Jury Acquits Pilot Who Questioned Liability for Income Tax

The New York Times has done an article about a court case where a woman who paid no income tax over the last few years has been aquitted on charges of tax evasion. I saw this story reported a few days ago in lesser known news sources, here and here, but I wanted to wait until a newspaper I had heard of had also covered the case.

"A federal jury in Memphis has acquitted a FedEx pilot on six counts of tax evasion after she testified that she wrote letters asking the Internal Revenue Service what law required her to pay taxes but never received a response. The verdict, reached on Friday, brings into question the I.R.S. practice of ignoring such questions, which it regards as frivolous because the first words of the Internal Revenue Code are 'a tax is hereby imposed.' The pilot, Vernice Kuglin, 58, filed a withholding statement on Dec. 30, 1995, directing that no taxes be withheld from her pay. From 1996 through 2001 she earned $920,000 as a pilot for FedEx, but no taxes were withheld, she said yesterday. Normal withholding for the period would have been about $250,000."