Us Tax System

Has the government sent letters to farmers telling them that they must destroy their crops and be paid one-and-a-half times the value of the crop or lose all government farm subsidies? No, that's not true: A collection of hoax TikTok videos has been circulating with baseless claims about a global or U.S. government plot to destroy crops and depopulate the…

Did Dr. Dan Stock present well-reasoned arguments to the Mt. Vernon, Indiana, school board against masking and vaccination as means to mitigate the spread and harm of COVID-19, and should his arguments apply universally as public health measures? No, that's not true: The arguments made by this doctor are a mixture of true, false and irrelevant and contradict the evolving…

After Mike Lindell's appearance on the April 28, 2021, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" show, Lead Stories published a story titled "Attention Mike Lindell: What You May Want To Know About The 'Data' Used In Your Stolen Election Claims" that traced some of the data used in Lindell's movies to a man named Dennis L. Montgomery. Lindell has been quite vague on…

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…