Chess One wrote:
"John A Swartz" wrote in message
...

Dear John Swartz,

on a moderated newsgroup a CPA wrote back to me that money earned
outside
the USA is not taxable by the USA. Perhaps he is incorrect, I
don't know.
Do you?

But if he is incorrect, and Fischer owes taxes to the US Treasury,
then
does it matter if these accrued prior to his match, or after? If
this
bean-counter is correct no revenue from the match is due the US
Gov't.

Since Fischer has stated that he hasn't filed income taxes since
1976, I
assume that he still owes money. But I'm assuming that he does owe
money
on those winnings, as I have not seen anything in the various news
reports
to suggest otherwise.

okay - he still owes money pre-Jugoslawia and post?


What is the basis of the Japanese holding him for 8 months?

Maybe because Fischer refuses to go back to the US.

?
I might also refuse to go somewhere - but what has this to do with
the
Japananese?

After all, there have been [how many years?] since the money was
earned
to form a case and in fact to publish the Government's complaint,
and it
does not appear anywhere in the world that one can be extradicted
to a
country by virtue of a government //claiming// you owe it taxes,
rather
than having established the fact - even in the severest of
regimes.

It does indeed introduce a peculiarity into the law, where
presumed
'illegal' income is legally taxed.

Actually, I've heard that "illegal" income is still legally
taxed...

A conundrum, no? Maybe you understand it better than me, but it seems
from
your response that he owed income tax before the Spassky match, which
is the
endictment being made, but also the US Govt thinks he should pay
taxes on
money from the Spassky match. Is that your understanding of it?

Similarly, it seems inconsistent because Fischer indulged in
defamatory
speech to prosecute him on that basis. Lindborg openly adored the
Nazis
and their policies. And Henry Ford was publicly
anti-semitic.Nothing at
all happened to these people -- and I think the constitution did
not
change in the meantime.

I agree - and despite all speculation, I do not know that there are
any
plans to charge him for that.

Okay.


Perhaps the issue has therefore to do with the war in the former
Yugoslavia? The claim, as I understand it, is that by taking part
in a
chess game with Boris Spassky, Fischer [not apparently Spassky]
was
supporting the regime.


Spassky is not a US citizen, so I don't think he is bound to US
Executive
Orders.

But you think this is also a motive for the US Govt? It does not seem
to
have been a motive for Spassky's country of residence, on the same
continent
as 'the offence' - do you see what I mean? This is something that
American's
would lay onto Fischer that the French did not think to charge to
Spassky.

Therefore, is this a solely American world view of how things should
be?

But I can't think that this is the case, since when people mention
that it
seemed to them disreputable that Fischer took part in the match since
it
somehow legitimized the Serbian regime, they neglect to mention
Spaasky at
all. This seems inconsistent as an ethical standard, so must be some
other
standard - a national one?

Additionally, an executive order forbade Fischer to play chess in
that
country, which Fischer dismissed as irrelevant to the war, and not
even
remotely relevant to playing chess with Spassky - in fact he may
have had
other ideas of the value of performing a ritual conflict, rather
than an
actual one- and which, if we would take him at his word about just

playing chess, 'was all he ever wanted to do'.

Do you personally doubt, from all and everything that you have
read,
that all he wanted to do was play chess?


Yes I do - he wanted to play chess and get paid millions of dollars
for
doing so. And even so, the notion that "all he wanted to do to
play
chess" is hardly an excuse for defying Executive Orders.

An executive order is not law. Ollie North supported the president of
the
United States but broke the law. An executive order is testable in a
court -
but who should prosecute whom? Can I, for example, prosecute the
government
on the basis of their restriction to the Consitution? How much money
would
it cost me to do so?

If the sense of the law was not to trade with Serbia, then there are
all
sorts of exceptions made. For chess there is even a specific
exception, the
United States Chess Federation were exempt from trading the Serbian
publication 'Informant'.

How shall we now discuss if Fischer's chess for profit in Serbia, is
different than the USCF's trading in chess for profit?

And while I can't argue whether they were illegal or not, they were

presumably made due to the international sanctions going on at the
time
against Yugoslavia. Whether it actually did or not, I assume the
holding
of the match there was to promote the country, and encourage other
business (tourism?) there.

laugh I should doubt tourism, and besides, the tourist area would
have
been a mainly coastal one, Splitz for example, which used to be the
terminus
of the orient express from paris. I travelled on it. Who in their
right mind
would go to Yugoslavia for a holiday during wartime?

The banker that financed the match, at the first press conference
acknowledged this by his comments to the effect that they have
"broken
through the blockade in spectacular fashion" (referring to the
sanctions).

I wonder if he ever reported if his hyperbole ever delivered a single
dollar
to his country?

But perhaps that is not the issue either, and it was the radio
broadcasts
at the time of 9/11 which are his crime.

They are perhaps his "crime against humanity", but it is not why I
think
this is happening.

