Today my good friend Brett Bixby made a FB post about how Colorado legislators are considering creating a new legal structure for artists/musicians called an ‘A-Corp’ (Artist Corporation?). While this might be better than using a sole proprietorship, partnership, C-Corp, etc., I thought I’d add to the dialog by presenting a little of what I’ve personally learned about these things over the last few years, and about how I’ve setup my own legal structures not only to protect myself and my little family, but also to minimize liabilities (both legal and economic). I call this “Going Private” for very specific – and very important – reasons.
What Does “Going Private” Mean?
This is a complicated subject, and therefore something that I’ll be creating more content about in the future. It’s also one of the most important legal concepts to understand, because it underpins nearly every law and regulation in the U.S. and around the globe. I described very briefly in “My Change of Policial/Legal Status” about the U.S. Corporation, and how being a citizen of that corporation is 100% different from being a citizen of the U.S. Republic. This is the hardest part of the ‘big picture’ to understand, so I strongly suggest you read my 2025 post “My Change of Political/Legal Status” to come up to speed with the history, facts, and implications. The bottom line is this: the only way to be free is to be living your life as a private citizen of the U.S. Republic. Unfortunately, it takes some work to get yourself setup as such. Changing one’s political status is by far the largest and hardest step; everything else is far easier, and very quickly done.
Private Contracting
Regardless of whether you take the plunge that I described in my other blog post, you can still insulate and protect yourself in other ways (including protection from the U.S. Corporation – aka ‘the government’, and from the other huge corporations). The most important of these other ways is by keeping all of your contracts private (or as many of them as you can).
Our founding fathers new the power and importance of privacy, and they very astutely included clauses in the founding U.S. documents (Constitution, etc.) that allows any person to setup, or to take part in, private organizations. There are two such organizations that any person can setup for free, and they are: Private Trusts, and PMAs (Private Members Associations).
Private Trusts
A private trust is simply a trust that is held privately by an individual or group, for the sake of the group. A private trust can be a for-profit, or a non-profit endeavor. A trust must have at least 3 stated members: the trustor (aka the ‘founder’), the trustee (at least one) and a beneficiary (at least one). One person can legally perform one or two of those roles, but not all three. And each role can be stated as an individual or as another trust (for instance, the trust “Freedom Productions” can be founded by the trust “Justic Enterprises”, with the trustee and beneficiary stated as “John Doe”. Nowhere does the trust document for “Freedom Productions” need to state the name of the founder/trustee/beneficiary of “Justice Enterprises”. You could even bring in a 3rd trust to ‘act’ as beneficiary.
The definition of a trust is: any interest (business, endeavor, activity, money) that is described by a trustor (founder), held/enacted/enforced by one or more trustees, for the sake (benefit) of one or more beneficiaries.
In the end, a private trust is basically just a small stack of papers (can be anywhere from 1 to 100 pages in length. All of my own private trusts are around 15 pages each, and all follow the same general outline). The document starts out with the name of the trust/group at the top (any name you want, which can be a business – like a record label or production company, for example), and is followed by a description of who founded the group, the trustee(s), the beneficiary(ies), the responsibilities and powers of the trustee(s), the shares of the beneficiary(ies) (as a percentage to each), and the signatures of the founding member(s) and the trustee(s), along with the date of each signature.
The trust should also reference an EIN number (Employee Identification Number), which you can get from the IRS in about 10 minutes by filing online. Once you have the document filled out with the EIN included, you take it to any notary in your state, and you (and any other founder/trustee) sign the document in the presence of the notary, and have them apply their state seal.
It’s important to note that the state seal and the EIN number do not make this a state or government-oriented document. The notary’s seal simply provides proof that your trust is legal; and the EIN provides proof that you’re acting in good faith with the IRS (more about this later).
With this document notarized, you can go to almost any bank and open up a business bank account (much better than opening a trust account, since the former is more flexible). You’ll need to open the account as an ‘Unincorporated Organization’, which most banks now accept (‘unincorporated’ simply means that it’s not registered with any state government as a sole proprietorship, partnership, C-Corp, etc.). This is a great benefit for you because, not only does it protect you from government overreach, it also means you don’t have to pay state income tax!
PMAs
A PMA (Private Membership Association) is slightly different from a private trust, and caters more to groups that are either large (larger than say 3 members) and/or always growing. It’s also founded on a very similar document, but it includes an extra document that’s used for singing up new members, which can be done in just a few minutes. Another important distinction is that a PMA does not need to be notarized. You still want to get an EIN, however, because you can’t get a bank account without an EIN (as with a trust).
