Originally published on Forbes.com.

I didn’t think anybody would ever be able to top “Call me Ishmael” as an opening line of a book, although “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday” comes close.  Professor Samuel Brunson has managed it though with his Thanksgiving line, at least in my book.  Well his book actually – God And The IRS – Accommodating Religious Practice in United States Tax Law.

As you can see from this link included in the footnote, I was the one that started the Twitter argument and Professor Brunson came out swinging on my side “@peterreillycpa speaks the truth. So far, dumb isn’t a jail able offense”.

Kent Is Back

Over two years ago I declared an end to the Kent Hovind saga as being Forbes worthy.  My continued coverage of Hovind was banished to my alternative blog Your Tax Matters Partner.  Somehow I knew Kent would come back here, but I am surprised at how it happened.

Professor Brunson has made Kent Hovind a focus of tax scholarship. It is not like a chair in Hovindolgy being established at a major university, but it is something.  And, as it happens, it corresponds with another major Hovind event that might otherwise be consigned to YTMP with its lax editorial standards and readership numbering in the scores.  We will start with Professor Brunson’s treatment of Hovind.

Brunson On Hovind

God And The IRS is not about Kent Hovind.  The book is about the intersection of taxation and religion in the United States.  From the blurb we get:
Samuel D. Brunson describes the many problems and breakdowns that can occur when tax meets religion in the United States, and shows how the US government has too often responded to these issues in an unprincipled, ad hoc manner. God and the IRS offers a better framework to understand tax and religion.
The author is the George Reithal Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago.  I count him as part of my parsonage brain trust and you will find quotes from him scattered across my posts including – Was Kent Hovind 2006 Structuring Indictment Flawed? I asked Professor Brunson what got him interested in Kent Hovind and he indicated that he was pretty sure that it was my blogging.  He has given me permission to share the Hovind material in his book, so here goes.  My analysis and an update on Hovind including the exciting current development will follow.
I knew very little about Hovind, but I knew that he had been convicted of and jailed for tax evasion and other financial crimes. And I knew that he had a fervent body of supporters who believed that his conviction for various financial crimes was just a cover for what the government

Hovind had spent his professional life as a minister of sorts. In 1989, he established Creation Science Evangelism, a ministry devoted to the promotion of creationism and opposition to evolution. To promote creationism, Hovind lectured domestically and internationally. In addition, he sold creationism-related merchandise through his ministry.

In 2001, Hovind took his creationist ambitions to a new level. Not content to merely lecture, he opened Dinosaur Adventure Land (“Where Dinosaurs and the Bible Meet!”), a seven-acre theme park and museum in Pensacola, Florida. As children enjoyed dinosaur-themed rides and created their own miniature Grand Canyons, they also learned that dinosaurs coexisted with humans – in fact, according to Dinosaur Adventure Land, a pair survived the Flood on Noah’s Ark.

Though creationism was Hovind’s professional passion, passion, it was far from his only interest. Hovind was also deeply dedicated to not paying taxes.  Hovind was as dedicated a tax protestor as any. He did not file a single federal tax return between 1989 and 1996. The IRS​ noticed and demanded that Hovind provide them with certain financial records. He refused. In fact, in his attempts to impede the IRS’s investigation, Hovind went so far as to file a lawsuit against the IRS, demanding that the court order the IRS and its agents to stop contacting and harassing him and that it order the IRS to stay off his property.

Eventually Hovind shifted from merely employing frivolous tax arguments to selling them, too: in addition to its creationist merchandise, his Christian Science Evangelism began to sell books and videos that taught customers how they could avoid paying taxes, based on his tax protestor​ arguments.

Although Hovind has proven remarkably dedicated to evading taxes, for the most part, he has not been imaginative in his tax evasion. Most of his justifications for refusing to pay taxes are entirely banal, the kinds of arguments promulgated on YouTube, in self-published books, and on sketchy websites. Tax protestors believe and trumpet these once-furtive arguments. “The federal income tax​ is 100 percent voluntary!” they announce proudly, which means that if they choose not to pay, there is nothing the government can do.