He is like the American heros Henry Ford and the flyer-Hitlerite
Lindborg -
these people also supported the same crime. But we discount this as a

Government motive, either in the USA, or in Japan laugh which is
not quite
free of racial superiority opinion especially of other Asian nations.


Fischer may have spoken in an uncivil and uncaring way about the
victims
of the disaster, but is this a criminal offence? I mean, if you
met him
you might be provoked to bop him on the nose!! but is it actually
criminal to have such views?

No, but you're right about the bopping him on the nose...

It would be hard not to do it
Real friends might have done it 20 years ago, as an 'organic'
response.

In short, if he is a criminal, which crime was it?


I see it as violation of Executive Orders, and income tax evasion.

Okay

If he did commit a crime, what is the extradition treaty with
Japan in
respect of that crime?

I don't know.

Neither does anyone else, so it seems.

And one other question: Why are we waiting 8 months to find out?

Again, I don't know. Maybe if Fischer returns to the US we will
find
out...

I meant, find out what the delay is about. He either broke a law
which
occassions the very serious act of extradition, or he did not. 8
months of
dithering reveal that he broke no law, and US lawyers must be
attempting to
fudge the basis of executive order as a basis of extradition. A novel

concept in world law, and one which will reduce USA and Japan even
further
in this sorry affair.

Holding a person without even a valid charge being brought against
them
is a crime in both the USA and in Japan.

My understanding (and I think Tom Klem recently posted it) is that
he is
being held because he refuses to go back to the US, which, given
that he
is a US citizen (or at least was at the time he was arrested)
without a
valid passport seems to be the only place he can go.

He has a valid passport now and seemed only to have been tricked into
going
to Japan on a false one - surely he would never knowingly do so if he
knew
it had been revoked? I challenged Tom Klem to say which law he broke
- but
Tom Klem has nothing to say.

Both the USA and Japan will have some explaining to do long after
this
issue is resolved. Perhaps Japan never entered the C20th at all in

respecting civil rights of individual people, and perhaps the USA
has
returned to the same C19th, and the sort of democracy advocated by

Jefferson? Rich Male White Wasps Rule, Right?

Are you saying that if Fischer was a Wasp he'd be all set? - He's
certainly a rich white male (or was)... ;-)

I am saying something much more serious about this affair. You should

understand that 'Jeffersonian' emancipation for all people, does not
in fact
mean that, since so very many people were not considered to have any
rights,
or indeed to have been human. It is a mocking WASp term, and I am not
a
WASP.

Fischer has been disenfranchised from his rights as a citizen in this
case -
the US and Japanese governements both act outside their own laws.

I seriously doubt there will be much "explaining to do" once this
issue is
resolved - I expect it will receive very little attention outside
the
chess world (and quite frankly not that much attention within it).
I wait
to be proven wrong - I personally take no delight in Fischer's
unhappiness, but much of it appears self-inflicted to me. Maybe
someday
he will get help, but if he has comitted crimes, he should pay for
them
(and becoming the world chess champion over 30 years ago doesn't
give him
a free pass).

John

O - I don't think so. I think the stink will last 10 years unless
there is
some honorable acknowledgement of this situation.

He has been taken hostage, outside any law, and no one wants to even
think
about it. Well, not here in the USA perhaps, but the whole world has
not
gone to sleep, and is watching this.

If you don't care about the whole world, then, I must report to you,
that
this is why it will cost your country O so much if it ever wishes to
rejoin
the C21st.

Phil Innes



Phil Innes


Hans J=F8rgen Lassen wrote:


"John A Swartz" wrote:



If you or I owed the US Gov't millions of dollars, don't you
think
they'd want to "get" us too?


Sure they would.

The interesting question is: Why does the US go after Fischer
right now,
after so many years? It seems he has ignored the IRS for fifteen,
twenty
or more years without any action at all from the US authorities.

So what has happened that has made Fischer a target now when he
was not
a couple of years ago?

HansJ



Phil,
Concerning money made overseas:
I have a friend who Summers at his home on Lake Geneva and has a home
in Ft Meyers, Fl as well as homes in Atlanta, Ga and in Nashville, Tn.
He has carefully constructed his finances in such a way that money
earned abroad or here in the States is not taxable income.

Thats all I can say as I know nothing more about Fischers particulars.
Best,
Rob

Phil,
Concerning money made overseas:
I have a friend who Summers at his home on Lake Geneva and has a home
in Ft Meyers, Fl as well as homes in Atlanta, Ga and in Nashville, Tn.
He has carefully constructed his finances in such a way that money
earned abroad or here in the States is not taxable income.

Thats all I can say as I know nothing more about Fischers particulars.
Best,
Rob
--

Hi Rob, me neither! I assume it is quite possible to guard one's resources
by using an offshore, or something - some of the English Channel Islands are
even established as independent financial entities and are sovereign. But in
this case, Fischer no longer seemed to be resident in the US. While I am
truly ignorant of these financial goings-on, I was just amused by everyone's
recently avowed enthusiasm for paying income tax

Cordially, Phil