Former CPA and IRS agent still challenging tax authority of U.S. after prison

Former IRS Agent and Certified Public Accountant Sherry Peel Jackson, who spent nearly four years in prison for failing to file her income tax returns, chose her words carefully while speaking to an anti-tax group on Monday night.

A self-styled “political prisoner,” the Georgia author and financial consultant still maintains her innocence and she still questions the government’s authority to levy a federal income tax.

She claimed that after speaking out publicly with other tax defiers, the judge was against her from the get-go, the jurors too fearful to deliver anything other than the guilty verdicts that sent her to a federal prison camp for women in Florida.

“When you’re too visible to kill, that’s what they do to shut you up,” said Jackson, 50, during her presentation to the Knoxville Patriots’ meeting at the Mandarin House restaurant in North Knoxville. Yet her advocacy only went so far.

“I never told people to file or not to file,” she said. “I never told anyone to pay or not to pay.” Jackson, did, however, encourage the 70 or so attendees gathered to hear her life’s story to think for themselves.

“It does not matter that I lost my case,” she said. “The truth is still the truth.” Jackson served seven years as a revenue agent before going into business as a certified public accountant

In 2007, Jackson was convicted on four misdemeanor counts of failure to file tax returns. The jury spent less than a half-hour deliberating. On appeal, she challenged the jurisdiction of the court, and claimed that the IRS Form 1040 did not comply with the Paper Reduction Act, according to the Department of Justice. All of her arguments were summarily rejected.

Determined to move on since her release in February 2011, though, Jackson has since founded two separate ministries, enrolled in seminary and begun a consulting business. She also runs a blog, where copies of the three books she authored behind bars are available for sale.

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Income Tax