If anyone is capable of effectuating the goal hereinabove set forth at the head hereof (as my expensive colleagues would say, if the government lets them), it is Judge Ronald L. (“Ingenuity”) Buch. But he must perforce forbear, as Daryl Cheatham, Docket No. 751-24, filed 4/15/25 (“It’s That Day Again”) gives him nothing but old-time protester jive wherewith to furnish forth this off-the-bencher.

“We have further explained in Wnuck v. Commissioner, ‘[I]t is doubtful whether tax jurisprudence will be much advanced by issuing yet another opinion affirming the obvious truisms about tax law’. 136 T.C. 498, 504 (2011). For example, we have previously spilled ink addressing the frivolous argument that income tax is an excise tax and it cannot be imposed as a non-apportioned direct tax under the 16th Amendment, an argument Mr. Cheatham repeats in this case.” Transcript, at p. 6. (Citation omitted).

For the backstory on oft-quoted Scott F. Wnuck, see my blogpost “One’ll Get You Five,” 5/31/11.

Perhaps the late Mr. Justice Antonin Scalia was partly right when he compared Tax Court to a village traffic court: the Glasshouse in the City of Governmental Efficiency may be a safety valve, a place where frustrated taxpayers get to blow off steam; where they get heard before a truly competent judge who cares but can do nothing to vary the law. Wherefore little harm is done either to the fisc or the public peace. And the advance of tax jurisprudence can wait for still another day.