Inside Freedom Law School’s Two-Hour Seminar

Alex: Welcome back to the show. Today we're doing something a little different, and a little ambitious. We sat through an entire two hour and seventeen minute YouTube seminar from Freedom Law School itself, titled The I R S's Biggest Secret, Why ninety nine percent of Americans are not required to file or pay federal income taxes. And we're going to walk you through the whole thing.

Jordan: The whole thing. This is Peymon Mohtahadi, the founder of Freedom Law School, doing his flagship presentation, and then, and this is the part that makes it fascinating, he opens up the phone lines and takes live calls for roughly two hours. Regular people from all over the country, asking him real questions about their situations.

Alex: So think of this episode as our field notes. We're going to cover his opening pitch, the arguments he makes, and then the call in show, because honestly, the callers tell you as much about the movement as the presentation does.

Jordan: And the usual framing applies to all of it. Everything we're describing is Freedom Law School's position, taken from their own video. We're not endorsing it, this isn't legal or tax advice, and the I R S and the courts see all of this very differently.

Alex: Right. So let's start at the beginning. Peymon opens with his biography, and it's very deliberately his credibility pitch. He says he started Freedom Law School in nineteen ninety six, and that for over thirty years he has not filed or paid any federal income taxes, and that he's shown other Americans how to do the same, legally and safely.

Jordan: Thirty years is the number he keeps coming back to. It's the foundation of everything. If the I R S hasn't gotten him in three decades, the implication is, the method works.

Alex: Then he goes to the visual aids, and he's a good showman about it. He holds up the ten forty form, the one most Americans file by April fifteenth, and he says, this is not a U S Individual Income Tax Return. He says it should be labeled a D C Individual Income Tax Return, because in his reading, it's a form for people of the District of Columbia, not people of the fifty states. He says Americans have been deceived, his word is suckered, into paying taxes they don't owe.

Jordan: And then he does the thing we talked about in our first episode. He pulls out the actual Internal Revenue Code, this giant paper copy, ten thousand pages, and he walks through the definitions section, title twenty six, section seventy seven oh one. The term United States, when used in a geographical sense, includes only the States and the District of Columbia. And then State shall be construed to include the District of Columbia, where necessary.

Alex: His question to the audience is, why would you need the second paragraph if State already meant the fifty states? And he adds a Supreme Court case we hadn't heard him cite before, Gould versus Gould, a unanimous nineteen seventeen decision. The holding, as he presents it, is that statutes levying taxes must be construed strictly, that you can't extend tax laws by implication. So if the fifty states aren't listed in the definition, you can't just assume they're in there.

Jordan: That's actually a real case, and the strict construction point is a real principle of tax law. Where he takes it, that therefore the fifty states are excluded from the income tax, is his interpretation, and it's one the courts have rejected. But as presentation goes, it's his strongest material, because he's pointing at real text and saying, read it yourself.

Alex: Then he runs through the seven steps, and he does it fast, like a hype man. Step one, follow the law, based on his reading, no law requires ninety nine percent of Americans to file and pay. Step two, stop filing income tax forms, which he calls the ten forty slave confession form. His line is, you put the rope around your neck and hand it to the I R S.

Jordan: Step three is my favorite piece of theater. Realize the I R S is ninety nine percent bluff. He does this whole Wizard of Oz bit. The I R S and the media have made you Dorothy, he says, a bunch of afraid slaves, and Freedom Law School pulls back the curtain, and behind it is just a bunch of lazy, incompetent I R S employees on nineteen sixties computer technology. His words, not mine.

Alex: Step four, write to your lawmakers. They have free petitions on the website, and the challenge is, file and pay only if your congressman can show you the law that requires it. Step five, take courage from the victories, which is mostly his own story again. Step six, join the Restore Freedom Plan, the membership, which comes with what he calls a one hundred percent guarantee. And step seven, spread the word.

Jordan: Let's pause on the guarantee, because callers ask about it later and it's central to the sales pitch. As he presents it, if the I R S takes your money or property and it's Freedom Law School's fault, they reimburse you in full, ten thousand or ten million, doesn't matter. And he claims that in over twenty four years of formally defending people, the I R S has never levied a member's bank account, paycheck, or home. That's the claim.

Alex: Okay, so that's the first twenty minutes. Then the phone lines open, and this is where it gets really interesting, because now it's not a monologue, it's a movement talking to itself. The call screener asks each person for their first name, their area code, and how they heard about Freedom Law School.

Jordan: And the how did you hear about us answers are revealing. Multiple people say Facebook. One caller from Dallas says he found them through a Facebook group called the Federal Income Tax Strike group, and Peymon says it has almost one hundred thousand members. So there's a real pipeline, social media outrage to seminar to membership.

