Claude Franklin Sanders, T. C. Memo. 2023-71, filed 6/14/23, “published monthly newsletters about the gold and silver market and provided brokerage services for clients.” T. C. Memo. 2023-71, at p. 2. He carried on his business under two names, one of which was “Moneychanger.”

Claude also never bothered to file or pay income tax for some ten (count ’em, ten) years, claiming he was neither a citizen nor an individual, and that Treasury violated APA by not publishing an organization chart. But he had managed to get run out of AR for sales tax evasion, and ran to TN, whose own sales taxers nailed him. So IRS hits Claude for about $1.6 million in tax, add-ons and chops, including without in any way limiting the generality of the foregoing (as my expensive colleagues would say), Section 6663 fraud chops, all of which Judge Travis A. (“Tag”) Greaves lays upon him.

“Moneychanger” is an unfortunate moniker. Perhaps Claude was unaware of John 2:13-16. But I daresay Judge Tag Greaves is fully familiar therewith, and acted accordingly.

Now I must remember publicly that the entire aim of a self-assessment tax system like ours is to bring taxpayers into compliance therewith. Publicly excoriating and berating noncompliants, however egregious their actions and nonactions, does not induce compliance; to the contrary, it rather perversely induces sympathy on the part of burdened compliants, even where those compliants’ burdens are increased by the malfeasance and nonfeasance of the noncompliant.

Still, if an Authority highly exalted above even Tax Court judges resorted to whipping moneychangers….