Al Thompson, the businessman who became a hero to tax protesters when he stopped withholding taxes from the pay of workers at his small manufacturing plant more than four years ago, was convicted on Friday on all but one of 14 tax charges.
The conviction is the latest blow to the "tax honesty movement," a melange of groups that assert various theories that Americans are tricked into paying taxes.
Thompson, 58, of Redding, California, was convicted of filing a false tax return, making false claims against the government and willful failure to withhold and pay taxes.
The jury acquitted Thompson of conspiring with Joseph Banister, a former Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator, to defeat the tax laws. Banister, a certified public accountant in San Jose, California, who tells clients no law requires them to pay taxes, asked to be tried separately in June.
Thompson's actions were the focus of an article in The New York Times in November 2000. Because he had publicly declared his actions, Thompson told the jurors, he did not see how they could convict him of conspiracy.
Thompson's company, Cencal Aviation Products, which made flight bags and other accessories for pilots, is defunct.
He has been in custody since November. He was jailed three times before that for violating civil orders to cooperate with state auditors and file federal tax returns.
The government calculated the tax loss resulting from Thompson's actions was US$256,000.
Thompson, who acted as his own lawyer, argued that he had not willfully violated the law and contended that he had been charged with a crime because "the IRS was misapplying the law."
In another tax protester case, a federal jury in Boise, Idaho, on Friday convicted David Roland Hinkson of soliciting the killings of a federal judge, a federal prosecutor and an IRS agent because of earlier charges against him for willful failure to file tax returns.
Hinkson, who ran Water Oz, a company that sold dietary supplements through a Web site, was accused of offering US$10,000 for each killing.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS