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The Law that Never Was: The Fraud of the 16th Amendment and Personal income Tax Hardcover – January 1, 1985

by Bill Benson (Author), M J "Red" Beckman (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Constitutional Research Assoc
  3. Publication date
    January 1, 1985
  4. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006ELT78
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Constitutional Research Assoc (January 1, 1985)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.5 pounds
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 13 ratings

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
13 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lin Bee
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful truth about a law that NEVER was!
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2011
Verified Purchase
Red is a friend and we love this honest and straightforward book #1. Do not buy #2 as it has not much of Red in it and the author only wrote it for money. He did not do his homework on #2 like Red did on #1. We talked with Red on the phone about #2 and he said, "don't waste your money". So, we didn't. Red is a true Patriot and a great man of God. He loves this Country and wants to see those brought to justice who are usurping the Rule of Law and using the IRS to steal, threaten and lie to us about income taxes that were never supposed to come out of our paychecks. That amendment was never ratified. NEVER! So, RED will live on in Volume #1 of the set. His books will be read and loved and will go on and on until the IRS is abolished and gone off our National scene. When this happens and I pray it does, Red Beckman will have played a vital roll in it. God bless you Red and may you find peace and love in the arms of Jesus our Lord!
You are loved!
19 people found this helpful
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ChinaTim
5.0 out of 5 stars ... so well packed and as of this writing the best packaging I have ever seen
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2016
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This book came so well packed and as of this writing the best packaging I have ever seen. The book itself for those who are crazy about facts and legal talk will love it, for me, yes it is very well written and researched and provided much needed information, just for my taste a little dry, BUT A must have book to read and share, Thank you
3 people found this helpful
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Jim Bennett
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2018
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I always knew that was a fraud passed amendment.
One person found this helpful
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BJ
5.0 out of 5 stars The Law That Never Was
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2012
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No comment bought this for a friend. He said he really liked and wants to share it with friends & family.
One person found this helpful
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RadioMaven
5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing forward important evidence that the enabling power for the Federal Govt to tax incomes
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2019
Bringing forward important evidence that the enabling power for the Federal Govt to tax incomes is a courageous act. And important one, especially if those enabling powers are questionable.
2 people found this helpful
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Bob Lewis
1.0 out of 5 stars Ill-informed
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2020
Allow me to split my review into two sections, one for each volume.

Vol I

The fundamental premise of this book is that the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (colloquially, the "income tax amendment") was never properly ratified. The bulk of the book's text consists of purported evidence of fraud in the ratification process. The book's assertions are untrue.

In its own way, this book is remarkably well documented. The vast majority of its contents consist of a presentation of "evidence" from the states concerning the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. I give the authors credit for their diligence in collecting and presenting what amounts to a mountain of legal records. The problem is, the errors they found in the ratification process are trivial inconsistencies in punctuation or capitalization, not substantive flaws in the process. While we might all prefer "cleaner" legislative records, there is actually no evidence of fraud (except arguably in the book's own contentions). Simply rattling off hundreds of pages of references to errant commas does not undo a long-standing piece of Constitutional law. Indeed, fans of the TV show The West Wing are already familiar (in an admittedly more lighthearted context) with the "inconsistent comma" in the Takings Clause. Yet no one (least of all, I daresay, the authors of this book) would seriously entertain an argument that such an inconsistent comma renders the Bill of Rights void.

Humorously, the book concludes with "warnings" to judges and IRS agents, as if the authors' arguments were so powerful as to shape the future of Constitutional law. Perhaps the authors should have saved the words of warning for themselves, at least one of whom spent time in Federal prison for tax evasion.

I do understand the appeal of such a book. I dislike our tax system as much as the next guy. However, pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away, and concocting an argument--at best ill-informed and at worst deliberately fraudulent--to convince people it doesn't exist only causes more harm. If you don't like the income tax (and fair enough!), the correct course of action is to write your representatives, run for office, even try to rally support to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment if you want. The correct course of action is not to merely pretend the law "never was."

