If, like some of us, you have fond memories of Nino Brown and White Men Can't Jump, then today wouldn't be the worst day to go to Ocala, Florida, and hang out in front of the courthouse holding a sign reading "Free Wesley Snipes!" As noted here previously, Snipes, who in the Blade movies worked so hard to rid Los Angeles of blood-sucking vampires [insert joke here], but who has been increasingly M.I.A. in Hollywood, is facing off against an enemy that might have made even Dracula blanch: the Internal Revenue Service. Snipes, who has been charged with attempting to defraud the government, goes on trial today. The talented and charismatic actor, who was once described by critic Elvis Mitchell as looking "so chiseled that his six-pack abs look stocked with 16-ounce cans," appears to have been taking his tax advice from Willie Nelson, or perhaps at a seance where he was able to consult with the spirit of Gordon Kahl. Snipes is said to have simply stopped paying taxes for six years starting in 1999, and is also charged with filing a false claim for a seven million dollar refund in 1997. (He is also said to have written the I.R.S. a total of fourteen million dollars in rubber checks.) Snipes's position is that he doesn't owe the government squat, and to back that up, he's cited "the 861 position." This, as David Kay Johnston explains in The New York Times, is not a direct-to-video sequel to Passenger 57 but a crackpot theory that's been gaining traction in tax deniers' culture: "Adherents say a regulation applying the 861 provision does not list wages as taxable, though it does say that 'compensation for services' is taxable. The courts have uniformly rejected all such theories, and eight people have been sentenced to prison after not paying taxes based on the 861 argument."
However, in a few recent high-profile cases, juries looking to side with the little guy against big gummint have frustrated the courts by turning tax deniers loose. It's hard to imagine the steroid-addled gargantua who might regard Wesley Snipes as a little guy, but he does have his celebrity on his side, and because of that, the trial has the potential to attract unprecedented attention to the tax deniers' movement. J. J. MacNab, a Maryland insurance analyst who works on tax denial cases, told the Times that if Snipes emerges victorious, the case "will get more press and attention than any other victory by the tax deniers, and the growth in new members will be exponential.” As the aptly named MacNab points out, the star is a pioneering tax denier in another way: "“Snipes is already drawing whole new demographics to the movement. Tax protesters used to be white, 50 or older, blue-collar, rural and often connected to racist movements, but Snipes is young, urban and famous.” (Snipes also has connections to a group called the Nuwaubians, "a quasi-religious sect of black Americans who promote antigovernment theories.") Sitting in the dock with Snipes are his tax advisers, Douglas Rosile, who lost his accounting license ten years ago, and Eddie Kahn, who "has served prison time for tax crimes". Not for nothing, but my sister does my taxes for me for free, and so far she's managed to keep me out of prison, to the general astonishment of the rest of the family. I'm sure she'd do Wesley's for him, in exchange for his agreeing to come to the house sometime in full costume to scare her kids.