What surprised me is Washington. Considering how many other taxes we have that are high. Such as property tax and in the King County area, extremely high sales tax. Not to mention our high regulations and the costs that come with that.
TAXATION WITH MISREPRESENTATION: IS IT AS BAD AS TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION?
- Taxation with Misrepresentation: Is it as bad as Taxation without Representation?
- Elected to Uphold the Constitution: Democrats fight to violate our Second Amendment rights and both Republicans and Democrats often try to restrict our Freedom of Speech and Press in addition to our Constitutionally Guaranteed Right to Privacy
- Elected to Protect Liberties and Equality: Republicans fight to restrict the rights of gays and deny Marriage Equality
- Elected to Help the Economy: Yet it seems like rather than protecting the interest of the Peoples' Economy Congress is protecting the interest of their own personal economy through overtaxation that allows them to recklessly spend another man's money.
- We Elect Them to Serve Us: But they seemingly only serve themselves; this is taxation with misrepresentation; is it as bad as the taxation without representation experienced by the Colonists?
TALLAHASSEE: Florida lawmakers reject Miami Dolphins stadium referendum bill - Florida - MiamiHerald.com
The Miami Dolphins failed to reach a deal for a taxpayer-supported stadium upgrade on the last day of Florida’s legislative session.“The Dolphins were seeking up to $289 million in taxpayer support from an increase in the Miami-Dade hotel tax, from 6 to 7 percent. The proposal also offered the team a shot at up to $90 million in state sales tax rebates. The bill allowed other sports organizations to compete for state tax dollars as well.”
It’s inappropriate that sports teams should be able to “compete” for tax payer dollars. Why should people be forced to fund such initiatives? They should be allowed to invest their hard-earned money into things that they value, which may or may not be a sports team. Not to mention how profitable the sports industry already is. They should be able to easily fund their own renovations, like any other business venture in the world ought to be expected to.
If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous. It is contradictory to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable.
(via shortformblog)
News to Me: If It Moves, Tax It
By Jeffrey Tucker
A contributing factor in the rise of Internet commerce, a feature that gave it a kick-start, was that you didn’t have to pay sales tax on what you purchased out of state. Ah, the glory days of the 2000s, when you could order anything and, for once in your life, not get hammered by the government. It was not a free market, but freer than most anything else you could find.
This is a major factor in why, despite every prediction that it could never work, Internet commerce rose from the ashes of the dot-com crash to become a huge and growing profit center today.
Alas, those days seem to be coming to an end. And why? Because the U.S. Congress is highly sympathetic to the plight of its state-based cousins, who are starved for money. As a proposed fix, Congress is suggesting a new innovation. Congress wants to give the OK to states that want to take your money.
Here is one argument you will not hear in the debate over taxing Internet sales: This will be good for the business climate. Instead, the debating points concern how much revenue it will raise for states, how onerous the burden will be for small business, whether it is “fair” to brick-and-mortar shops to pay and for online sellers not to pay, and so on.
The real issue — whether this is good for business and prosperity — is not even on the table.
Will taxing all Internet purchases harm business, harm job creation, harm the profitability of those who have seized on digital venues as a viable commercial space? Of course it will. There can be no doubt. The question then becomes: Why is the political class interested in unleashing state legislatures to collect sales tax when it is so obviously harmful to prosperity?
Maybe the answer is obvious, but it still needs to be said. Despite the stump rhetoric, the political class is not interested in fostering a vibrant commercial life to help you and me get by in this world. Instead, it is interested in extracting as much revenue as possible from the existing commercial environment. The government elites want their cut, regardless of the consequences.
You can learn something about the way the world works just by watching the way this legislation is coming down the pike. Here we are, still in a deeply struggling economic environment. Young people have a hard time getting jobs. Growth rates are anemic. Families are still smarting from the surprise payroll tax increase earlier this year.
Online commerce — with low startup costs and a potentially unlimited market — actually represents a ray of hope. This is especially true for young and tech-savvy people.
