First published in A.D. 2003, Cracking The Code is one of, perhaps the, premier book on how to avoid paying income taxes to the IRS. Peter Eric Hendrickson is the book’s author. His wife is Doreen Hendrickson. He seems strong. She does not.
I can imagine that, in court, Mr. Hendrickson would be a formidable opponent but Mrs. Hendrickson might be less focused, less confident, and more easily convicted of an offense.
According to Pete Hendrickson, tens of thousands of people have successfully used the strategy presented in his book to stop paying income taxes. The IRS has not been pleased. So far as I know, the IRS has never expressed its displeasure by charging Mr. Hendrickson with willful failure to file, tax evasion, etc. However, the IRS has successfully prosecuted Mrs. Hendrickson for income tax evasion and caused her to be sentenced to 18 months in prison.
I don’t know what the IRS’s motivation was to prosecute Mrs. Hendrickson, but judging from the following video, her prosecution may have been, at least in part, retaliation against her husband for publishing Cracking the Code.
However, the following video is conspicuously silent concerning the details of the IRS’s grounds for charging and convicting Mrs. Hendrickson. That silence suggests that Mrs. Hendrickson made a serious mistake that gave the IRS legitimate grounds to file charges and pursue conviction.
Instead of alleging some fault in the IRS’s grounds to prosecute Mrs. Hendrickson, the video focuses on a significant fault in the procedure used by the IRS and the trial court judge. According to Solutions Institute,
“Doreen and Pete have been using this [Cracking The Code] method to avoid paying income tax since the release of Pete’s book, and it’s put them at odds with the IRS. In the recent case, Doreen was given a new set of returns filled out by the federal government and ordered to sign them as being her own testimony. Because they were not her own words, she refused, and has now been sentenced to prison.”
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Mrs. Hendrickson complains that she could not, in good conscience, sign an income tax return under penalties of perjury if she didn’t believe the words on the document to be true. She therefore argues that her prosecution violates her right to free speech and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
According to the Solutions Institute,
“Whether or not this method of avoiding taxation is valid, the case highlights a fundamental issue of free speech in today’s America. While the First Amendment supposedly validates one’s right to say, or not say, what they want, this case draws that principle into question. Doreen was not charged with tax evasion or falsifying returns; she was only charged with contempt of court for refusing to sign a document swearing something she doesn’t believe to be true.”
If the Hendricksons’ allegations are true and the IRS and the judge are trying to force Mrs. Hendrickson to sign an income tax return that she didn’t personally author and prepare, then the IRS and the courts have sunk to a new low in fascism. They are essentially trying to force the defendant to sign a confession of guilt and testify against herself.
But, it’s my understanding that forcing someone to testify under penalty of perjury to facts that the affiant does not believe to be true constitutes “subornation of perjury”–a felony under 18 USC 1622 that can earn the perpetrator fines and up to five years in the slammer.
If so, why haven’t the Hendricksons charged the IRS and/or the trial court judge with subornation of perjury?
More, while the video alleges that Mrs. Hendrickson has been jailed for “contempt of court” rather than some violation of income tax laws, I doubt that this case started under the pretext of “contempt of court”. The IRS had to allege some other ground (violation of income tax laws) to drag Mrs. Hendrickson into court in the first place where she might be subsequently charged with “contempt of court”.
The video implies that the IRS had no legitimate cause to charge Mrs. Hendrickson in the first place–but it never expressly says so.
Something’s wrong here.
By accident or intent, the video fails to provide details as to why Mrs. Hendrickson was prosecuted in the first place–and why Mr. Hendrickson has not, so far, been prosecuted. These details are important because the Hendricksons have allegedly relied on the Cracking the Code strategy to avoid paying income taxes for most of 13 years.
It’s possible that the IRS prosecution of Mrs. Hendrickson is purely retaliatory. We need to see the details of the case to expose and confirm that retaliation.
It’s possible that the Hendricksons agreed to structure their financial affairs so that Mr. Hendrickson wrote the book and hosted seminars, while Mrs. Hendrickson received the income from the book and assumed personal liability for whatever taxes might be imposed on the book’s earnings. Those who’ve relied on Cracking the Code to avoid paying income taxes need to see the details of the case in order to avoid structuring their finances in a similarly defective manner.
It’s also possible that, after ten years of studying Cracking the Code, the IRS found a “crack” in that strategy and used that “crack” to prosecute Mrs. Hendrickson. If the IRS found a fatal flaw in Cracking The Code, those who’ve relied on that strategy need to see the details of the IRS charges against Mrs. Hendrickson in order to avoid making that same mistake, themselves.
The following video makes an effective, emotional appeal on Mrs. Hendrickson’s behalf. We feel sympathy for her and her predicament.
But this is no game. Sympathy’s not enough. People who resist the IRS can wind up in the slammer.
It’s like being on a bomb disposal squad. The first bomb-squad member to try to defuse a bomb reports his every step by radio so, if he cuts the blue wire and the bomb explodes, the next guy who tries to defuse the next bomb of the same sort will know, whatever you do, don’t cut the blue wire! If he cuts the red wire, and the bomb explodes, the next guy on the next bomb will know that he must not cut either the blue or red wires. Look for the green wire. Through this process of attrition and sacrifice, we hopefully learn how to effectively defuse bombs without getting blown up.
Similarly, in order to defeat the IRS, those who are actually drawn into a courtroom confrontation with the IRS need to report every detail so the rest of us can learn how to better defuse that particular kind of “bomb”. The following video doesn’t provide enough details to really inform us of much besides the fact that the IRS is a “bomb” that can explode. Well, we already knew that.
I want the details of why the IRS charged Mrs. Hendrickson in the first place–and why they didn’t charge her husband.
I want the details of how Mrs. Hendrickson wound up in court. I’ve said for years that if your case is going to court, you’ve already screwed up and lost. When the plaintiff or prosecutor is the government, modern courtroom battles aren’t trials so much as sentencing hearings. Generally, the only questions to be decided are How much will you be fined? and How long will you be imprisoned? I’ve also said that if you’re going to stop prosecution by government agencies like the IRS, you have to stop them long before you ever get to court. I want to know the details of how and why Mrs. Hendrickson failed to stop the IRS before arriving in court.
It may well be that all of the details that I’d like to see are available on some other website that I haven’t yet discovered. My only comment is that those details are, by accident or intent, not provided in the following 13-minute video.
If I had to guess–and I’m only guessing–Mrs. Hendrickson failed to respond to the first IRS notice(s) with questions. I strongly suspect that by failing to ask insightful questions in response to initial IRS notices, she may have allowed the courts to proceed against her under procedural due process (see, Notes and Notes#2).
If I had to guess–and I’m only guessing–Mrs Hendrickson failed to identify herself as one of the “people” of her State of the Union and thereby lay the foundation for claiming her right to be free from administrative process under administrative law.
I haven’t read Cracking the Code. I’ve heard only praise for that book and its strategy. It may well be that Pete Hendrickson’s book and his wife’s legal strategies are light years ahead of any of my own “guesses” concerning questions, citizenship and administrative law.
My only comment and criticism in this matter is that, while the following video inspires our sympathy for Mrs. Hendrickson and may even motivate us to support her, it does not provide enough details to help us. It doesn’t tell the “bomb disposal squad” who are trying to defuse the IRS “bomb” whether they should cut the blue wire or the red one.
I don’t doubt that there’s an enormous amount to be learned from the charges, answers, paperwork, transcripts and over-all “details” of Mrs. Hendrickson’s case, defense and conviction.
The following video is good but incomplete. It’s worth your time. But, most of the details that I’d like to see are missing:
video 00:12:51
