Sovereign Citizens Helped Swindle $1B from the Government They Disavow
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Basically it goes like this -
* SSN Act (created after the market crash) was created not only to provide faux "retirement" accounts but also "incorporate" every citizen of the country as a company upon birth.
* New baby John Smith instantiates company JOHN SMITH with account 123-45-6789
* ALL banking and financials go through your company account JOHN SMITH (check your checks, statements, loans). This included Liens, child support, taxes, alimony, etc.
* The line you sign your name on your check is not actually a line but very tiny "Authorized Representative" IE: John Smith is acting on behalf of JOHN SMITH
Why?
Because Feds didn't have the power to enact laws on individual citizens at the time. So they created companies out of every citizen which they can then force to pay into Social Security (among other things). This has evolved over time granting the government the power much more power over individuals through their "shell companies"
Some sovereign citizens claim to be able to gain sole control over their shell corporation JOHN SMITH and with that all government encroachments on their rights via liens and taxes are invalid.
Disclaimer: I have no position on this conspiracy theory just providing a better summary
Of course, this sort of thing could only appeal in the US, where a lot of the laws aren't product of a giant conspiracy but rather a complex patchwork of local, state and federal strictures, so a spew of incoherent legal nonsense takes a given court office a while to deal with.
What these conspiracy people don't get is that a nation exists as a consequence of its subjects and warriors loyalty to it and obedience of it. It's just a power structure. All the legalities and voting and bureaucracy around it are just there because it's much easier for everyone to live with a power structure that behaves predictably, justly and generally nicely. But the legalities are not actually necessary. At the core the answer to "Why?" is "Because we can".
Note that I'm generally pro-government. I'd rather have one nice power structure to deal with than a world operating after the rules of school, where I have to protect my lunch money myself. This is just reality.
"We live in reality, where the four laws are not common law, statutory, code and... whatever. The real laws are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. Everything else is fair game."
Isn't this the spirit of hacking in general?
Of course, they're trying to hack a system rooted in fundamentals that undermine hacking. So rather than a vulnerability leading to a "full compromise", the best that can be obtained is a minor advantage.
Similarly, relying on technicalities you will still get tripped up by mens rea.
But other model-playing optimizations like tax avoidance are perfectly acceptable. As I said, "minor advantage" rather than "full compromise".
One of it's most interesting examples is how early modern governments reformed agricultural practices, not to raise productivity levels but to make them more easily measured and therefore taxed.
It happens with "wage gap" stuff too; people assume the USA wage gap stats apply to them here.
Oh yeah, and we get Trump supporters.
I think copyright is the only other area I can recall where people assume USA legislation applies (that's a pre-internet example), some think you have to add © to get copyright protection.
A country with a thousand years of accumulated legal rulings seems like fertile soil for conspiracy theories. Superseded common law is the framework for many sovereign citizen's arguments in the US.
>Oh yeah, and we get Trump supporters.
We also weirdly get Brexit supporters.
Sovereign's go from extreme libertarian to crackpot in their explanation of why the world doesn't match their description of the natural free state. They invent an elaborate story of paper people and corporations and conspiracies to act as a sort of dark matter that makes their theory match reality. Soverign's can have wildly different takes on the dark matter while still agreeing on the core ideology.
Soverign's are basically just magical thinkers who happen to be libertarian.
It is silly to assume you can evade any given state forever unless you actually want to live like a hermit. Or start from scratch, like Americans of old, and even they had to fight and lose wars.
It covers a lot of ground -- lots of contextual information -- and is quite long, but readable (and entertaining).
The real question is what is driving these people to behave in such an irrational way? Might it be the ever increasing reach of government into people’s lives or the fact that many in positions of power in the US seem to think of that the people should serve the government rather than the government serving the people...
From what I understand, a substantial part of it is scam artists taking advantage of people who fundamentally lack understanding about the legal system. See this judge's ruling that contains a substantial guide on the subject, and look at the section "The OPCA Guru": https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012a...
If you start with an assertion that the founding laws must still be in full effect (the fundamentalist mindset, effectively), then it stands to reason that if you can just find the correct loopholes you can cut through all the totalitarian cruft that was plastered on top. There's a lot of runway before individuals actually run aground from these theories (and social pressure to not admit when they've failed in a minor way), so you end up with the sovereign citizen social club.
(AFAIK what actually happened is that those loopholes were de facto closed via societal consensus. And to the degree that some of them are still effective, you're fighting an uphill social/economic battle to choose them)
If I want to sell a large chunk of capital gains in a single year, is there anything stopping me from moving to PR for 6months+1 day to a year and paying nothing on it?
It’s not just “take a vacation in PR for 183 days”. You have hoops to jump through and need to actually move there. I think cap gains rate becomes 4% on the PR part, with some amount of apportioning between PR and prior gains.
Set aside several evenings to do the basic reading, then if still interested, engage in a PR-based expert counsel to ensure you both understand and that you do everything correctly.
For me, it would only make sense if the amount in question was mid 7 figures if you’re just doing it for taxes and didn’t otherwise want to live in PR.
If you can arrange for your capital gains elsewhere to look like income in Puerto Rico though, then you're all set.
The "tax event" happens when I sell my shares, no?
I know multiple people who've moved to PR for tax purposes.
Even with a few hoops that I assume are manageable if others are doing it, it seems way too good to be true. I would seriously consider moving if I lined up a bunch of capital gains to liquidate in a single year.
and rich corporations, too. indeed, why not us?