So what do the politicians do? They plot another hammer blow. Even by old-fashioned Keynesian standards, this is the worst possible time to enable vast tax increases across all states that hit millions of people. But economic rationality is not high on the list of values held by Capitol Hill.
What does this say about whole libraries full of books that instruct the political class on how to foster the well-being of society? What does this say about the hundreds of well-worked-out theories of how the government can manage the economy in the best possible way? What does this say about the oceans of policy reports that presume that the political class has the best interests of the public in mind?
If it is true that political actors only want to get the government’s beak wet and otherwise don’t care a flying fig about the consequences for you and me, many theorists are going to have to go back to the drawing board. The bulk of writing on political economy over the last hundred years might as well be pulped.
There is also an interesting dynamic taking place in terms of those pushing for the change to allow states in which there is no physical presence of the relevant Internet retailer to tax purchase. The world’s largest and most successful Internet retailer, Amazon.com, is backing the change, and paying politicians left and right to go along.
Why? Here, we need to understand something about way regulations are used as a competitive tool in the world of enterprise. The larger the business, the more it is in a position to absorb new regulatory costs. The regulations will invariably hurt the little guy more than the big guy. Therefore, even though the big guy is paying more, the regulations end up working as a kind of subsidy to keep competition at bay.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Big Business and Big Government work together. Does that sound like a wacky conspiracy theory? It shouldn’t. The reality goes back at least 100 years. Big Business was a huge supporter of the Progressive Era regulations of food and safety, the New Deal’s interventions on prices and labor, the Great Society medical expansions, protectionism during the 1980s, and almost every other major intervention in free enterprise in the annals of history.
Sometimes the biggest enemies of capitalism are not socialists, but the capitalists themselves. They don’t like capitalism because they don’t like competition, because it threatens their business and their profits. A real free market has winners coming and going. But a heavily regulated markets entrenches elites who are working with the political establishment.
You might think that this would cause left liberals pause, but apparently not.
Here is what the blog at National Public Radio said about an Internet sales tax:“Collecting state and local sales tax all around the country would require a fair bit of effort on the part of online retailers, because sales tax rules vary from state to state. That’s not a huge deal for a giant company like Amazon, but it would be more of a burden for smaller online retailers. From Amazon’s point of view, that’s a good thing — it makes life harder for Amazon’s smaller competitors.
“That’s why big businesses, despite what they may say, often like regulations. They make life harder for small, would-be competitors.”The Amazon sales tax case is complicated by the fact that it is already mostly paying these taxes because many states started interpreting the law to mean that if there is a warehouse in the state, it is subject to tax. Amazon has warehouses all over the world so that it can offer same-day delivery. That allows it to go after physical stores with even greater intensity.
The average eBay mom and pop is not going to be in a position to file tax statements to every state where it shipped goods. Amazon will be there to not only comply, but have the competitive edge on everyone. The battle between Amazon and eBay has been so intense that the Internet Association has refused to take a position.
This is how business becomes cartelized. There is still competition, but it is not on a level playing field. You have to be heavily capitalized just to get your foot in the door. Then people look at the configuration of the remaining industries and scream, “Hey, business is too big and too powerful!” But they don’t discover the reason. It is too far back in time. And the cause and effect is too opaque to the casual observer.
It’s not hard to imagine the consequences. There will be fewer startups because the accounting costs of filing with states every month will be too daunting. Consumers will start looking at overseas merchants to buy their goods — as they are already doing for cigarettes, prescription drugs, and electronics. Digital currencies will help facilitate this move.
Meanwhile, the domestic market using government currency will be dominated by just a few players.
Everyone these days is sitting around regretting the way the recession just goes on and on, seemingly without end. If you are looking for the answer, look to Capitol Hill. Every time free enterprise tries to come up for air, the Congress and the regulators are there to put it underwater again.
