David Cay Johnston, a respected New York Times reporter on tax issues, has debunked “America: From Freedom to Fascism,” a crackpot anti-tax documentary that has been treated respectfully in mainstream press reviews:

Mr. Russo, the narrator, asserts that every president since Woodrow Wilson and every member of Congress has perpetrated a hoax to tax people’s wages and issue them dubious currency. All of the federal income tax revenue, the film says, goes to these bankers to pay interest on the national debt, even though by the broadest measure the federal government’s interest payments are less than 40 percent of the individual income taxes, according to an examination of every federal budget since 1995…

Near the film’s beginning Mr. Russo says, and others appear on screen asserting, that the Internal Revenue Service has refused every request to show any law making Americans liable for an income tax on their wages.

Yet among those thanked in the credits for their help in making the film is Anthony Burke, an I.R.S. spokesman. Mr. Burke said that when Mr. Russo called him asking what law required the payment of income taxes on wages, he sent Mr. Russo a link to documents, including Title 26 of the United States Code, citing the specific sections that require income taxes be paid on wages. Title 26 says on its face that it is law enacted by Congress, but Mr. Russo denied this fact…

Arguments made in court that the income tax is invalid are so baseless that Congress has authorized fines of $25,000 for anyone who makes them. But even though the penalty was quintupled, from $5,000, it has not deterred those who assert this and other claims that Congress and the courts deemed “frivolous arguments.”

The film also states repeatedly that people are tricked into paying income taxes because no law makes them liable for taxes. The tax code uses the word impose, whose definition includes the concept of liability, courts have held in published decisions…

Mr. Russo also said that “Congress has no authority to tax people’s labor.” Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution begins with the phrase “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes.”

Only three limitations are placed on that power, none of which bars a tax on wages. One limitation, however, was a requirement that taxes be “apportioned among the several states.”

The 16th Amendment repealed apportionment, but Mr. Russo says in the film that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified and thus a tax on wages is unconstitutional. This claim has been made in various forms by thousands of tax protesters since 1913, and so far their batting average with the courts is .000.

And by the way, Aaron Russo, the director, producer, and writer of the film, has “more than $2 million of tax liens” filed against him by the IRS, New York and California. But according to Johnston, he says the liens “were not relevant to his film.” Right…