For those of us who still believe that freedom is best, the way is clear: we must concentrate on the correction of the mistake of 1913. The Sixteenth Amendment must be repealed. Nothing less will do. FULL ARTICLE by J. Bracken Lee
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/10666/the-income-tax-really-is-evil/
The Income Tax Really Is Evil
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Taxation is an oxymoron in a free society.
Good article, but it does make it seem like everything was hunky-dory before the income tax. For instance, the whole State sovereignty thing had been long-obliterated by that time. Unionism was entrenched after the North’s victory in the Civil War.
It is evil to eclipse the values of peaceful people. Governments are repositories of Force and as they lose their mission they become the biggest Thug truncating the complete cycle of values into behavior into productive labor into equity into consumption. Interposing itself via taxation (and regulation) it severs these links and replaces one system of values that produced with another that consumes. THAT is about as evil a concept as I can imagine. THAT needs to be stated clearly and loudly at every opportunity.
It can’t just be taken as a given – not anymore. I think back in the day there was much more such sentiment to allow this complete cycle. But as each year has passed, especially since the 1860′s on, that sentiment has been eroding away. Hence why we now have a country dominated by two branches of the same Fascistic center supported so zealously by half the nation at least. Force is the default setting and settling other people’s hash brutishly is the norm. This endeavor funds itself by the cavilier confiscation of labor – of the middle class especially.
The entire system is upside down.
it is the Feds that should ask the states for money and the states that should ask the counties and the counties the people. how else can there be any accountablility.
even the evil income tax would appear in a better light if the money was directed in this manner.
still, the single tax land fee is much better equipped to work from the local to the federal level and retain control where citizens can view and rein it in when it needs to be contained. if you don’t like or want the service, you don’t pay for it.
the income tax is all about central control.
Of course I agree that the income tax is evil. The IRS attacks on privacy, the massive compliance costs etc.
However, payroll taxes have grown from less than 9% of the government revenues to almost 40% in the last 40 years. Payroll taxes steal almost as much from the people as income taxes and the growth rates are far greater.
Federal Revenue Sources>
NEO-cons love Reagan and Greenspan who doubled payroll tax rates with their bipartisian committee. The growth of the payroll tax is a blatant attack on the working poor.
I am not in favor of “progressive” taxation, but the theory behind progressive taxation(versus regressive taxation) is aimed at values that are difficult to argue against. Either you believe the rich should pay more in taxes as a percent of income or you don’t…not many people change their mind on that.
Does anyone else get annoyed at Republicans who claim that “rich people pay all the taxes” while pretending that payroll taxes don’t even exist?
When a MSM liberal is arguing agaisnt he republicans you can be sure they will never mention payroll taxes in his rebuttal, because hey….the MSM liberals love payroll taxes!
IMO the 10% of Democrats who have legitimately high IQ’s are far more ready to turn libertarian when we rail against the Democrat and Republican hypocrisy related to payroll taxes, than when we focus exclusively on income taxes.
Middle class republicans (40-70k/yr)pay as much or more of their salaries to payroll taxes as they do to income taxes. This is a lot of votes! why ignore that?
What do we always here about the great dangers of a rising wealth disparity? isn’t this classic MSM complaint an easy way of entering into a discussion about eliminating payroll taxes? When we rail against income taxes then we are easily written off/smeared as republicans(which everyone knows are hippocrites)…lets start sidestepping that mindless rebuttal by focussing on Democrats actively trying to f*** the working poor and minorities with their payroll taxes(especially the way it penalizes the coal miners and inner city black men dying in their 40′s, 50′s and 60′s…while benefitting the healthy rich white people who live to be 70, 80 or 90.)
To be clear, I am not proposing comprimise here. I am against all taxes yada yada yada….my Austrian purity score is quite high I assure you. There are lots of good reasons to argue against the income tax. Perhaps it is just a result of me living in Boston, but I have had more success in penetrating left-right-paradigm-brainwashing by focusing my rhetorical hate on payroll taxes.
And that is my #1 metric of success…convincing a republican that libertarians are pretty good during a democratic regime is easy(see Glenn Beck followers)…convincing a democrat that republican politicians should go to prison during a republican regime is also easy and just as meaningless(see Bill Maher).
Unless the left-right paradigm brainwashing is attacked then your recent anti-government converts will quickly be herded back into their proper pens by the MSM just like the sheep that they are.
sorry for the bad link in the above post…..
Federal Revenue History
“The obligation of freedom is a willingness to stand on your own feet.”
The obligation of freedom is a willing to die for daring to stand on your own feet.
In today’s America, standing on your own feet means the SWAT will kill you.
Standing on your own feet in today’s America is risking your life, nothing less.
It’s Jeffrey Schaler who said that political virtue is obedience to authority and the biggest political sin is independence, for independence renders authority useless and that’s what infuriates it so.
Although I’ve resisted and paid no income tax since 1971, I believe the problem is taxation in general rather than any specific tax. All taxes include enforcement provisions, which provide for the initiation of force and violence without cause or provocation by tax collectors. This interjection of violence into peaceful human relations has untold negative consequences for tax takers and payers alike. Even in the name of pragmatism it is entirely unwarranted, for nothing obtained by means of taxation couldn’t be otherwise had. I think it may be argued that taxation is the very worst construct of the human mind ever visited upon mankind, including even its kissing-cousin slavery, because taxation’s corrupting influence has gone on longer and corrupted many more people than slavery ever did. I hold it, above any other human failing, to account for our inability to put an end to wars.
Agreed Ned.