Poor Richard's News: Tsarnaev family received over $100,000 in taxpayer funded welfare benefits
Ah, the American welfare state! Not only do we make people lazy and dependent on the government, we also hand giant amounts of cash over to terrorists who bomb us. Isn’t that great?
from Boston Herald:
The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.
“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.
The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.
Until last September, the entire family was non-citizens, at least two of them were on terror watch lists, one of them had been arrested for assault, and one of them had a warrant out for her arrest for shoplifting. And they still managed to get welfare checks!
The next time you hear a liberal argue that we don’t need welfare reform, link them to this article.
Senate passes internet sales tax bill amid opposition from conservatives
Bill to overturn 1992 court decision has support of Obama, Amazon and Walmart â but its future in the House is uncertainObama, Amazon, and Walmart all support an internet tax to make the world a “fairer” place which can also be explained as a place where big business and government are equally powerful.
A tax on the internet is not going to create equality for anyone- in fact it will make it even more difficult for internet business start-ups to compete with huge companies like Amazon who can easily deal with the costs of time-consuming regulations to adhere to. It will not help the consumer, as naturally anything you buy online will be more expensive. Taxing business and market transactions stifles an already troubled economy and ensures it stays that way.
I again ask the simple question: if we tax beer and cigarettes to encourage people to not buy them, why is taxing internet business or other products sold in-store any different? Even the government recognizes adding taxes is a hindrance to sales.Beyond the immorality and thievery of taxation, it is worth mentioning that we are also taxed far, far more than the colonies when they were inspired to rebel and create this “free” country in the first place.
The Costs of the United States’ Overseas Military Presence.
note: unfortunate misuse of pronouns (“we”, “our”).
Torture, Murder, and Terror: Three Drug War Programs Your Taxes Pay For
Happy tax day!And now this Tax Day, let’s take a brief look at where those tax dollars are being spent.
“But it’s also the case that your taxes pay for unquestionably vile things. Incontrovertibly evil things. Plainly awful things. If you’re finishing up your taxes today, you should know that the U.S. will spend $14.7 billion of next year’s $25.4 billion drug control budget on government-sponsored violence; which means that your tax dollars—even if it’s just a fraction of a cent—will make possible acts of state-sponsored terror, torture, and murder.”
You Need to Read: More government, more problems Part 3: How taxpayer money is wasted
“Nowhere to Cut?
In 2011, the federal government wasted $115.3 billion of taxpayers’ money in improper payments: money paid in the wrong amount, to the wrong person, or for the wrong reason. Most of these excess payments—$107 billion, or 93 percent—were in just 10 programs, including Medicare fee-for-service ($28.8 billion), Medicaid ($21.9 billion), the Earned Income Tax Credit ($15.2 billion), and Unemployment Insurance ($13.7 billion).
Implementation of updated computer systems and fraud detection methods and stricter documentation requirements would reduce payment errors.
Federally subsidized Amtrak lost $84.5 million on its food and beverage services in 2011, and $833.8 million over the past 10 years. It has never broken even on these services.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified 34 areas in which federal agencies or initiatives have overlapping goals or duplicative services, which cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year. There are:
More than 80 economic development programs operating out of four different agencies: the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development, and the Small Business Administration;
More than 100 economic development programs spread across five agencies within the Department of Transportation; Seven federal agencies, including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development, which have more than 20 programs addressing homelessness;
44 employment and training programs in the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor; and
82 programs on teacher quality run through the Departments of Defense, Education, and Energy, as well as NASA and the National Science Foundation.
In 2008 and 2009 alone, the Department of Justice spent (DOJ)$121 million to host or participate in 1,832 conferences. At one conference, petite Beef Wellington made the hors d’oeuvres menu, at a cost of $7.32 per serving.
An internal audit found DOJ did not keep costs to a minimum, despite federal guidelines. The most expensive conference reviewed in the audit was held in Istanbul, Turkey, and cost $1.18 million.
