In accounting, you record financial transactions in a book referred to as a ledger. "Off the books" is the phrase that describes the transactions that you choose not to record and you could choose to do so for a number of reasons. If your transaction was illegal, it would probably be wise not to record it in your books as if to tip off your illegal activities.
Someone can correct me here if I'm wrong, but Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion because of his improper records. Capone misrepresented his financial transactions and kept his illegal transactions off the books. People became suspicious of him because his income was so high while having no recorded means for this income. It would be his accounting that became his downfall. They couldn't convict Al Capone of any murders, but they could convict him because of his records and all these financial transactions that were kept off the books which he did not pay taxes for.
In the song "Off the Books" that muffincakes mentioned, they are boasting about how they are getting "money off the books this year." You're probably smart enough to understand how they're getting this money.
Urban communities typically have an abundance of transactions that are "off the books." You can read about it in books like Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor:
In Off the Books, Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh defines the underground economy as 'a web in which many different people, from the criminal to the pious, from the down-and-out to the bourgeois, are inextricably intertwined'...The story Venkatesh tells in Off the Books is specific to Maquis Park, but the underground economy he found there almost certainly has its counterpart in the black ghettos of large cities. Indeed, its reach extends beyond the ghetto to the kitchens of restaurants, the homes of the well-off and the myriad service jobs that employ workers off the books. Yet it remains in the shadows, barely touched by researchers, a vast world usually ignored, misunderstood, or dismissed with stereotypes. Venkatesh's riveting account describes the underground economy through vividly realized characters...[His] dissection of Maquis Park's underground economy overturns one stereotype and common assumption about the urban poor after another...Venkatesh finds the underground economy's origins in the racism, economic devastation, and political abandonment that have decimated many big American cities...What can be done? Venkatesh offers no concrete remedies. But that is not his point. Off the Books is not about policy. Wonderfully written, brilliantly researched, it illuminates, as no other book has done, the ubiquitous world of shady activities that structure everyday life for the residents of the nation's Maquis Parks in ways few Americans observe or understand.
-Chicago Tribune
Metaphorically, in the case of a forum such as this one, you could say that "off the books" refers to something that is secretive in nature that you do not want regulated by the rules of the system. It is rebellious to the system but still manages a way to have structure and run day in and day out.
But hey, I'm sure the "Jedi Council Union" has a lot more meaning behind its name so why don't you go back over there.
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