Section-7701
The movement claim that statutes addressed to 'persons' bind only those who hold the corresponding legal status — leaving 'free men and women' outside the statute's reach — is foreclosed
The movement reads 'person' in statutes as a term of art that quietly excludes 'free men and women.' Statutory construction reads 'person' as a term of inclusion meant to broaden the statute's reach, not narrow it. Every court that has engaged the distinction has rejected the movement reading. The textual observation about statutory definitions is real; the doctrinal conclusion built on it is foreclosed.
The movement claim that 'resident' in IRC § 7701(b) means a federal functionary rather than a person physically dwelling in the United States is unsupported
The movement reads 'resident' in IRC § 7701(b) as a hidden term of art that means federal functionary. The statute defines residence as physical presence (substantial-presence test, green-card test, lawful-permanent-resident status). The textual observation about the IRC's specialized vocabulary is real; the doctrinal conclusion is foreclosed.
The movement claim that a parallel narrower citizenship category exists alongside 14A citizenship — one that ordinary Americans could occupy while declining to be 'citizens of the United States' for IRC purposes — is foreclosed
The movement looks for a parallel narrower citizenship — one that ordinary Americans could occupy while declining 'citizen of the United States' status for tax purposes. The Fourteenth Amendment and the IRC are operative law: there is no such parallel category. The textual observation about layered statutory citizenship is real; the doctrinal conclusion built on it is foreclosed.
The movement claim that ordinary Americans living in the fifty states are 'nonresident aliens' for IRC purposes is unsupported
The 'I am a nonresident alien for IRC purposes' theory holds that ordinary Americans living in the fifty states fall outside the income tax because the IRC's 'United States' means only federal territories. The statutory definitions are clear, the case law is uniform, and the theory is one of the most heavily-sanctioned positions in the IRS frivolous-positions list.
'Includes' as non-exclusive: Helvering v. Morgan's settled the question at apex in 1934
The construction rule for 'includes' and 'including' in tax statutes was substantively decided by the Supreme Court in 1934 — at apex, on the merits, citing the Revenue Act's own internal construction rule. The 1934 holding is the apex anchor for what 26 U.S.C. § 7701(c) now codifies. Subsequent re-raisings of the question (the Federal-Zone-style tax-protester line) are routed to lower courts that apply this binding precedent rather than re-examine it.
Brushaber: What the Case Actually Says
Brushaber v. Union Pacific (1916) is the most-cited and most-misread case in alternate-tax literature. What the Court actually held: the Sixteenth Amendment did not create new taxing power but removed apportionment as a barrier; the income tax is an excise on the receipt of income, valid against direct-tax challenges. What the movement reads into it: an exemption for private-sector wages. Not in the opinion.
The Federal Zone Thesis at Its Foundation
Paul Andrew Mitchell's *The Federal Zone* (1992; 11th ed. 2001) builds an elaborate territorial-limits argument on three foundational moves: a re-reading of the Supreme Court's 'three meanings' of 'United States' from Hooven & Allison, a restrictive reading of the IRC's definition of 'State,' and a restrictive reading of the IRC's use of 'includes.' The structural argument depends on each foundation holding. None of the three holds against primary sources. § 7701(c) — the IRC's own construction rule — directly forecloses the central move.
Society of Slaves and Freedmen
Treatise #9 of Beers's 11-treatise corpus. Argues that modern American citizens exist in a legal status functionally equivalent to Roman slaves or freedmen — bearing the label 'person' which historically denoted a character subject to the will of a master, with the federal tax system operating on this slave/freedman classification.
Person / Man Distinction (Beers)
Byron Beers's central definitional move, recurring across Treatises 2, 7, 9, and 10: 'person' is a creature of civil law — a legal fiction whose status the sovereign confers and can revoke — while 'man' is the natural condition of human beings outside that taxonomy. The distinction is used to argue that statutes addressed to 'persons,' 'residents,' or 'individuals' bind only those who hold the corresponding legal status, not 'free men and women' operating under the natural order. The historical fact that older legal dictionaries treated 'person' as a status-bearing term is correct; the inference Beers builds on it is foreclosed by every statute that defines 'person' for its own purposes.
Citizenship and Naturalization: The Constitutional Structure
The constitutional structure of citizenship — Article I naturalization power, Fourteenth Amendment birthright citizenship, the dual federal/state structure, and the layered statutory citizenship of corporations under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(c). The vocabulary the project's findings rely on, defined once and cross-referenced from the per-finding work.
'Nonresident Alien' in the Internal Revenue Code
26 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(1)(B) defines 'nonresident alien' as 'an individual who is neither a citizen of the United States nor a resident of the United States.' The definition has two requirements, both necessary: non-citizenship and non-residency. A U.S. citizen — by the express text of an Act of Congress enacted in 1984 — cannot be a nonresident alien for IRC purposes. This single sentence forecloses the territorial-volunteer reading that *The Federal Zone* and its derivatives depend on.
The Citizen/Alien × Resident/Nonresident Matrix
The IRC distinguishes individual taxpayers along two axes: U.S. citizenship (citizen vs. alien) and U.S. residence (resident vs. nonresident). The four resulting cells map onto real Code sections with distinct tax bases — citizens and resident aliens taxed worldwide under § 1, nonresident aliens taxed on U.S.-source / effectively-connected income under § 871. The Matrix is real; what the alternate-tax movement adds — moving U.S. citizens in the fifty states into the nonresident-alien cell — is not in the Matrix.
'Includes' in the Internal Revenue Code
26 U.S.C. § 7701(c) is the IRC's own rule for how the words 'includes' and 'including' should be read in IRC definitions. The rule says the listed items do not exclude other things within the ordinary meaning of the defined term. This single sentence forecloses the restrictive-includes reading on which a substantial part of alternate-tax theory depends.
'State' in the Internal Revenue Code
26 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(10) defines 'State' to include the District of Columbia. The use of 'include' rather than 'mean' has been read in alternate-tax theory as restricting the term to D.C. and federal possessions, excluding the fifty states. Read in tandem with § 7701(c) — the IRC's own construction rule — that reading is foreclosed: 'includes' is non-exclusive, and the fifty states remain within the ordinary meaning of 'State.'
Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius
A common-law canon of statutory construction: 'the express mention of one thing excludes others.' The canon raises a defeasible presumption that items not listed in a statute are excluded from its reach. It is genuinely ancient, genuinely operative in U.S. statutory interpretation, and frequently invoked in alternate-tax theory — most often without acknowledging the canon's well-mapped limits or the express statutory overrides that Congress regularly enacts.