are not even up-to-date. Also, they do not show anything regarding the judges determinations or if, in fact, he ever even made any in our cases. After almost a month, no decision was listed on the tax court website. We are thinking that the judge may have pigeon-holed our cases. Only time will tell.
  14. J. R. made us aware of this whole thing. If you go to document 6209 (the Internal Revenue Manual) you will find that W-2's, W-4's and 1099-Misc. Forms are all classification 5 documents for reporting Estate and Gift taxes. This was also brought to the attention of Richard Cornforth who thinks that we may have something very important here. J. R. is an avid researcher and devotee of Cornforth and checks with him frequently.(RBC does not recommend this approach)
  15. At this point, until we get a determination from the judge, we are holding steady to see what he does. Because of the classification 5 document information, it means that all private sector employers have been using the wrong forms (illegally) to report “supposed income” to the IRS for many years. This could be a very big thing for all of us!
  16. My son has ordered and paid for a typed transcript of his hearing. It should be mailed to him shortly. We want to see if anything has been removed from the record. We tried to get a tape-recording of his hearing, but guess what, they will not make them available to anyone. RBC says: the law mandates they give anybody a copy of the proceedings which are a matter of public record.
  17. Based on this information regarding the classification 5 documents that came out at the hearing, My son, myself and several other insurance agents will be sending letters to the CEO’s and heads of the legal department of each corporation who has issued 1099's to us over the past several years. We are asking them to tell us why and on what authority they are doing this because it is obviously illegal (since the IRS has told them that this is the proper form(s) to report “supposed income” on. Depending on their answers to the letters, we could entertain future legal action against them.
  18. Well Robert, that pretty much updates you on our situation and what has happened to date. Dec 24, 2008