So you are telling me this 'Businessman' wasted 11 peeps x 4 hours x 10$ min wage = $440, to 'make a statement' to IRS and pay his $400 tax bill with pennies / coins?!
What kind of a businessman does that? What a waste of man power.
Right in the caption.
A smart business man. He has gotten a lot of free publicity out of it.
I can do a lot of things for attention; it doesn't make me smart.
if payment can be made onerous then perhaps the taxing authority is itself
Ok what free publicity? For his business? Do we even know what his business is? No website. No name.
I meant that he wasted labor time (and money). That's not a smart business man. If he had had a plug for his business website or service in all the news, then it's smart and you can say "publicity for $440. Otherwise, it's just a stupid stunt that wasted everyone's time -- the IRS, the media, you and me (reading it and reacting to it).
As per section 31 U.S.C. 5103 of the "United States Coinage Act of 1965" Federal law specifically says: "United States coins and currency are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."
Even charging an extra handling fee for dealing with all the coins is difficult to justify given the wording of the law. Luckily, carrying around 5 wheelbarrows of coins is also inconvenient for the person who's doing the protesting, so you really only see this sort of thing when someone is really aggravated and has lots of free time and money, it's not like we have a rash of DMV offices being crushed under a singularity's worth of pennies.
[0]http://www.craftvinyl.com/page165 (He actually got the BBC to link directly to his site, wow, he just made another million I bet!)
Also: does the law imply that every public entity that you pay taxes to in the US must have a physical office somewhere that you can go pay with cash? Mind blown.