Apparently Doreen Hendrickson, married to the author Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth About Taxation in America, Peter Hendrickson, was a fan of her husband’s anti-tax theories. According to The Journal of Accountancy, she was sentenced in April to 18 months in federal prison and a year of supervised release.
Her crime? A criminal contempt charge for filing a 2008 tax return claiming no wages during that tax year and for failing to file amended returns for the 2002 and 2003 tax years as previously ordered by a federal judge. The returns in question claimed a refund of all taxable income based on a theory put forth by her husband’s book. The 2002 and 2003 amended tax returns they jointly filed were ruled invalid, because they signed “under duress” in place of their signatures at the bottom of the tax form.
The moral of the story: The IRS isn’t buying anti-tax arguments, and it’s not worth attempting to be the first person to convince them otherwise.