The Truth Shall Set You Free

It’s true.  Just like the Bible says.

A generation or two ago, the Soviet Union dominated a half billion people against their will.  The government controlled all major information outlets, broadcast and press.  So when President Reagan described the USSR as an “evil empire” there was no evidence of such a pronouncement within the Soviet bloc.  Except for one little thing.  The people themselves, unwilling to stay in bondage, began their own “unofficial news agency.”  Using typewriters, mimeographs, photocopies and scraps of paper furtively circulated from one to another, the samizdat was born.

So it was that the words and efforts of reformers and thinkers, like Lech Walesa and Fr. Schmemann, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and John Paul II, pierced through an Iron Curtain Churchill called impenetrable.  In the end, the truth is what brought the Wall down.  The truth does set you free.

The internet serves us in the same way.  We can learn from one another, no matter what the “official” line says.  We will endeavor to provide all who visit this blog with new or little-know information.  Truth about the IRS.  Truth about taxes.  Truth that can free us from undue hardship of taxes higher than the law requires, or overly aggressive collection efforts.  This will be our samizdat and we will help one another to find the truths that lead to the lowest legal tax.

We can have the right to relief from penalties.

Take Penalties, for example.  Most people and business struggle under heavy penalty burdens, exceeding 50% or more from federal and local tax agencies, if they make a mistake, or even if it just looks like a mistake was made.  What can be done?  Anything?  A lot can be done.  The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that penalties are not to be inflicted upon a company or a person whose problems arise from other issues.  The Internal Revenue Code and even the Internal Revenue Manual (the inside rules which are supposed to direct IRS actions) provide that for any reasonable cause, such penalties are to be removed.

So why not challenge the assertion of penalties which the Court and the Statutes and the Rules suggest should not apply?  Those same rules indicate that when an appeal against such penalties is taken, the IRS should ordinarily stop collection efforts, and review the matter objectively.  We can fight such penalties.  Save thousands or more.  We should.  It’s part of getting to that lowest legal tax.