Alex: The questions fall into a few buckets. The biggest one is state taxes. A guy from New Jersey asks whether he should file, since New Jersey follows the federal guidelines. A caller named Jim from Missouri talks about the campaign to eliminate the Missouri income tax entirely, and says he went to a town hall about it. A woman from Michigan asks about handling the Michigan portion. Somebody asks about California.

Jordan: And Peymon's answer on states is basically, it depends on the state, but a lot of state income taxes piggyback on the federal return, so if you're not in the federal system, the state question changes too. On domicile, he's very direct. Move to Florida, or Texas, get the driver's license, register the car, get insurance there, make it all consistent. He tells one caller, nobody watches you to see whether you're in Missouri or California or Florida. You choose, you decide.

Alex: The second bucket is fear. People who've already stopped filing and now they're getting letters. One caller says he got a notice saying the I R S will file for him if he doesn't file, and he's expecting the deficiency letter, the ninety day notice. And Peymon's answer is interesting, because it's almost reassuring in a technical way. He says better than ninety eight percent of the time, there's no follow up to those initial letters at all. They're designed to scare you into voluntary compliance.

Jordan: And on the deficiency notice specifically, he says that's actually the letter you want, because it opens the door to Tax Court, where you can challenge them. And then he gives this logistical argument. There are under thirty U S Tax Court judges, he says. The system is overburdened. They don't have enough appeals officers. They can't fight everybody. Whether or not that's true in the way he means it, it's a clever argument, because it shifts the question from who's right to who has the resources.

Alex: The third bucket is practical mechanics. How do I stop withholding from my paycheck? Peymon points them to the free W four instructions on the website. Somebody asks about retirement account withholding, and he says there's a W four P for that, you just mark exempt. A business owner asks how to avoid paying as a self employed person, and Peymon basically laughs and says, that's the easy one, nobody withholds from your paycheck, just stop filing.

Jordan: There's a caller with a genuinely complicated situation, mutual fund withdrawals, capital gains, a Domino's job, an early Roth I R A withdrawal, and Peymon walks through it live. It gives you a sense of the show's function. It's part seminar, part call in clinic, part community.

Alex: And then there are the moments that show you the emotional core of the audience. A caller asks about someone close to him, a pastor, who went to jail over taxes. Peymon stops him and asks one question. Did he file a ten forty? The caller says yes. And Peymon says, that's his problem right there. He signed the confession form under oath and gave the I R S the rope. The lesson, in their telling, is never sign.

Jordan: Another caller asks about Wesley Snipes, and Peymon draws the line we've heard before. Snipes followed what he calls patriot mythology and a guy named Eddie Kahn, not Freedom Law School's method. The distinction matters to them, because they need to explain why the famous tax cases don't apply to their people.

Alex: Now, the last part of the video is the close, and it's an explicit recruitment pitch. Peymon tells the audience to hand out Freedom Law School brochures everywhere. Give them to your Uber and Lyft passengers. Leave them in your chiropractor's waiting room. Talk to strangers. And he says, we'll pay you, cash, gold, or crypto, for referring people. One out of ten will take it seriously, he says.

Jordan: It's the seventh step, spread the word, happening live. And it reframes the whole two hours. This isn't just education, it's a funnel. The seminar is free, the petitions are free, the withholding instructions are free, and all of it points toward the membership and the referral program.

Alex: So stepping back, what did two hours and seventeen minutes actually teach us? A few things. First, the pitch is much more sophisticated than a meme. It's built on real statutes, real cases like Gould, real procedures like the deficiency notice, all woven into a story where you're the hero who read the fine print.

Jordan: Second, the audience is real and motivated. These aren't bots, they're people from New Jersey and Missouri and Texas with specific questions about their lives. Whatever you think of the answers, the demand is genuine.

Alex: Third, the business model is right there on the surface. Free content, a paid membership with a guarantee, and a referral program that turns members into recruiters. It's a movement with a monetization plan.

Jordan: And fourth, the whole thing runs on a single emotional engine, which is fear of the I R S, and the product being sold is the removal of that fear. The Wizard of Oz bit isn't decoration, it's the thesis. Once you stop being afraid, he says, you're free.

Alex: With the giant caveat we've given every time, and we'll give it again. This is Freedom Law School's presentation of its own positions. The I R S, the courts, and mainstream tax professionals read these statutes very differently, and courts have consistently rejected these arguments. Nothing in this episode is legal or tax advice. We're telling you what's in the video, not telling you what to do.

Jordan: And honestly, that's why we watched it. You can disagree with every conclusion and still learn something from seeing how the case is made, who it's made to, and why it lands. Two hours is a lot, but now you don't have to spend them.

Alex: If you want to go deeper, the full breakdown we put together is on our site, and we'll link the video itself in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time.