Throwing Down the Gauntlet

A man named Peymon Mottahedeh issued three challenges in the year 2000 that have not been successfully overcome to this day. His first challenge:

Show the statute written by the Congress of the United States that requires American citizens or corporations of the 50 states, having solely private earnings, to file an income tax return and pay an income tax.

Notice that Mr. Mottahedeh specifically asks for the “statute” not “Code”.

See Wikipedia’s explanations and hyperlinks that fully explain the difference between statute and Code and the codification of statutes into the law process. 

Codes of the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26) are not statutes. The code is only prima fascia evidence of the statute, but not the statute itself. In this context, prima facie means that it is regarded as true at first blush, but subject to additional examination or investigation.

As Proverbs 18:17 says,

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

It is important to understand that Title 26 is not positive law. Per the Legislative Research Special Interest Section of the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C., Inc.:

Positive law titles of the United States Code, indicated by an asterisk, are legal evidence of the law and need no further authoritative citation as prior acts concerning those titles have been repealed. Other titles to the U.S. Code are "prima facie" evidence of the law (1 USC §204), and are presumed to be the law, but are rebuttable by production of prior unrepealed acts of Congress at variance with the Code.

Thus we cannot be certain that any code section in Title 26 accurately reflects the exact language and intent of the statute.