Kotmair v. Brown SAPF Fiduciary John B. Kotmair debates veteran ex-IRS tax attorney Alvin Brown on Baltimore talk radio
"Who cares what the law says!"
BACKGROUND
On March 23, 1999, CNN Financial Networks published a "warning" regarding the Save-A-Patriot "Internet tax bandits." This report was filled with a number of wildly inaccurate statements and smears. Featured in the report was a former IRS tax attorney by the name of Alvin Brown who stated that SAPF was selling "buckets of poison" to the public. A copy of the report was faxed to WCBM, a talk radio station located in Baltimore, Maryland, which resulted in this program being aired. (Since SAPF is accustomed to being vilified by the establishment media, the report was largely ignored here when it first appeared.)
ABOUT THE SHOW AND THE TRANSCRIPT
This program was originally broadcast on WCBM on July 19, 1999. It opens with the talk show host, Les Kinsolving, reading the CNN report in its entirety. The CNN report is not reproduced here, but many of its inaccuracies are addressed by Mr. Kotmair during the show.
It should also be mentioned that Mr. Kinsolving has for some time been an outspoken critic of Save-A-Patriot, commonly referring to the Fellowship as "those crazies in Westminster" and "tax bandits." His apparent intent with this radio program was to publicly humiliate SAPF fiduciary John Kotmair with the assistance of his "IRS expert." (What was the actual outcome? You be the judge!) In fact, Kotmair was to be publicly facing not one but two adversaries. (Much like the situation in the courts where judges frequently advance the prosecutor's agenda rather than remaining neutral arbiters.) The show received a lot of advance publicity and enjoyed a large listening audience.
The following transcription has been made as accurately as possible, using a tape of the original WCBM radio broadcast. There are times during which more than one person is talking at once and it was not possible to determine what was said for brief periods. These are noted in the text. Where possible the tone of the conversation is also indicated. To the best of our knowledge there are no substantive errors in the following text.
Les Kinsolving Show WCBM 680 AM, Baltimore, MD, 7/19/99 KINSOLVING: Since it [the CNN report] is strongly critical of Save-A- Patriot and similar organizations, I do believe that in fairness our guest John Kotmair should have first rebuttal for five minutes, then we'll go to our other guest, attorney Alvin Brown. Mr. Kotmair, welcome to WCBM and the floor is yours.
KOTMAIR: Well, thank you Les, it's a pleasure to be with you.
KINSOLVING: Thank you.
KOTMAIR: Well, first of all, I'll give you a little bit of history. I became interested in the federal tax code back in 1968. I started studying it very seriously in 1973. In 1984, I founded the Save-A- Patriot Fellowship. For 15 years now we've been teaching the Constitution and the tax code itself; and the regs and the manual. In 1993 we wrote to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue... only before I get into that, might I say that...
KINSOLVING: You can say anything you want, this is uninhibited radio.
KOTMAIR: OK. ...that the CNN misquotes us like everybody else. They say that we contend that the laws are "unconstitutional." That's not so at all. The laws are very constitutional, as written. And we have never said that the tax law is "unconstitutional." If we were saying that the tax law was "unconstitutional" and people should not obey the law because of that, then the first one that did that by our say-so with us, we'd both be charged with conspiracy and the Fellowship wouldn't be 15 years old. That's nonsense, that's ludicrous.
Getting back to 1993, we wrote the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and asked if the Commissioner or a delegate of the Commissioner would come to the Fellowship, and show us where we were wrong in the law. We published this in the newspaper, and we received no response. In October of the same year we wrote again and asked the Commissioner if she would (at that time she was just appointed), if she would come or have her delegate come to the Fellowship and show us if we're wrong in the way we're teaching the law and publishing about the law. After that we received a letter from the chief of the CID [Criminal Investigation Division] in Washington, DC saying that the Commissioner was declining our invitation, and that he was turning the whole affair over to CID in Baltimore.
