A Known Legal Duty
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A Known Legal Duty
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It is March 17. Welcome to yestohellwith.com.
If we want to understand why good-faith belief matters in tax law, we must appreciate one word:
willfulness.
The Supreme Court has made clear that in criminal tax cases, willfulness means the voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty. That formulation was reaffirmed in Cheek v. United States, drawing from earlier cases including United States v. Bishop and United States v. Murdock.
Now stop and think carefully.
A known legal duty.
Not an assumed duty.Not a socially repeated duty.Not a duty someone merely told you exists.
A known legal duty.
That matters because federal tax law does not operate honestly through slogans. It operates through definitions, terms of art, classifications, and jurisdictional structure. Before anyone can truly be said to know a duty, he must first understand what the statute actually means.
What is meant by United States in the title?What is meant by State?How does includes operate under 26 U.S.C. §7701(c)?What class of person is being described?What activity gives rise to liability?What jurisdiction must exist before obligation can arise?
Those are not insignificant questions. Those are the very questions that must be worked through if a legal duty is to be known rather than merely presumed.
That is where the Liberty Dialogues becomes indispensable.
Because the LD method does not begin with panic.It does not begin with enforcement.It begins with structure.
Authority.Jurisdiction.Status.Standing.Obligation.Enforcement.
And if a person has sincerely worked through that sequence in an effort to determine what the law actually requires, that is not irrelevant. That goes directly to the issue of willfulness itself.
This is why good faith matters. Because in tax law, the government does not merely say, “You acted.” It must prove that the person intentionally violated a duty he actually knew the law imposed.
And as always…
May truth reign supreme.
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