Baker v. State

WILNER, Chief Judge. Taxes, Justice Holmes penned in dissent in Companía de Tabacos v. Collector, 275 U.S. 87, 100 , 48 S.Ct. 100, 105 , 72 L.Ed. 177 (1904), are what we pay for civilized society. David Bruce Baker, to our knowledge, has not complained about or sought voluntarily to withdraw from civilized society. He has, however, objected to making his annual contribution to that society. ⁵⁶⁶ The Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County took a dim view of Mr. Baker’s attitude in this regard.

On ample, and largely undisputed, evidence, a jury convicted him of willful failure to file his 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 Maryland income tax returns. No doubt disturbed by the fact that Mr. Baker then fled the State in violation of his release on personal recognizance pending sentencing, the court, upon his return pursuant to a bench warrant eventually served on him in Tennessee, sentenced him to 12 years in prison and a $12,000 fine. That sentence, it appears, caused Mr. Baker temporarily to reformulate his political and fiscal philosophy. He filed the delinquent returns and paid the taxes that were due, along with interest and penalties, whereupon a sentence review panel reduced his sentence to 18 months and a $1,500 fine.

Mr. Baker is now part of civilized society again, having been released on parole some six months ago. Though free, he remains unrepentant, and, with the assistance of the Public Defender’s Office, which he previously was unwilling to help support, he has brought this appeal, complaining that he was “denied due process of law and the rudimentary demands of justice by the State’s deception of the court and jury in regard to the Comptroller’s status under the Maryland Forms Management Law.” The essence of his argument is that he was not required to file Maryland income tax returns or to pay any taxes because the income tax return form prescribed by the Comptroller was not in compliance with the Forms Management Act (Md.Ann.Code State Gov’t art., §§ 10-604 — 10-608). He complains further that the State’s witnesses misled the court into thinking that the form was in compliance with that Act. The English language, blending and building upon the vocabulary of its Latin and Germanic roots, is a marvelous and omnificent language, offering a rich variety of words and expressions to describe or explain a single thought.

And so, in characterizing the complaint made in this appeal by Mr. David Bruce Baker, we have much to choose from— ⁵⁶⁷ ludicrous, preposterous, silly, asinine, ridiculous, absurd, nonsensical, frivolous, outrageous, unreasonable, laughable, foolish, unsound, and incongruous come to mind, but there may be others. Meritless and erroneous are partly descriptive, but somehow they don’t seem to capture the full flavor of the thought. In other words, we propose to affirm. Appellant at one time worked for Giant Food, Inc. As long as his employer withheld money from his salary toward his income tax liability and thereby entitled him to a refund at the end of the year, Baker filed tax returns.

At some point, however, and by some means, he was able to persuade his employer to cease withholding money for taxes, and he thereafter declined to file returns. In response to inquiries from the Internal Revenue Service and the State Comptroller, he offered a variety of reasons as to why he was not required to file returns or pay taxes, including assertions that the income tax laws were unconstitutional, that wages did not constitute income, that IRS Form 1040 was not an authorized form and for that reason he was excused from having to file either Federal or State income tax returns, and that, pursuant to his “Affidavit of Revocation and Rescission," he was a “free sovereign U.S. citizen” who elected to become, retroactively, a “nontaxpayer.” It is undisputed that Baker earned income in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 subject to tax under Maryland law, that he in fact owed a tax on the income so earned, and that for each of those years he knowingly and deliberately refused to file an income tax return and to pay any part of the tax that was due. At the time, the refusal was presumably based on the reasons just noted. Those are not the reasons advanced at trial or in this appeal, however.

Rather, he discovered the Forms Management Act, which, among other things, (1) requires each unit of the Executive Branch of the State Government to designate a “forms management officer” to “keep a current plan for the management of forms that the unit uses” (§ 10-605); (2) states that the plan shall require “a register of the forms that the forms manage ⁵⁶⁸ ment officer approves” (§ 10-606(a)(2)) and require also that each form be identified in accordance with a standard identification system developed by the Records Management Division of the Department of General Services (§ 10-606(a)(3)); and (3) provides that the unit “may use only the forms that are listed on its register of approved forms.” (§ 10-607). Incredibly, a major part of the four-day trial, producing 815 pages of transcript and an entire carton of exhibits, was taken up with