SILVER, GOLD AND THE IRS

By Derry Brownfield
June 15, 2008

I began a recent presentation before a large group of cattle producers (R-CALFUSA) by showing a paper dollar bill and a silver coin. The words “one dollar” are inscribed on both the coin and the paper, yet the paper dollar will only pay for about one quart of gasoline at today’s prices, while the silver dollar will pay for over five gallons. I explained to my audience that consumer prices are not high – the paper dollar has lost most of its value. It makes no difference how high the price of gasoline goes, a silver dollar will continue to buy gas for 20 cents a gallon, exactly the price gas was during the Great Depression. Based on 1940 prices, a paper dollar is worth about two pennies.

Today in America, we are being systematically robbed of our property because we have allowed the Federal Reserve to flood our banks with fiat, worthless paper money. There is actually a law against paper
money but nobody seems to know about it. The Supreme law of the land is the US Constitution, which stated in Article I Section 10:

Individual states are “not allowed to make any money out of anything other than gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The Constitution also
states that “Congress has the power to COIN money and regulate the value thereof.” Our Founding Fathers knew how a central bank printing paper money would collapse our economy. Had we followed the US
Constitution to the full letter of the law, gasoline would still be 20 cents a gallon.

As the dollar continues to lose value we say our
currency has lost its purchasing power. It should be more properly referred to as embezzlement by the banking industry.

Robert Kahre owns a family business and instead of using paper money he paid his workers with gold and silver coins minted by the United States government. He paid them based on the “face value” of the coins. If he paid a worker a dollar an hour he paid with a silver dollar, which states on the coin that it is “one dollar” regardless of today’s value. His wages were so low that he didn’t have to file W-2
income tax forms or withhold taxes or pay workman’s comp. This upset the IRS, which charged him and his family with 161 federal tax crimes.

The case which was tried before a Las Vegas jury in a Federal Court, heard testimony for almost four months. Defendants believed they had no legal obligation to withhold, pay income taxes or report anything to the government because the “face value” of the gold and silver coins is so small as to fall beneath the reporting thresholds set by the Internal Revenue Code. The government argued that the payments in gold and silver US coins must be considered at their bullion, full-market value when considering the worth of the wages for purposes of the IRS code. The essence of the argument is that Congress is obligated by law to mint and circulate such coins as demand requires, and must establish the value of coins as they are used as legal tender, but a coin’s market value is a distinct, separate attribute of such coins and is of no legal consequence if the coins are used as legal tender. If a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable income can only be the face value indicated on the coin. “A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value anymore than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them.”

On September 17, the jury returned its verdict refusing to convict all nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with. One would think, “we the tax payers would want to hear that the IRS was defeated by the use of the true money.” To my knowledge, the results of this trial were never printed or broadcast by any of the major news media. Three days after the trial’s cohnclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal ran its first and last story about the outcome and then only because of public pressure from interested parties who attended the trial.

The Department of Justice prosecutors know that justice was done and that if this information was made available to the general public their house of cards would come tumbling down. All federal agencies
have a great fear of the truth and only by controlling the news media can they keep the world from caving in on their heads.

(After typing this article, Beth (my secretary) has now surrendered the raise that she has yet to receive, contingent on me agreeing to pay her in gold & silver coins; see the truth does hurt.)

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i thought it would be illegal to pay under minimum wage

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exist elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin to the Hobbes

So wait a minute. Where do they get the coins that are worth so much more than paper money, and who is it worth so much more to?
Head to the bank and trade your cash money in for coins, then exchange them into a foreign currency for larger quantities of paper money, then a final exchange for even larger quantities of U.S. dollars? I'm confused.

Edit :

The words “one dollar” are inscribed on both the coin and the paper, yet the paper dollar will only pay for about one quart of gasoline at today’s prices, while the silver dollar will pay for over five gallons.

Wouldn't you have to change it away from a form of currency to sell it for the value of the metal? If you hand a gas station attendant the coin he's like okay, that's 1 dollar, where's the other 59?

I'm confused.

Don't be, it's just another excuse/scam... Paper money is nothing more than a convenient way of carrying your gold and your silver around... The problem is, they printed more paper money than they had gold and silver... The irony is, when it's all said and done, the average citizen doesn't give a hoot about the gold and the silver, which makes it real easy for others 'in the know' to steal your cash... Credit cards do the same thing, people seem to forget that the numbers actually represent the cash which represents the gold and the silver... Of course, I'm sure they'll do their best to convince you otherwise, which would probably involve a lot of progressive aggressive rhetorical verbiage...

And if I may be so bold... People have been writing checks they can't cash for a very very very long time, and the more the population grows, the less 'gold' there is to go around... Until we get away from the money system, things will only get worse, but we all know that ain't ever gonna happen... ;)

(Common sense 101: We can issue credit cards, we can print money, but we can't create more gold and silver.)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

So wait a minute. Where do they get the coins that are worth so much more than paper money, and who is it worth so much more to?
Head to the bank and trade your cash money in for coins, then exchange them into a foreign currency for larger quantities of paper money, then a final exchange for even larger quantities of U.S. dollars? I'm confused.

Edit :

The words “one dollar” are inscribed on both the coin and the paper, yet the paper dollar will only pay for about one quart of gasoline at today’s prices, while the silver dollar will pay for over five gallons.

Wouldn't you have to change it away from a form of currency to sell it for the value of the metal? If you hand a gas station attendant the coin he's like okay, that's 1 dollar, where's the other 59?

One would assume that when the employees sell the silver to be able to pay for rent and goods etc then they would have to declare any money as taxable income anyway.

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Reality Internet Personality

So wait a minute. Where do they get the coins that are worth so much more than paper money, and who is it worth so much more to?
Head to the bank and trade your cash money in for coins, then exchange them into a foreign currency for larger quantities of paper money, then a final exchange for even larger quantities of U.S. dollars? I'm confused.

Edit :

The words “one dollar” are inscribed on both the coin and the paper, yet the paper dollar will only pay for about one quart of gasoline at today’s prices, while the silver dollar will pay for over five gallons.

Wouldn't you have to change it away from a form of currency to sell it for the value of the metal? If you hand a gas station attendant the coin he's like okay, that's 1 dollar, where's the other 59?

One would assume that when the employees sell the silver to be able to pay for rent and goods etc then they would have to declare any money as taxable income anyway.

and still the guy would be paying less than minimum wage, so ergo, city legend which doesn´t have any relation to the real world, have i heard something like that before

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exist elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin to the Hobbes

Don't be, it's just another excuse/scam... Paper money is nothing more than a convenient way of carrying your gold and your silver around... The problem is, they printed more paper money than they had gold and silver... The irony is, when it's all said and done, the average citizen doesn't give a hoot about the gold and the silver, which makes it real easy for others 'in the know' to steal your cash.

Errm, are you talking about currencies backed by gold, silver? I think you're talking about the Gold standard. Not sure which countries still have this in place, but I'm pretty certain neither the US nor the UK are amongst the ranks.

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

Monopoly money,

Fitting isn't it?

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Monopoly money,

Fitting isn't it?

Don't know, would you be willing to throw all of yours away as if it were nothing more than a game piece or toy?

I doubt it...

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I was about to post something clever regarding economics, precious metals, commodities, etc but then got distraced by Dominique's avatar and here we are...................a perfectly fine male mind gone to waste by circumstances.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

gone to waste by circumstances.

That says circumstances, right?

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me@rescam.org

The usual suspects that have little to no understanding of basic economics entirely missed Dominique's point.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!