Us Tax System

Are Internal Revenue Service (IRS) income taxes voluntary? No, that's not true: The duties to file a tax return and pay federal income taxes owed are not voluntary. The requirements are enshrined in the Internal Revenue Code as well as relevant case law. The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published on March 27, 2021. The title of…

Does a person's birth certificate, with their name spelled out in capital letters, create a second entity, a "straw man," that is owned by the state and is separate from the flesh and blood person given that name at birth? No, that's not true: This is an illegitimate theory promoted by several different conspiracist groups such as Sovereign Citizens, Freemen…

Would electric cars caught in a three-hour traffic jam drain their batteries? Will electric car drivers suffer with "virtually no heating" if stuck overnight on a cold road? Will the GPS, radio and heating drain the battery? No, none of that is true: A senior engineer and part of the Clean Transportation Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, took…

Summary: Mike Lindell's video series allegedly proving fraud in the November 2020 elections relies heavily on digital evidence in the form of files and animations that Lindell claims show attacks on the U.S. election infrastructure coming from China and other places. Lindell has never acknowledged where these files and animations came from. Lead Stories traced them back to a website…

Has President Joe Biden taken down the southern border wall that former President Donald Trump built? No, that's not true: On Biden's first day in office, January 20, 2021, he ordered a "pause in construction and obligation of funds" relating to the expansion of the border wall Trump had decreed. Biden's order says nothing about tearing down the part of…

Did President Bill Clinton quietly sign into law an economic reform measure secretly passed by Congress and did President George W. Bush later orchestrate the 9/11 attacks to prevent the enactment of the law, commonly known as NESARA? No, that's not true: The claims about NESARA, which at the time of its introduction stood for the National Economic Security and…

Is the Gates Foundation a multinational corporation that profits from vaccines as part of a U.S. government plot hatched in the 1970s to depopulate developing countries? No, that's not true: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a registered nonprofit that doesn't pay dividends or capital gains to shareholders. The video cites a declassified 1974 document as proof of the…

Was the "Keystone" pipeline "just about completed" when President Joe Biden stopped it? No, that's not true: Less than one tenth of the Keystone XL segment of the Keystone system was complete when Biden revoked the permit for Keystone XL by executive order on January 20, 2021. The XL, which is the fourth phase of the Keystone system, had not…

Did all of Germany's close to 30,000 wind turbines and millions of photovoltaic panels suddenly stop working due to harsh weather conditions? And do wind turbines in Germany have to be heated in cold temperatures, taxing the country's energy grid? No, that's not true: Data on Germany's power production during January and February of 2021 shows that renewable energy sources…

Is President Biden about to send $3 trillion to Iran by plane to apologize for the drone strike that killed General Soleimaini last year? No, that's not true. The story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to mislead Trump supporters and Republicans into sharing made up stories that are clearly marked as satire when you actually click…