The answer is somewhat technical, but that's what you get in a thread like this, so please ask any questions needed. Life imprisonment is something we sovereigns have determined too important for any one of us to decide alone, so we have justly delegated that power to elected (elect) representatives who appoint judges. But the government has no power to threaten prosecution in matters our representatives have not decided prosecutable.

Thus other legally compliant alternatives to the traditional meaning of voluntary compliance do exist. The traditional (deceptive) meaning is "pay what we ask". The true legally compliant meaning is "pay what you owe". To discern the difference is to be able to distinguish when an ask is beyond the government's authority.

Natural inertia tempts a government to enlarge its claims and requests beyond its commission into whatever its masters, the sovereigns, permit it to get away with. Further, the government is not alone but must depend on a network of business interests that also prefer a scheme of effective bondage to the actual nation of sovereigns we created and maintain.

When a government is run by moral people who have the power to pass their morality onto the next generation, all is well; but sooner or later the forces of evil seek, and find, ways to corrupt that government from its intent. The Lord says this corruption will not exceed what we can bear, will not be permitted to go so far as to prevent us from earning our daily bread, and will be surely judged when its iniquity is full. So he oversees all governments that backslide, allowing their errors for his teaching and loving purposes while protecting his own who call on him, and making up for anything lost by anyone who calls on his name.

That means they only get away with what we let them. As a sovereign, I deign not to fight every battle I might, but to trust that I and my Lord and my fellow sovereigns are each taking up our part. In this post I know I have the power to communicate truths unfiltered to a few people, and so I am victor. Before I came to Scored I fought in other ways. But when I first realized the immense scope of this and related problems and I asked the Lord, he told me plainly: it's his job to fix it, not mine, and he's doing it just fine on his own time. And ever since, I've trusted that. So for those around me I do not let lies persist or empty threats prevail; but for the public at large I am not given a special commission to devote dedicated resources to the problem of people who know the IRS is misleading them but don't know how to proceed. I got a commission to come here 2 years ago and was permitted to speak to this topic ad hoc among many others, and my focus may change in future, but right now that's how I fight.

Very few get life imprisonment for tax crimes, because the threat is much more effective than the execution. Those true scoundrels who have broken the law and who happen to have been caught by the IRS are paraded around as evidence that the IRS's judgments are always valid. Intermixed with them is the occasional "law-abiding" citizen who objects to the traditional compliance method but seeks to break no law, and these are paraded just as if they are mob bosses or traffickers for daring to suggest that one who collects money might have a conflict of interest in determining how much to collect. The particulars of any case can be discussed by us sovereigns to determine if the IRS followed or broke the law in its prosecution, rather than accepted wholeheartedly as one-sidedly stated.

But pragmatists like Thoreau can remind us Christians something we ought to have found in the Bible: the man or woman who trusts what is Right will never fear being jailed or even executed for what they have not done. Like our founders, we appeal to the supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions. Thus the empty threat has no power over the sovereign. That leads to each one self-educating about the nature of the law and its execution and deciding what to do about it for oneself. And such sovereigns end up banding together to build strength. And by natural law, after enough of this, nobody gets away with deception anymore.