How you can resist funding the government → a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns → resonate with myths, legends, folklore, or historical examples → the “black tax credit”

Here’s another in my series of posts on fringe tax avoidance schemes. , Robert Foster was sentenced to 13 years in prison for preparing his daughter’s taxes with a fraudulent “slavery tax credit” that gained her a half million dollar refund. The daughter, Crystal Foster, was sentenced to three years in prison.

This “slavery tax credit” in its various forms harmonizes with a belief held by many African Americans that they are due reparations for the American institution of slavery. It has no basis in the tax code or the law, however.

The Washington Post reports today that the refund check to Foster:

…which she received in , is believed to be the largest slavery claim ever paid by the agency. IRS spokeswoman Michelle Lamishaw said yesterday that the IRS received nearly 80,000 tax returns claiming $2.7 billion in nonexistent slavery credits in alone. It has paid out about $30 million in fraudulent reparations claims, she said, but she was unable to say over what time period.

Earlier news stories say that the $30 million figure was from . Here’s the snopes.com entry on the “Black Tax Credit.”

Here’s a follow-up to a Picket Line post from about the “black tax credit.” This is mostly interesting from the historical and folkloric angle, but I thought I’d mention it here.

Jonathan Turley traced this tax credit legend back to an article in Essence magazine  — an article Turley suggests was irresponsibly advocating tax fraud.

That article’s author responds in ’s Washington Post:

I concluded [my Essence] commentary with what I considered a sardonic observation: “Since de facto racial discrimination continues to function as a hidden Black tax, it ought to be deductible. So when income-tax time rolls around, on line 59 of form 1040 — which asks you to list ‘other payments’ — simply enter $43,209 in ‘Black taxes’ and compute accordingly.”

Nonetheless, Turley, in a rabid urge to distort, writes, “Readers could claim this amount, she advised…” (In Turley’s world, a tongue-in-cheek comment is equivalent to sage advice.) That my words could produce, in his words, “a cottage industry of charlatans and crooks pushing the promise of a ‘black tax’ ” is covered by the law of unintended consequences.