Embarrassing Big Brother

2011/12/17 · by · in Economics, Idiocracy, People

I read today an interesting article on Lew Rockwell’s site about one Robert Kahre. He had arranged to pay his employees in gold and silver coin. He arranged for them to all work as private contractors, and paid them absurdly low wages (the face value of the coin). Some fascinating ramifications of this arrangement:

  • Each worker is likely incorporated, and therefore pays taxes, at the business rate, before drawing salary.
  • Workers insurance, Social Security witholdings, etc. become the responsibility of each contractor; lowering up-front operation costs.
  • The coins are minted by the US Mint, and can operate as legal tender.
  • Exchange is made at the face value of the coin (significantly lower than the market value).
  • Taxes are paid on the recorded exchange value.
  • Before any of this occurred, he did at one point pay his filing fees using face valued coins.

His companies compounds were invaded, with malice and forethought, by the IRS, SWAT, and FBI; which took purposeful actions to HIDE their activities, as can be seen in this video. They apparently also directly LIED in court, about who they interrogated, and what they did. Amazingly, his 2007 trial ended with jurors acquitting him, saying “the government had failed to prove that the defendants had acted to intentionally violate tax laws”! Things did not fare as well in a second trial in 2009, where he and a couple conspirators were found guilty.

This is an amazingly interesting case. Based only on that (and not his other mechanisms for tax dodging) I think that his only guilt is in exposing the hypocrisy (and greed) of the government and IRS. The lesson seems to be that if you embarrass the internally conflicting rules of Big Brother, he will smack you down.

side note: In that video, he also claims that the IRS, as originally chartered, actually collects, not for the US government, but for the IMF and World Bank. I should perhaps try to verify that claim.