Whereas trusts assist and protect their beneficiaries, PMAs assist/protect their ‘members’. Let’s say, for instance, a couple wants to protect their children, themselves, and the family’s assets and property. The best way to protect themselves and their children is with a PMA (with the parents as the founders and the trustees, and the children as members). They would additionally protect their assets (which are their children’s future assets) using a private trust. And both entities (trust and PMA) keep all the members ‘in the private’, allowing each/all members to conduct any/all affairs (including business) using the trust/PMA as a private intermediary for all their contracts. For the sake of this blog post, this is the most important protection that is afforded by these two types of legal entities. Why? Great question!
Private vs Public
The best way to think about private vs public is to think of it as ‘you’ or ‘your family/group/business’ as needing protection from the government and big corporations (or any other business, for that matter). This is because all statute law (government regulations that aren’t actually laws, but are part of the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) can only be directed/enforced upon public entities (corporations, and citizens of the U.S. Corporation). Consider the implications of what has just been disclosed here: if you’ve setup your own private trust and/or PMA, you and your group are no longer subject to most legal statutes!!
Let’s consider an extremely important example: alternative healthcare. Let’s say a guy named John has cancer, and wants to get treated using an alternative cancer treatment called “Gershon Therapy”. He discovers that Gershon Therapy is illegal in his state, and only legally available in Mexico (this is true, by the way!). So instead of moving to Mexico (!), John spends 20 minutes setting up his own PMA, then emails a member document to someone he found who knows how to do Gershon Therapy in his area. That person signs the document, becoming a member of John’s PMA. Now that they are part of the same PMA, neither of them can be sued, fined or even harassed by the federal or state governments for practicing or taking part in Gershon Therapy (which, by the way, is extremely effective in the fight against cancer, and is not ‘dangerous’ in the least little bit, as falsely stated by corrupt lackeys of the at-least-partially-criminal American medical establishment).
Let’s take another very important example: a home remodel. Let’s say John wants to celebrate his cancer remission by remodeling his house, but his county wants to charge him hundreds of dollars in permit fees, and won’t even let him start his project for another two months (!). They also won’t let him use an ‘unlicensed’ contractor, telling him its too dangerous. So, John finds an unlicensed contractor who is good at what he does, but charges half the price of everyone else. He has that contractor sign up as a member of his PMA. Now the two are legally in their right to contract with each other all they want; and if the county harasses either John or his contractor (John for hiring without permits, and his contractor for working without a state contractor’s license), either or both of them can sue the county/state, including damages. Once the county/state realize the trouble they’ve gotten themselves into, they’re likely to back off. And if they don’t back off, they’re likely to lose huge amounts of money to John and/or his contractor, who are well within their rights!
Taxes
One of the most corrupt aspect of being an ‘American’ concerns income tax (I include the quotes because America most certainly includes Central and South America). The average reader will be very surprised to hear that the only people legally liable for income tax are those whose income originates from the U.S. and state governments. This includes teachers, politicians, postal workers, government contractors – and very few others. This also means that most people are giving away their hard-earned money based on a lie!
Many years ago I read the book Cracking the Code by Pete Hendrickson, who worked for the IRS for many years before quitting in disgust when he suddenly learned that little factoid above. He said that, even amongst people who work for the IRS, it’s not a well-known fact. He had to ask every single person he knew there, including all of his superiors, and said that it took years and years of digging before he finally learned the truth.
The book explains that – if none of your income is funded by the government – all you have to do is write a letter to the IRS stating that none of your income is government funded, and as such you are declaring yourself as a ‘non-taxpayer’. Sign it and send it to them, and keep a copy for yourself along with the date that you sent it. They may send you one or two more letters trying to scare you into filing your taxes. If they do, simply send them the same letter over and over again until they stop bothering you.
I stopped paying income and state taxes in 2013, and anytime the IRS requested that I pay ‘my taxes’ I re-sent my signed letter (a couple times). They eventually stopped sending me requests to pay. They also sent me a check for the last payment I had made; this alone provides proof positive that Pete Hendrickson was absolutely correct in all his assertions and conclusions.
Critical caveat: do not do this unless/until you own your own home, and are secure in that home. The reason I say this is that, after I stopped paying taxes, I was not allowed to get a home loan by any bank/lender, because I had no transcripts at the IRS that they could download to approve a loan. This means that the only way the IRS can truly enforce the payment of income taxes is by coercing the banks to require tax transcripts for home loan approval.
Conclusion
As you can see, knowledge really is power, and the benefits of understanding the laws (government law, contracting law, tax law, common law, etc.) are manifold. While it’s true that our extremely corrupt governments (fed and state) still practice trickery and deceit on a daily basis, and that politicians, judges, police officers and other officials will deny any and all of this info, it’s also true that by knowing the truth you can defend yourself against abuses of power and governmental/corporate overreach.
I’ll end by declaring the only three laws that truly private citizens of the Republic are liable for, which are known under the heading “Common Law”: 1) Do not harm others; 2) Do not steal or damage anyone’s property; and 3) be honest in all your dealings.
I also promised a how-to on using blockchain tech for copyrighting music, lyrics, and other IP – but I’ll put that in its own blog post…