Wesley Snipes Busted For Tax Evasion - Page 2
Oh man, don't screw with the IRS. They will castrate you, d00d.
I have to agree, though, that they seem to be wanting to make an example of Wesley. I mean, while the charges are serious, and he should absolutely be made to pay what he owes, three years in prison seems to be a little much. In this day and age when we have drug dealers and rapists being freed early because of overcrowding in our jails, do we really want to stick a guy in there for three years because of something like this?
I mean, come on. Richie Sambora drives drunk with two underage children in his vehicle, and all he got was three years' probation, three months of classes, and made to pay some fines.
However, Wesley did seem to bring some of this on himself, with his theories on taxes and why he should be exempt from having to pay them like any other wage-earning American:
Mr. Snipes had become an unlikely public face for the tax-denier movement, whose members maintain that Americans are not obligated to pay income taxes and that the government extracts taxes from its citizens illegally. [...]Tax deniers assert variously that the tax laws are valid but do not apply to them, that no law makes anyone liable for taxes and that the government tricks people into paying. Promoters of tax denial claim that people can legally stop paying income taxes by executing certain documents, or by not signing others, such as tax returns. Courts have rejected all of these arguments. [...]
In closing arguments [in January], lawyers for Mr. Snipes sought to portray him as a well-intended victim of bad advice by his co-defendants. They called his tax theories “kooky,†“crazy†and “dead wrong,†but said acting on these views did not make him a criminal because he disclosed his actions. The defense also objected to his being tried by an all-white jury of seven women and five men.
The Supreme Court has ruled that tax deniers can demonstrate the absence of criminal intent by asserting that they “sincerely believe†that they are not required to pay taxes, although they cannot escape the levies.
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