Well, on December the 10th, 1993, the IRS raided our Fellowship. Their Affidavit of Probable Cause was charging me criminally as follows, they made four allegations. The first allegation was that I had no Employer Identification Number, and that I was not withholding taxes from the employees here. The second allegation was that people come and go. The third allegation was, there quite possibly could be contraband on the premises. And the fourth allegation was that we could not exist without being regulated by government.
Well, there was six hearings in the Federal court in Baltimore. The first thing we argued back to the court, we said that if the government shows us a law that requires me to obtain an Employer Identification Number and withhold from the employees, I'll do so. No problem. Well the government couldn't do that. So, after the fifth hearing the U.S. Attorney, Harvey Eisenberg, came to me and said that he was declining the IRS' criminal investigation on me. And then of course it was ludicrous to argue "people come and go," so the next thing was this contraband but they couldn't find none in the raid, there is no contraband. So the last thing they had to argue was we couldn't exist without being regulated. Well, we argued that on the sixth hearing. And finally the judge, Garbis 3, entered his ruling, which favored us and said of course, it's a free society, they can exist without being regulated.
So the IRS had to return all the property, all their efforts were for naught. We still don't have an EIN number, we still don't hold from our employees. The Department of Justice appealed the judge's decision in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and two months or three months later they moved with a motion to the court to dismiss their own appeal with prejudice. And it all ended. And they haven't bothered us since.
Now there's other discrepancies with the article from CNN. In fact, believe it or not, today is the first day I've read it. We're so used to being smeared usually some of the staff here handle this, Bill Huff who was then editor of the newsletter handled this. Another discrepancy is we charged 35 instead of 45. The other discrepancy is, it indicates or infers that he found us on the Internet in 1992, we were not on the Internet, we didn't have a web page in 1992. And it's impossible to do 10 letters a month and they're not even letters that we do. We appeal, request information, and we use the rules that are found in the Internal Revenue Service Regulations at Part 601. Which, by the way, very clearly say in Part 601, section 601-102 that employment taxes cannot be appealed to the tax court, because the tax court has no jurisdiction, there is no appeal for employment taxes for a Notice of Deficiency.
KINSOLVING: John, can you wind it up in another minute, I don't...
KOTMAIR: Sure...I'll be glad to talk to Mr. Brown, I'd love to talk to Mr. Brown.
KINSOLVING: OK, all right, you've got one more minute because I think you're about at five, but go ahead. One more minute.
KOTMAIR: Bring Mr. Brown on, I'd be glad to hear him.
KINSOLVING: OK, let's go to Alvin Brown, welcome to WCBM.
BROWN: Les, thank you very much, and I think you've done a good job, I think you're raising an extremely important issue, uh, because...
KINSOLVING: Can you, Alvin, can you speak up a little bit?
BROWN: ...yeah, I'm sorry...
KINSOLVING: That's good, that's great!
BROWN: I normally talk a little softly, I'll just have to, uh, uh, make a little mental adjustment. Um, I just want to introduce myself briefly. I had, uh, uh, a 30-year career with the office of the, uh, Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service. For many years I had the authority to sign off for the IRS. So, uh, if the District Director of some, you know, had a legal issue and needed to know what the answer was, my office of attorneys working for me would, uh, would give that opinion and the District Director would rely on it, ruling letters and things like that. So, I had a very high level pure legal interpretative function with the Service, and, uh, also worked on capitol hill as a tax lobbyist, so I'm familiar with, uh, uh, legislation, and what Congress has in mind when they write tax legislation. And, uh, now... The issues you raised in that piece, it's something that came to my attention by I would say hundreds of phone calls I've gotten because people have found me on the Internet and seen my IRS credentials and have asked me various questions. I help many of them with, uh, collection issues, like, you know, get their taxes reduced in different ways, things like that, that let them deal with the tax burden or eliminate it after it's imposed.
