Federal Judge Imposes Permanent Ban On Schiff Book

by Leroy Baker, for LawAndTax-News.com, New York

18 June 2003

Irwin Schiff, controversial author and anti-tax campaigner has been ordered by Las Vegas federal judge Lloyd D. Cole to stop selling his book "The Federal Mafia: How the Federal Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Federal Income Taxes".

The ruling by Judge Cole permanently bans Schiff's book, and rejects the author's claim that such a move would violate his First Amendment rights. In his 35 page judgement, Cole wrote that "The First Amendment does not shield criminal conduct in tax schemes," and contended that Schiff and his business associates were well aware that they were offering "fraudulent tax advice" and as such the book is considered false commercial speech which "is not protected by the First Amendment."

Cole considered that the fact that Schiff had previously been prosecuted and imprisoned twice for tax related crimes established that he knew his tax advice was illegal. "That Schiff has no misunderstanding of the falsity of the claim that income tax is voluntary, is further evidenced by his many losses in civil tax cases," the judge wrote.

Schiff intends to appeal against the ruling, and lawyer Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has expressed a willingness to argue the author's case in the appeals court. "We argued that the book is not commercial speech, cannot be banned as false commercial speech and does not meet any other criteria for censorship," Lichtenstein announced, according to the New York Times this week.

In addition to the ACLU, several organisations including the American Booksellers Association, American Publishers Association, American Library Association and writers group PEN filed a friend of the court brief on the grounds that they consider any attempt to restrict the sale of the book a violation of First Amendment rights.

Evan Davis, a Department of Justice lawyer, said after the previous hearing at the Las Vegas federal district court that the case was one of the largest tax evasion scams in US history, and claimed that Schiff had over 3,000 clients trying to evade a total of $56 million.

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