© World Wide News April 7, 1981
Paul Bell ran a small print shop in Taft, Calif., where I first met him. I had made an order for a dozen or so bumper stickers of my own design. I soon realized he was the man who made a trip each year from his home in Taft to the Internal Revenue Service in Bakersfield and demanded that officials arrest him for not paying his income tax, which he said the IRS had no basis for requirement by individuals, based on religious and Constitutional overriding authority. I asked him for details and he had plenty to offer, speaking in a serious and confident tone and with an edge of anger in his voice. National attention came in the above clipping from a grocery story tabloid, one in the vein of National Inquirer and with actor Tom Selleck on the cover. Each year the Californian newspaper carried the story. Each time it was the same. No arrest. Until one year... click, click, went the handcuffs.