The adage that one man's hero is another man's scoundrel was seldom truer than in the case of Irwin Schiff. From 1974 he stopped paying his federal income tax, on the chief ground that it was unconstitutional; and never paid it thereafter. Not only did he refuse to pay it himself, but he encouraged thousands of other Americans to write "zero" on their tax returns, selling books and advice and running a noisy national campaign out of his baby-blue office in Las Vegas. He spent many hours in court and 17 years in jail, and as a result became a martyr of the far libertarian right and the scourge of IRS agents everywhere.
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