George Pragovich is at it again. A self-confessed anti-tax guru, Pragovich is said to be the brainchild behind the latest round of plaintiffs’ suits filed against the IRS.
Though Pragovich refuses to answer questions about his involvement in the suits, Heidi Broward, the wife of former plaintiff Paul Broward was quoted as saying, “He’s one of the major coordinators of what we’re doing. I just fill out the forms and send them in.”
Stunning, isn’t it? Folks who claim to want “out” of a system that they compare to slavery, alleging that most taxpayers are paying taxes blindly and not out of a legal obligation, appear not to be informed about what they are actually doing. Nonetheless, more than 100 such suits have been filed all over the country, including one filed pro se by Michael Stephens, a truck driver from Georgia whose case was dismissed without prejudice this year. Forty other such suits have already been dismissed.
There is no doubt that the remaining suits will likely be dismissed. There’s not much new about these kinds of cases which have been repeatedly rejected by the courts, except that this latest round of efforts appears more coordinated than previous suits. The coordinated suits were reportedly the result of networking efforts across the internet.
The most famous of the anti-tax prophets was Irwin Schiff, who was sentenced to what amounts to a life sentence in prison (13 years in prison – he was 78 at the sentencing) for hiding millions of dollars that he made off of his “paynoincometax.com” web site and related propaganda. This was not his first conviction for the same or related offenses.
At his latest sentencing, the Judge noted, “Of all those who participated in this scheme, only Schiff made money. And in all other things in his life prior to this scheme, he was a failure in his life.”