Vol II

The second volume of The Law That Never Was picks up the story where the first book left off, taking the first volume's arguments as given. In many ways, it's a better book. The author takes the time here (but not in the first volume) to actually discuss the effects of the Sixteenth Amendment, which, contrary to popular opinion, was not the first Constitutional authorization of a tax but rather removed the requirement that direct taxes must be apportioned among the states, a requirement leading to a Supreme Court decision (unpopular at the time) striking down an income tax in Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust Co. Understanding this background, despite the author's analysis, actually renders the Sixteenth Amendment more useful even to the eyes of someone like me who dislikes our tax system.

Despite this subtler opening of the second volume, the author's fundamental contention that the income tax itself is unconstitutional still rests upon his contention in the first volume that the Sixteenth Amendment wasn't ratified. Because this argument itself is flawed, the rest of the reasoning in this book becomes just a waste of ink and paper.

Beyond the substantive flaws in the book's argument, it ends up being nigh unreadable by the end. It contains a lengthy chapter arguing that the judiciary needs to hear cases related to the Sixteenth Amendment's ratification, which might make the reader experience some schadenfreude upon realizing that a Federal court has since ruled the book's arguments to be fraudulent, and then dedicates the remainder of the volume's original content to bellyaching about tax trials that haven't gone according to the author's wishes.

Approximately half of the book isn't original material. The gigantic appendix actually makes for the most interesting reading in the book, consisting of an opinion in Hohri v. United States (not a tax case, oddly enough, though I do understand the connection however tenuous) and a partial transcript from the trial United States v. Buchta. These legal documents may be of interest to people interested in law (or the practice thereof) generally, but are more conveniently acquired through public records searches rather than as an appendix to an otherwise less-than-useful book.
8 people found this helpful
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Robert Beveridge
3.0 out of 5 stars Review of vol. I only so far.
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2005
Bill Benson and M. J. Beckman, The Law That Never Was, vol. I (Constitutional Research Associates, 1985)

The idea behind this book is a powerful one: that the sixteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America (for those of you who fell asleep in civics class, it's better known as the "income tax amendment") was never ratified, and thus the government's collection of income tax every year is fraudulent. What American wouldn't jump at the idea that you don't have to give a third or more of your income tot he Federal government every year?

Well, unfortunately, out of three hundred million of us, the answer's probably in the vicinity of two hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred fifty thousand, and that's being generous because the book's been out for twenty years. I'm hoping copies of it have passed through fifty thousand hands. And yet, how many of those people have stood up and asked questions about this? Very, very few.

Part of the reason so few people have read this book is its expense. It is no longer sold without its companion, volume II (despite that they were published a year apart, and each is a stand-alone volume), and the set is quite expensive for a country where the average person spends less on books in a year than this set costs. It's possible that another part of the reason is that, if you care at all about language and presentation, it's simply impossible to recommend this book. All the great ideas here, and all the evidence, is presented horribly.

The Law That Never Was, vol. I is three hundred sixty-six pages long. I didn't actually get out the ruler, measure, multiply, and extrapolate, but I'm estimating that a full fifty pages of that amount was repetition-- exact repetition-- of two key pieces of legislation that the ratifications of most of the states broke and paragraphs of explanatory text surrounding them. Another fifty to seventy-five pages was taken up with lists of the details that made the ratifications incorrect, many of which were repeated from state to state. Perhaps, one thinks, a two hundred fifty page books would have cost less to print than a three hundred sixty-six page book, and might cost less to the consumer; however, when one is self-publishing, one does not have the services of a good editor to point out the incredibly annoying repetition. Nor would that editor point out that exclamation points, especially in a chapter heading, especially when there are more than one of them at a time, especially when they are meant to convey a threat, are just begging for ridicule of the authors. Such things make for schoolyard bully taunts, not good legal writing.

This is a fabulous idea, and so important in the general scheme of things in America that it should be read by every tax paying American. However, most tax paying Americans will find it very hard to get through-- not just the legalese, but the general unreadability of it. And yet, it is worth persevering, because this is not information you are likely to get from anyone else. Certainly, the IRS will never tell you they're criminals. ** ½
62 people found this helpful
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Alan L. LaBar
5.0 out of 5 stars Who said knowedge is power?
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2015
Every seeker of knowledge should have access to the work.
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