November 12, 2004

• A tax expert told me a while ago that most laws like these exist not because the tax depts actually expect people to admit to illegal activity, but so that when the government goes after taxes on undeclared earnings, it can't be claimed that because those earnings happen to be from illegal activities there's no basis in the tax code. They want every last drop.
• When I first saw this (maybe a month ago) I thought "Oh, those crazy Americans!". However it seems far less entertaining now that senior Police are asking the government to tax drug dealers over here in Airstrip One.
• It's called double jeopardy.
• I'm sorry, but if you want to claim the money, you should have to make it legal. I know the purpose, I understand their side of it, but I would feel absolutely no guilt for not paying taxes on an illegally acquired item, even if I felt guilt about having acquiring it illegally.
• Double jeopardy is so 1980s. Taking your license at arrest for a DWI and then prosecuting is not double jeopardy. Prosecuting someone in state court and then prosecuting the same person for the same crime in federal court is not double jeopardy. Taking someone's vehicle in a DWI arrest is not double jeopardy. Taking money found on the person or in the house/car of a person arrested for a drug offense is not double jeopardy.
• Actually, prosecuting them in state court and then again in federal for the same crime is double jeopardy. And taking someone's property for drug crime should be illegal seizure (or "unreasonable") but unfortunately the 4th is the least popular ammendment right now...
• I'm sorry, I think the whole concept of taxing an underground economy and expecting to get something back from it is naive as anything I've ever heard. It sounds like a great comedy skit for some comedy TV show though . . .
• It's profiting from an illegal enterprise. I think the government should be arrested and prosecuted immediately.
• Excellent book on the subject of the underground economy, from the writer of Fast Food Nation...
• js, I refer to you to Heath v. Alabama, 106 S.Ct. 433 where O'Connor explains how the principle of dual sovereignty allows the state and federal government (or even two states) to prosecute the same case without double jeopardy arising. Exerpt of opinion: The dual sovereignty doctrine, as originally articulated and consistently applied by this Court, compels the conclusion that successive prosecutions by two States for the same conduct are not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause. [4] The dual sovereignty doctrine is founded on the common-law conception of crime as an offense against the sovereignty of the government. When a defendant in a single act violates the "peace and dignity" of two sovereigns by breaking the laws of each, he has committed two distinct "offences." United States v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377, 382, 43 S.Ct. 141, 67 L.Ed. 314 (1922). As the Court explained in Moore v. Illinois, 14 How. 13, 19, 14 L.Ed. 306 (1852), "[a]n offence, in its legal signification, means the transgression of a law." Consequently, when the same act transgresses the laws of two sovereigns, "it cannot be truly averred that the offender has been twice punished for the same offence; but only that by one act he has committed two offences, for each of which he is justly punishable."
• I believe that it is often difficult to convict someone of felony drug offenses - how do you prove they had intent to sell? However, it's pretty easy to convict someone of tax evasion since the pot is required to have proper stamps at all times. The idea is not to actually collect revenue, but to make it easier to convict drug dealers of something. That said, personally I think pot should be legal.
• I believe that it is often difficult to convict someone of felony drug offenses - how do you prove they had intent to sell? Quantity is the usual standard for intent. Over a certain amount and you have possession with intent to distribute. Beyond that you get into kingpin terrority and the federal gov't can execute you.
• Doesn't the government know that anyone who benefits from illegal drugs only supports the terrorists? They said so on a TV commercial I saw.
• For those curious, as to the why: (from Full Text of the Marihuana Tax Act as passed in 1937, but still applicable today.) Introduction (in italics) by David Solomon The popular and therapeutic uses of hemp preparations are not categorically prohibited by the provisions of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The apparent purpose of the Act is to levy a token tax of approximately one dollar on all buyers, sellers, importers, growers, physicians, veterinarians, and any other persons who deal in marijuana commercially, prescribe it professionally, or possess it. The deceptive nature of that apparent purpose begins to come into focus when the reader reaches the penalty provisions of the Act: five years' imprisonment, a $2,000 fine, or both seem rather excessive for evading a sum (provided for by the purchase of a Treasury Department tax stamp) that, even if collected, would produce only a minute amount of government revenue. (Fines and jail sentences were f urther increased to the point of the cruel and unusual in subsequent federal drug legislation that incorporated the Marijuana Tax Act. It is now possible under the later version of the Act to draw a life sentence for selling just one marihuana cigarette to a minor.) One might wonder, too, why a small clause, amounting to an open-ended catchall provision, was inserted into the Act, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to grant the Commissioner (then Harry Anslinger) and agents of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics absolute administrative regulatory, and police powers in the enforcement of the law. The message becomes entirely clear when, having finished the short text of the Act itself, one proceeds to the sixty-odd pages of administrative and enforcement procedures established by the infamous Regulations No. 1. That regulation, not fully reproduced here, calls for a maze of affidavits, depositions, sworn statements, and constant Treasury Department police inspection in every instance that marijuana is bought, sold, used, raised, distributed, given away, and so on. Physicians who wish to purchase the one-dollar tax stamp so that they might prescribe it for their patients are forced to report such use to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in sworn and attested detail, revealing the name and address of the patient, the nature of his ailment, the dates and amounts prescribed, and so on. If a physician for any reason fails to do so immediately, both he and his patient are liable to imprisonment-and a heavy fine. Obviously, the details of that regulation make it far too risky for anyone to have anything to do with marijuana in any way whatsoever. Regulations No. 1 was more than an invasion of the traditional right of privacy between patient and physician; it was a hopelessly involved set of rules that were obviously designed not merely to discourage but to prohibit the medical and popular use of marijuana. In addition to the Marihuana Tax Act and Regulations No. 1, the Bureau of Narcotics prepared a standard bill for marihuana that more than forty state legislatures enacted. This bill made possession and use of marihuana illegal per se, and so reinforced the federal act. From here.
• And an humorous note from the Virginia Law Review, regarding the 1937 bill's passage: Mr. Snell. What is the bill? Mr. Rayburn. It has something to do with something that is called marihuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind. Colloquy on the House floor prior to passage of the Marihuana Tax Act.
• I'm sorry, but if you want to claim the money, you should have to make it legal. I know the purpose, I understand their side of it, but I would feel absolutely no guilt for not paying taxes on an illegally acquired item, even if I felt guilt about having acquiring it illegally. It will be a cold day in hell before I feel guilt over anything I acquire illegally. Especially now. I could grow acres and not feel an ounce of guilt....gee, I might even feel glee over NOT paying taxes on my crops!! Purchasing drug tax stamps does not make possession of drugs legal. Fuck the fucking fuckers.
• Darshon, my dear, I certainly hope you don't do farming. I'm sure they'll have someone knocking on your barn door soon. /paranoia filter
• No worries, those days are over now that I have children. It just pisses me off, the hypocrasy. Guilt? Never! ;>
• Pot bigger than corn.