But Hovind’s flavor of tax evasion differs from most tax protestors’ in one significant way: he ultimately rests his belief that he owes no taxes – at least, to the extent anything besides bald greed underlies that belief – on his status as a Christian​ and a minister. He believes that something about being a religious believer makes him different from the vast majority of his fellow citizens. This difference, he believes, is itself sufficient to excuse him from paying taxes. That is, in Hovind’s mind, there is something about the economics of religious practice that materially alters the secular assumptions that underlie the tax law.

Hovind’s understanding of the difference that frees him from the clutches of the taxation that his fellow-citizens face comprises two parts, one descriptive and one normative. Descriptively, he argues that he is a minister and, as a minister, everything he owns belongs to God. Normatively, he argues that he should not be subject to earthly taxation on money he earns doing God’s work.
That is from the introduction.  The author picks up the Hovind story in Chapter 4 (Taxing Citizens of the Kingdom of God).
Kent Hovind, the impresario of creationism mentioned in the introduction, succinctly laid out the basic premise of those who argue that their religion exempts them from the obligation their fellow-citizens have to pay taxes. According to a Florida bankruptcy court, Hovind maintained that “as a minister of God everything he owns belongs to God and he is not subject to ​paying taxes to the United States on the money he receives for doing God’s work.”

Hovind did not claim that he had no legal or effective control over his money. He did not argue that his income provided him with no benefit. He merely asserted that the nature of his religious belief put him outside the reach of the tax system. And he was not the only person to claim exemption from taxes as a result of doing God’s work.
That Was Then

Everything that Professor Brunson writes about Doc Dino is supported by footnotes to good sources.  The only thing is it is all so nineties/turn of the millennium. The post-prison Hovind is still attached to his persecution innocence narrative, but it is all about how unjust the structuring charges were.  Other than that he has always paid every tax he has ever owed.  Brady Byrum,an autodidact legal researcher, has a DVD series that explains it all along with with a petition drive for President Trump to issue a pardon.  I think that Byrum’s analysis has some significant weaknesses which I explain in – Kent Hovind Innocence Narrative The Latest Chapter.  On the other hand, if by some magic, L’affaire Kent Hovind received Oval Office attention, I would not rule out President Trump issuing a pardon.  Our President is nothing if not unpredictable.

Regardless, the shenanigans of earlier days have been put behind him and according to his long time friend and consigliere Ernie Land, Kent and his new ministry are conventionally tax compliant.  The recent filing of Form 990 by Creation Science Evangelism Ministries Inc is evidence of that.

Getting You Up To Date On Kent Hovind

After his release from prison in 2015, Kent Hovind started a youtube channel which seems to be going great guns.  It focuses on saving souls and exposing the “lie of evolution”, just as he promised.  Early on he found himself under attack by flat earthers who are disappointed that Doc Dino will not take that extra step that using the bible as a science textbook can bring you. In the spring of 2016, he got into an ugly fight with his son Eric about control of assets of his former ministry and his long suffering wife Jo filed for divorce.  He relocated to Lenox Alabama where the new ministry had acquired over one hundred acres and began working on a bigger better Dinosaur Adventure Land.

The fall of 2016 brought us the nuptials of Kent Hovind and anti-vaccine activist Mary Tocco, which caused a bit of a stir among some of his supporters who have moral issues with divorce.  That appears not to have worked out so well.  Kent was also plagued by his former webmaster turning on him. None of the trials and tribulations seem to have phased him, which brings us to the big event tomorrow – April 21, 2018.  The new, bigger better Dinosaur Adventure Land will be opening.

Kent continues to have critics most notably Robert Baty, bane of the basketball ministers.  Bob’s facebook site Kent Hovind’s Worst Nightmare keeps me up to date. Bob will probably be disappointed that Professor Brunson did not mention him in the book either in regard to Hovind or the parsonage issue which I will treat separately.

More On The Book

I will do a separate post on the book as a whole and likely another on its treatment of parsonage.  My only criticism so far is the price – $110 for hardcover, $34.99 for paperback and $28 for Kindle.  That seems to be the way it goes with academic publishers.  A similar thing happened with Edward Zelinsky’s Taxing the Church.  No paperback $65.00 for the hardcover and $64.99 for Kindle.  Both of these works are important to people interested in the intersection of religion and taxation, many of whom do not have deep pockets, so I wish it were otherwise.

The introduction is available as a download on SSRN and makes a good read on its own.

Content retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2018/04/20/god-and-the-irs-and-kent-hovind/#55b12f9f1f10.