Al Thompson, the businessman who became a hero to tax protesters when he stopped withholding taxes from the pay of workers at his small manufacturing plant more than four years ago, was convicted on Friday on all but one of 14 tax charges.
The conviction is the latest blow to the "tax honesty movement," a melange of groups that assert various theories that Americans are tricked into paying taxes.
Thompson, 58, of Redding, California, was convicted of filing a false tax return, making false claims against the government and willful failure to withhold and pay taxes.
The jury acquitted Thompson of conspiring with Joseph Banister, a former Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator, to defeat the tax laws. Banister, a certified public accountant in San Jose, California, who tells clients no law requires them to pay taxes, asked to be tried separately in June.
Thompson's actions were the focus of an article in The New York Times in November 2000. Because he had publicly declared his actions, Thompson told the jurors, he did not see how they could convict him of conspiracy.
Thompson's company, Cencal Aviation Products, which made flight bags and other accessories for pilots, is defunct.
He has been in custody since November. He was jailed three times before that for violating civil orders to cooperate with state auditors and file federal tax returns.
The government calculated the tax loss resulting from Thompson's actions was US$256,000.
Thompson, who acted as his own lawyer, argued that he had not willfully violated the law and contended that he had been charged with a crime because "the IRS was misapplying the law."
In another tax protester case, a federal jury in Boise, Idaho, on Friday convicted David Roland Hinkson of soliciting the killings of a federal judge, a federal prosecutor and an IRS agent because of earlier charges against him for willful failure to file tax returns.
Hinkson, who ran Water Oz, a company that sold dietary supplements through a Web site, was accused of offering US$10,000 for each killing.
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