Peymon Mottahedeh has spent the past three decades proclaiming that the federal income tax system is a fraud. With thousands of loyal followers across the internet, Mottahedeh, wearing his signature American flag tie, argues that there’s no law requiring 99% of Americans to pay federal income taxes.
Mottahedeh’s “Tax Truth” organization, Freedom Law School, is one of many groups taking advantage of social media’s explosive growth to promote misleading tax strategies to wide audiences. Despite its name, the group isn’t an accredited university, but a “tax truth and honesty organization” that provides seminars, classes, and other materials on how to free yourself from the IRS.
The “school” currently has over 1,000 members who pay a minimum of $2,000 a year to enroll in the it’s Restore Freedom Plan, according to Mottahedeh. Enrollment is calculated based on 30 percent of what members would have otherwise paid the IRS.
Tuition payments can only be made in cash, cryptocurrency, or gold.
While his contemporaries have faded from public view or found themselves in prison, Mottahedeh is the exception. He has avoided what others couldn’t, which is prosecution by the IRS and the Justice Department for teaching others how to stop paying income taxes.
While Mottahedeh has managed to avoid prison, many of his followers haven’t been as lucky. Some of the Freedom Law School students who’ve ended up in prison include…
1 – Richard Thomas Grant, who was sentenced to 33 months in prison for tax evasion in 2016. A Justice Department press release said that Grant, charged with tax evasion for tax years 2005 through 2009, “with the assistance of Freedom Law School and its founder, Peymon Mottahedeh, attempted to frustrate the IRS’s actions by, among other things, filing multiple and ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits in various jurisdictions.”
2 – F. William Messier of Brunswick, Maine, was sentenced to a year in prison, according to the Justice Department, for “conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by impeding and impairing the [IRS] and corruptly endeavoring to impede the lawful administration of the tax laws.”
“In imposing the sentence, Judge Hornby said that the notion that people do not have to pay federal taxes unless they live in the District of Columbia or a federal territory or are federal employees ’is a fantasy,’” prosecutors said in a press release.
3 – In 2013 David Gilmartin, a PhD economist, was convicted of tax evasion and mail fraud charges being sentenced to four years in the joint. According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Gilmartin was a member of Freedom Law School, and he testified during his trial that he was paid for his work with the group.
And the list goes on.
Let me leave you with this…
Tax Defiers, or members of the Tax Truth Movement, have been around since the 16th Amendment. Their motivations for refusing to pay federal taxes vary, from protesting against government decisions like participation in foreign wars to interrogating the legal and constitutional validity of tax laws.
These gurus cite various reasons why federal income taxes are invalid, including…
1 – That filling out an individual income tax form violates the Fourth Amendment right to privacy,
2 – They sight the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination,
3 – Or that the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax was never properly ratified.
The truth is that the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the right to collect taxes, and the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, allows Congress to levy income taxes without needing to base those taxes on the population of the states. Those powers authorize Congress to write laws requiring individuals to pay federal taxes.
The Tax Truth movement was bolstered by a series of high-profile congressional hearings on the IRS in 1997, where lawmakers from both sides blasted the agency for aggressive collection quotas, property seizures, and fabricated cases against taxpayers.
Legislation that came out of the hearings—the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998—included a reorganization of the agency that moved funding and resources away from enforcement. That reorganization catalyzed the success of tax protest gurus and their students.
It’s unclear how much of an impact tax scams have had on the tax gap which is the difference between true tax liability and the amount that is paid on time, but the challenges they present are perennial. This is shown by the IRS “Dirty Dozen List” of common tax scams published annually since 2002 where number four on the current list is “misleading tax advice on social media.”
Tax schemes on social media platforms have been rising in recent years. Since 2022 the IRS has reported a surge in questionable refund claims fueled by misleading social media posts and bad actors pretending to have tax expertise.
It should be noted that Mottahedeh is nothing more than the last of the Tax Defier Gurus yet to be shut down and imprisoned.
He and his wife, April, have been fighting the IRS and Justice Department on separate outstanding federal income tax liabilities for tax years 2001 through 2006, when the couple lived in California. As of June 2025 Mottahedeh owes $262,803 in tax assessments, plus fees, interest, and failure to pay penalties, while April owes another $85,797, according to prosecutors.
While the case concerns the couple’s individual income tax liabilities, the Justice Department’s complaint in the most recent case filed in the Middle District of Florida also specifically details their work with Freedom Law School.
It should be noted that sooner or later they’ll go down. You just know the IRS will get them.
What has always interested me about this movement is that it all boils down to nothing more than a long series of legal maneuvers and dodges. When these Tax Protesters lose a case, they refile another one, hopefully in a jurisdiction where adjudication will hopefully take two or three times longer.
At the end of the day, it’s nothing more than an expensive way given legal costs, to end up in jail while paying even more tax given interest and penalties, then you could have if you just paid your bill in the first place.
It’s the literal definition of abject stupidity.
So the next time you see one of these videos on the social media platform of your choice, do yourselves a favor. Keep Scrolling.
And for the sake of whatever God you pray to, please don’t bring any of this ridiculousness up to me. Jail cells fit more than one person, and I’m not going.
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