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"obtuseness". See Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68, 72 (7th
Cir. 1986) (quoted in Talmage v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1996-
114). That misunderstanding arises from a false distinction
between the way in which some taxes are determined and collected
without the filing of a return, as by stamp or at the point of
sale, and our self-assessment system of filing income tax returns
in which taxpayers are required in the first instance to compute
and report to the Government the amount of their taxable income
and the resulting tax liability. But, as Judge Learned Hand
pointed out in his famous aphorism about income tax avoidance in
Commissioner v. Newman, 159 F.2d 848, 850-851 (2d Cir. 1947):
Over and over again courts have said that there is
nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to
keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich
or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public
duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are
enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To
demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.
[Emphasis supplied.]
Again, the notion that the tax on the income from employment
or labor of a human being is an unconstitutional tax on his
existence, and that only artificial entities such as
corporations, formed and continued by State action, can be
subjected to income tax, is, in this day and age, even when
alternative approaches to raising revenue are receiving
legislative consideration, too quaint to require extended
discussion. In this connection, petitioners' notion that common
speech restricts the term “person” to artificial persons is just
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