If it is true that one "cannot prove a negative," then how can the IRS "prove" in a courtroom, that someone NEVER filed a return, or NEVER reported an income source, or NEVER sent them a payment? ALL of those things are indeed "negatives," aren't they?
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Anonymous
ANSWERS: 18
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I'm not even sure what standard they need to meet. If it's a criminal proceeding, they need to show guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." Probably after subpoenaing your checking account, they can do that quite easily. If it's a civil proceeding, they merely need to show that there's a high likelihood you owe them $.
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A logical conundrum. But lawyers are great at "straining at gnats" and "pushing camels through the eyes of needles". +2
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Well, logic chopping is all fine and good, but.... The IRS would not go to court to prove that you NEVER filed a tax return. They would go to court saying "You did not file your returns for years XXXX through XXXX". You would then be asked to produce records that you did file for those years. If you produced none, the court would almost certainly find for the IRS (just like when you tell the traffic court "I was not speeding" and the cop says "Yes, you were"). That's why you should make copies of all of your tax returns and never throw them away. As for the video, this is typical Tax Protester nonsense. Title 26 of the US Code gives the IRS the power to levy taxes, and Section 61 of the IRS code defines income. I believe the reason that IRS officials do not directly answer these questions is that if they misspeak, a zillion Tax Protesters will go to court saying "Well, IRS official so-and-so said X publicly", which will waste a lot of IRS time (paid for by the taxpayers). Here is a good summary of typical Tax Protester nonsense and the relevant law/cases debunking it. http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html
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Negatives represent an opposition to possitive things. All taxes are negative to people who pay them, but positive for them in the big picture, so the balance in between is always tilted in the favor of the negative, because if it wasn't, it wouldn't get done enough to qualify as a possitive to begin with. I should remind myself that politics and finances are not my forte. ;D
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Your premise is flawed. First, it is difficult to prove a negative, but not impossible (most of the time). For example, you can prove that something IS NOT in a book by presenting every page in the book. You can prove that you DID NOT commit a crime by showing that you were someone else when the crime was committed. Second, it is erroneous to conclude that the IRS has to prove that you did not file a return. In America, the burden of proof shifts between the parties. Initially, the accusing party has the burden to present a prima facie case that you did something wrong. Moreover, in criminal law, the government must only prove beyond a reasonable doubt (as opposed to actually prove). Then, once the accusing party meets their burden, the accused has the burden of defending their case. Third, the IRS can easily meet their burden because taxpayers have the duty to maintain their records to allow for an audit.
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The problem is though is as much as they can "prove" that you DIDNT file your taxes, can you "prove" that you did?? They only need reasonable doubt on their side where as you need the actual proof.
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LOL!! Same way a court allows the assertion that someone did or did not commit crime x or y. Evidence and reasonable doubt are a courts tools, and they have to be thus for blindingly obvious reasons. Seriously, the world would fall apart if everyone was this daft.
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It's true that you can't really prove that something doesn't exist or didn't happen, but you can have enough evidence to prove that it didn't happen that to believe it did would be ridiculous.
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Very little is proven in court. Evidence is given to support a particular verdict but rarely is anything proven one way or the other. The IRS can show evidence that a return has never been filed and since filing the return is required then it would up to you to show evidence that you had filed a return. It's your responsibility to keep that paperwork.
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Whoever said that you can't prove a negative? I don't think that is a true statement.
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You're right, those things are negatives. I couldn't find the source of 'you can't prove a negative' (a particular philosopher?), but I did find lots of explanations of why/how it isn't true and context for it. This came from Skepticwiki: "The claim 'you can't prove a negative' is often used as a shorthand in discussions to refer to the difficulty of gathering experimental evidence to 'prove' that something does not exist. Proving that a phenomenon isn't real takes a lot more time and effort than it takes to demonstrate it [is real].... Its very difficult to prove the general non-existence of a phenomenon, and this difficulty is used by believers of many kinds of phenomena to give the appearance of credibility to their beliefs." http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/%22You_Can%27t_Prove_a_Negative%22
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"cannot prove a negative" makes no sense to me. Where did such a statement come from and what axiom supports it?
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You left out the banks and an overdrawn checking account. This is a negative that the banks can prove. They are good at it. We are charged $35.00 for each overdrawn check or transaction we make. Your assumption is not true, according to the banks.
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you can prove a negative ... my glass of water is NOT frozen ... i have never died ... the IRS can prove that someone did not file a return based on their requirements
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I mailed a credit card payment the week before Christmas. It was due Jan 5. Sure enough, in Feb I received a statement saying I was late with my Jan payment. I asked them to prove it with an envelope date stamp. They could not do it and got very defensive. I said they had 2 choices: look at my record and take back all the penalties OR we can go to small claims court. They made my cc correct, but no apology.
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You can prove a negative. It is the law of noncontradiction. Here is a white paper to explain how you can logically do this: http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf The problem lies in constructing the necessary evidence to prove it. Which, in a highly uncontroled and unregulated environment, may not be possible.
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From the moment you get a social security number, the government tracks your every move. They know more about you than you know about you. Unless you purposely use the wrong social security number they will know whether or not you have filed..eventually. Maybe not immediately, but there is no statute of limitations on fraud (at least I don't think there is). You can be nailed for something you didn't do 20 years ago. I can prove a negative. I can prove I'm not a man because I gave birth to a child. That makes me an un-man or in the vernacular, a woman! :)
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I gotch, that would be "proving a lie".
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