What you heard initially in the first five minutes is really not the issue that you started with, uh, he was drawing you off into unrelated issues not germane to the topic that you're discussing, you raised. Uh, the people that, a lot of the people that call me have been through the system. They paid a lot of money relying on their right not to pay their, um, federal income tax. The paid a lot of money for advice on, um, not filing. So, a lot of people in the United States don't file and they don't pay their income taxes. Um, and then the IRS jumps on them, they take their homes, they take their businesses, they just literally clean them out, and they leave them with a huge debt that they can carry for the rest of their lives. They literally can destroy families, take everything they have, because the IRS has the right to seize property and levy income. Um, uh, you can work your whole life collecting income, collecting property, and it can be taken away from you in minutes through this advice.
Um, I, I get very steamed on this subject because people profit for selling this information to Americans. Now, I read all of the cases, that come out. I read the cases that decide these issues. I would say there are hundreds of, um, protester-type issues that are raised in the courts. The courts deal with this issue constantly. I don't know of any cases they win. I mean, I read these cases, I read current cases. Um, I started posting some of these cases on my web page. I don't go back through all of them, there's zillions of them, but...
KINSOLVING: Alvin, let me, I don't want to in any way to inhibit you either, this is uninhibited radio. But Mr. Kotmair said that he had won a case against the IRS. Do you recall that?
BROWN: Yes, you weren't paying attention to what he was saying. Now...
KINSOLVING: Well, I was trying... (laughter)
BROWN: The issue was not whether he was paying his federal income tax, his reporting his income from his business. It wasn't a specific individual fraud issue. So don't get led down the path talking about...
KOTMAIR: (laughter)
BROWN: ...they did a raid on him, they're trying to find something because he's selling this poison to Americans and they're looking for something, it was probably a fishing expedition, um, and they didn't come up with anything in his individual case. But, he didn't tell you that he wasn't, uh, filing his income tax returns, um, with income that he is receiving, um...
KOTMAIR: (laughter)
KINSOLVING: All right, Alvin, uh....
BROWN: I mean, he was not charged with specific fraud.
KOTMAIR: (laughter)
KINSOLVING: OK, now listen, I want to know, is there anything else you want in your opener or can we just go back and forth? Alvin, do you need a little bit more... I don't want to cut you short...
BROWN: Let me just say this because I...
KINSOLVING: All right, and then we can take a break, then we'll go back and forth.
BROWN: ...I have an audience that -- of course, you can do that, and I can be interrupted, but, um, I agree with your initial comment that there are lots of, uh, Americans who don't file and who don't pay their full income tax. There's a lot of people who can't afford it, you know, businesses go sour and they use federal tax money to pay their electric utility bills. There are a lot of people out there. But I just want to let everybody know that there is very strong tax policy not to prosecute, not to bring a criminal charge against anyone who voluntarily comes in and files their income tax return. And Congress has written law to abate their tax liability if they can't afford to pay it. I deal with a lot of that, uh, to help the people who have already been devastated by this misinformation. Um, I just want to make two solid points here, because this is the bottom line...
KINSOLVING: All right, then we'll break; then we'll break and we'll come back and we'll mix it up.
BROWN: OK, the bottom line is they don't win these cases, because I read them. The other thing is when they tangle with the IRS, the IRS wins. I don't know any situations...
KOTMAIR: (laughter)
BROWN: ...any situations where the IRS loses on these collection issues after there is an assessment.
KINSOLVING: OK, we're going to take a break, but we'll be right back...
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Poster Comment:
I had two liens on me filed with the Recorder of Deeds over in the town I was living when driving trucks. I called over there and was told, "Send us a check for $4 and a SASE and we will send copies."
I had credit repair lawyers in Salt Lake City, Lexington Law, challenge the IRS. The IRS could not prove I owed the tax and were forced to withdraw the liens.
My Credit Karma used to say "2" for Public Filings and it now says "0". The proof is in the pudding.