Tax resister to be freed — on April 15

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — When Arthur Farnsworth decided in 1996 that his days of paying income taxes were over, April 15 became just another day on the calendar — "April Fools' Day" as he and his friends came to call it.

Not this year.

The annual tax-filing deadline is the day the Bucks County man will be released from prison after a stay of more than two years after a federal tax-evasion conviction.

"Everyone is getting a kick out of that date," Farnsworth, 46, said Friday during a phone call from the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, N.J., 50 miles southeast of Philadelphia. "But I don't think there's anything to it."

Farnsworth said the release date, while seemingly symbolic, is coincidental. Prison officials, who originally scheduled a March release, delayed it twice because Farnsworth lost some good-conduct time.

Farnsworth was convicted in December 2006 of failing to pay an estimated $80,000 in federal tax from 1998 through 2000. He also operated a Web site critical of the U.S. tax system and offered tips on how to avoid paying federal income tax.

When asked if his position on paying income taxes — he does pay property and sales taxes — changed while he was in prison, Farnsworth asked if tax law had changed.

"My response to that is that I'm going to pay all of the taxes I'm required to by law," he said.