Some push the “Fair Tax”, most here agree that is rubbish from the start.
Democrats seem to be pushing a health care mandate aka “tax” for the poor.
I propose that a political campaign against the payroll tax would bear more liberty fruit than a campaign against the income tax.
Gabe, aren’t payroll taxes half paid by the employer? Is your proposal to lower them for both or only the employee portion?
Charles,
“Gabe, aren’t payroll taxes half paid by the employer? Is your proposal to lower them for both or only the employee portion?”
The separation of the total payroll tax into two parts is of no economic or other real significance. The total tax is what both reduces the employee take home pay and increases the employer’s labor cost.
Regards, Don
Don,
that is true and untrue. if there is a demand for labor, then the half paid by the employer could truly be paid by the employer. but, since demand rarely is full on in most industries, the worker foots the bill. either way, it sucks.
we should pay for service we receive. the government should protect us from invasion and each citizen should contribute something for that protection, but i don’t want to pay to bomb iraq!
the government should probably protect us from each other, so that is worth something.
and, the State makes possible private property without ridiculous private armies or so called agencies, so land should be taxed something.
and us geolibs believe we all have dibs on resource rather than those that either draw or bribe for the lucky straw, but that shouldn’t be a tax but a “dividend”.
other than that, the courts could be sustained by fees on the guilty parties and those that fail to prove guilt, as long as it didn’t prevent justified suits.
what we have today is a travesty of government corporatism and i am surprised anyone puts up with it.
Don Again, after rereading your comment, i believe we said the same thing!
Don Lloyd wrote “The separation of the total [US] payroll tax into two parts is of no economic or other real significance. The total tax is what both reduces the employee take home pay and increases the employer’s labor cost.”
This is true in the long term, and even in the medium term. But in the short term there are differences before everything flows through – and these make a lot of psychological and political difference to how levels can be moved up or down. If it were abolished tomorrow, the pattern of winners and losers would be different (retirees lose, employees and employers both gain) from how it would shake out ten years later (employees gain if there is full employment, otherwise employers do, and retirees get the effects of saving any past gains while they were still employees – which might take a further period to shake out fully).
Payroll taxes steal almost as much from the people as income taxes and the growth rates are far greater.
I’m not sure what you mean by “payroll tax”; I’ve always thought that was just an American term for (the withholding of) income tax! No?
The rot set in with “No Taxation without representation!”. This implies that you will allow yourself to be taxed if you have a collective say in it. Since the revolution was inspired by such sentiments, you seem to be disrespecting the founding old white males if you suggest things ain’t perfect.
A better slogan would have been “The only good tax- is a DEAD one!”
Note also that income taxes are levied on gross income, not disposable income after paying for necessities such as food and shelter. So the effective income tax rate is much higher than the nominal rate.
I am a very vocal supply sider so understand my post. The income tax is not the demon. The demon is the expansive federal government. This is what we have to turn back.
If we were to attempt to raise the same amount of taxes to pay for government through tariffs we would total destroy international trade, and ultimately not receive sufficient taxes to pay for out commitments. With an income tax the illusion is that we can raise enough to pay for our commitments, but it is just that, an illusion.
Taxes to pay for our current level of government are just as destructive as a domestic tax as they are for an international tax. The difference is that the domestic tax takes longer to be destructive because the base is larger, but the destruction is much greater again because the base is larger.
What we must do is elect people who will bring our government back to the limits envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Do you know any politicians who will run on that kind of platform? If the answer is not then are you willing to run for office on that kind of platform? If there is no candidate with ideas you can support then you need to be the candidate.
Peter,
The terms get used sloppily. The distinction being made in this thread is between income taxes and Social Security/Medicaid taxes, which are being referred to as payroll taxes. The income tax is on a variable-rate schedule under which the tax rate increases with marginal income. The “payroll tax” is a flat-rate 15.3% tax on all income up to around $100,000 (I think it’s just above that mark now). If a taxpayer is considered an employee, he pays half and the employer pays half (make of that distinction what you will). If the taxpayer is self-employed, he pays the full amount.
Hope that helps.
Yes of course I would get rid of both the worker portion and the employer paid portion and yes I believe both of these pretty much flow directly through to lower wages.
For those not familiar with the SS/Medicare/self employment taxes…they total up to between 12.5% and 16% of all income earned…and this comes out of paychecks(not to be refunded) starting at the first dolalr earned(even for minimum wage workers). Theere is a “earned income tax credit” that is supposed to help pay some of this back…but if you are single and work at Mcdonalds for $7 per hour 40 hrs/ week for a52 weeks then you make more than $14k per year and this means basically the working poor are hit with these taxes full on. All income above 107k per yr is excluded…this upper limit has been growing very quickly over the last decade…in 2000 you could escape the tax on income above about 60k(but of course it keeps creeping higher. Therefore a guy like Warren Buffet pays LESS payroll tax than my family…(my wife works and we both pay the max). Yet Buffet is on TV saying people like me need to pay higher taxes,
At least people like me do have a long life expectancy so I theoretically could get payments after 65 for many years…this is in contrast to the poor/minority males that can expect to die in their 50′s or 60′s…right after they are supposed to start”getting back” all the money they have put in.
The way the earned income tax credit is set up is a extreme discincentive for the young uneducated worker to keep his nose to the grindstone and build up work experience. It worse than the minimum wage in my opinion.
The cap has grown from $6,600 per year since in 1966 to $106,600 in 2009 a increase of OVER 7% annually. At the same time the combined rate has increased from 8.5% to 18.3%.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/soc_security_rates_1937-2009-20090504.xls
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