Deschesne Caught

Deschesne Caught "Evading" Taxes

Reel Mower Deprives Government of Much-Needed Revenue

Fort Fairfield Journal, May 25, 2005

David Deschesne, editor of the Fort Fairfield Journal, was recently photographed evading taxes by using a manual Reel mower to cut his grass.

Because reel mowers convert human energy directly into motion in the blades that cut the grass, those who use them are able to avoid, or as government says, “evade,” payment of Federal Income Tax, State Income Tax, as well as Federal and state gasoline taxes.

Most people go to work, convert their labor into Federal Reserve Notes and pay anywhere from 15% to 30% for that privilege. They then take the notes they have left over and purchase gasoline for their lawn mower and pay, again 40+% of the price in taxes to State and Federal agencies. After all that, they exert even more labor pushing a gasoline lawn mower around their yard in order to either maintain or slightly increase the value of their land by keeping the grass short. With this method of cutting grass, much labor has been frivolously wasted in taxation.

“The mechanics of reducing your tax burden are in the lawn mower, itself,” says Deschesne. “By simply changing the type of lawn mower, a person may, indeed reduce all of the taxes associated therewith. My suggestion is in the capacity of a reel mower.”

Most of today's generation do not know what a reel mower is, older people do, however. A reel mower is a lawn mower from yesteryear. It is all manual. The blades are parallel with the ground and are connected to the wheels with a gearing mechanism. As you push the mower, the blades spin and cut the grass; thus, the power for the mower is generated by the human pushing it. Reel mowers are still available at some hardware stores for about $100.00, but you have to look around.

“With a reel mower, you eliminate the labor which you needed to expend in order to obtain the FRNs to purchase the gasoline, thereby eliminating the tax on said labor, which you would have otherwise paid,” notes Deschesne. “Since you are not purchasing gasoline, you do not pay any of those associated taxes, either. However, you still have to push a mower around the yard - there's no getting out of that.”

“With approximately the same amount of labor you exerted with a gasoline mower in order to obtain cut grass, a reel mower will achieve the same result. In the end, you exert half as much labor and pay no tax with a reel mower; thereby freeing up more of your precious time for other more important and productive things - may I suggest reading, or spending time with your family.”

Labor, and the ability to expend it for whom and what one desires, is each individual person’s own private property. If it weren’t, we would all be slaves. The income tax at the Federal and state level therefore is merely a property tax - not an income tax.

With that in mind, Deschesne asks the rhetorical question: “Since income tax is a direct tax on the expenditure of our own labor (which is our property), will the politicians and bureaucrats we now serve allow us to get away with this form of ‘tax evasion?’”