This is a short, simple book that leverages "the Hendrickson Discovery" about the federal income tax--ref. Pete Hendrickson's book Cracking the Code--into independent consciousness and personal liberation... which in turn disarm the collective-mind that uses ad hominem and other logical fallacies to keep people from truth about the tax (the Discovery), unjustly depriving them of rightfully earned property. AGC opens the door to an imminent prosperous, benevolent future for you, your family, and our country.

From Kevin Flanagan's Chapter 1:

Learn how you can LEGALLY keep all of your property every year (which is what the framers of the Constitution intended, that a man's labor would never be violated).

The federal income tax is actually written as an excise tax-because a direct tax without apportionment would be unconstitutional [the 16th amendment did not change this]. Excise taxes can only target narrowly de-fined activities and must be avoidable. Think cigarette tax, if you don't want to pay it, then don't smoke.

The activity that the federal income tax targets is the exercise of Federal Privilege. To put it simply and bluntly, the only people who technically owe federal income tax are the ones who have federal earnings; i.e. working for or contracting with the federal government or one of their federal corporations (post office, FDA, etc) or instrumentalities (railroads, national banks, etc.), or receiving federal payments such as Social Security (though most SS benefits are typically specifically ex-cluded from income tax on the 1040). This has been true ever since the first income tax was enacted during the Abraham Lincoln presidency in 1862.

The great scam of the IRS was in convincing all companies, not just those federally connected, to begin withholding during WWII-before then, less than 4% of the American adult population paid federal income taxes (Congressional reports from that time period detail this). Most companies complied in the fervor of war, not knowing they weren't legally/technically required to do so.

So now when you receive a W2 or 1099, understand that it is actually a legal document that declares that the money you received for the year was federally connected income. 80% of the time this is false. But once it's been filed with the IRS the burden is on you to refute it (and once you refute it the burden is on them to prove that it is federally connected, which they can't).

Legal scholar Pete Hendrickson made this discovery in the late 1990s when the IRS digitized the entire code and made it searchable (dumbest thing they ever did). Before that it was literally impossible for anyone to see all the pieces, much less to put them together.

His book came out in 2003 and since then 10s of thousands of Americans have been legally reclaiming more than 2.5 billion dollars of their property incorrectly withheld from them. This includes, get this, all FICA taxes as well as income taxes. (Unfortunately you can only go back three years).

Observations of the author:

This purpose of this book, American Gumption-Catharsis, is to show that the Hendrickson Discovery is ironclad, and, as important, the learning and practice of the discovery is very likely the root best action any of us can take to reclaim a) honest government, and b) our own spiritual and intellectual independence.

Or to put it in the author's own terms: "As I've stated in the narrative of this book, leveraging the Discovery of Pete Hendrickson is the best catalyst I can think of to ultimately break all the collars and reach our destiny as Independents, starbound.