- -6
In the case at bar, Mr. Gaumer testified that his
study of Defendant's Exhibit A--a book that purports to
tell the reader "[w]hy you are not legally required to
file tax returns"--led him to do further research to
verify the author's claims that people like himself had
no such obligation. This research led him to Exhibits
B through E, consisting of photocopies of Brushaber v.
Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1, 36 S.Ct. 236, 60
L.Ed. 493 (1916), Flint v. Stone Tracy, 220 U.S. 107,
31 S.Ct. 342, 55 L.Ed. 389 (1911), Stanton v. Baltic
Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103, 36 S.Ct. 278, 60 L.Ed. 546
(1916), and pages 2578-81 of the Congressional Record
of March 27, 1943. Gaumer testified that he learned
from Brushaber and the Congressional Record excerpt
that income taxes are excise taxes. * * *
As a legal matter, the exhibits do not validate
Mr. Gaumer's views. As a factual matter, however, we
think a jury might have discerned a nexus between these
materials and Mr. Gaumer's stated belief that he was
not required to file income tax returns. Brushaber and
the Congressional Record excerpt do indeed state that
for constitutional purposes, the income tax is an
excise tax. This statement is reiterated in Stanton,
and Flint discusses the scope of the term "excise tax"
in a way that could conceivably be thought to provide
some comfort to a person in defendant Gaumer's station.
Mr. Gaumer should therefore have been allowed to
present the contents of the exhibits to the jury to the
extent that the material was relevant.
Clearly, the case of United States v. Gaumer, supra, does
not support petitioner's position in the present case, since it
is stated therein that the cases of Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.,
supra, and Brushaber v. Union Pac. R.R., supra, on which
petitioner relies in the instant case, as a legal matter, do not
validate the views that a taxpayer is not required to file income
tax returns because an income tax is an excise tax. The Court's
holding merely was that the evidence should have been permitted
to be introduced in connection with the issue of whether the
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