The General Services Administration (GSA), which is responsible for managing federal buildings and helping to cut costs, held a conference costing $822,751 in Las Vegas. At more than $2,500 per employee, it included $44-per-person breakfasts and commemorative coins for conference participants that cost $6,325.
In fiscal year 2010, the federal government spent nearly $1.7 billion to maintain 77,700 underused or unused buildings.
Eliminating both the New Starts and Small Starts transit grants programs would save taxpayers $5.6 billion over the next five years and $16.3 billion over 10 years. It would get the federal government out of the business of subsidizing high-cost, low-value local transit projects, such as $900 million for a 10-mile extension of the Bay Area rail system in San Jose and a $1.6 billion grant to construct a Honolulu rail line.
The Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Information Officer funded a $2 million intern program. Only one intern was hired full time as a result.
Fifteen federal agencies are involved in administering 30 food safety laws, resulting in fragmented food safety oversight.
The U.S. Navy bought 450,000 gallons of biofuels for $12 million, or almost $27 per gallon, to conduct exercises to showcase the fuel and bring it closer toward commercialization. It is the largest biofuel purchase ever made by the government.
The Internal Revenue Service stored 22,486 items of u
nused furniture in a warehouse at an annual cost of $862,000.
An Inspector General audit found that the Department of Energy cannot locate $500,000 worth of “green energy” manufacturing equipment that was bought with stimulus money.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs funded a fish hatchery that never saw a fish hatch for fourteen years, continuing funding even after the land had been converted to office space. Taxpayers spent $46.1 million in fiscal year 2012 to operate the national fish hatchery system.
The Department of Agriculture endorsed the “Meatless Monday” initiative and then a few weeks later announced plans to purchase $170 million worth of meat from drought-stricken livestock producers.
The Labor Department spent $495,000 in stimulus money on 100 television commercials to advertise the Obama Administration’s Jobs Corps Initiative for green jobs.
The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $6.1 million, or $3,389 for each of the 1,800 employees that attended two training conferences last year in Orlando, Florida. The agency Inspector
General’s office is investigating the conference organizers for possible ethics rules violations. The department also spent nearly $50,000 to make a video parodying General Patton that was shown at the conferences and $98,000 on promotional items. The items included pens, highlighters, hand sanitizers, and USB flash drives with VA’s logo.
The State Department began a Diplomatic Culinary Partnership program in 2012. Over 80 American chefs have been inducted into the American Chefs Corps and will support the State Department by preparing food for visiting officials and traveling around the world to engage in “culinary diplomacy.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $221,540 on an 11-day conference at a resort—enough to pay annual disability compensation for six totally disabled combat veterans.
Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy officials approved a $76 million grant for a wood-to-ethanol plant in Soperton, Georgia, despite concerns among the project’s researchers and other officials. The plant closed within a year of receiving the loan guarantee, without producing any ethanol.
The Rural Business Enterprise Grant Program gave $55,660 to a New York State dairy farm to package its butter in smaller, eight-ounce containers.
A grant totaling $25,000 was used to transcribe a Maldivian love ballad.
Taxpayers funded a National Institutes of Health study costing $55,382 in 2011, and $170,000 over three years, to study the hookah smoking habits of Jordanian university students.
The Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program spends $200 million a year to help U.S. agricultural trade associations and cooperatives advertise their products in foreign markets. In 2011, it funded a reality TV show in India that advertised U.S. cotton.
The Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $141,450 grant under the Clean Air Act to fund a Chinese study on swine manure and a $1.2 million grant to the United Nations for clean fuel promotion.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that some people are double-dipping from unemployment and disability benefits programs. This lack of coordination among government agencies is costing taxpayers $850 million annually. GAO found one individual who drew $62,000 from unemployment insurance and disability insurance at the same time she was working and earning an additional $7,000 in income.
In 2011, the top 20 percent of farm subsidy recipients received almost 80 percent of all premium subsidies. Twenty-six farm businesses each collected over $1 million worth of subsidies.
Taxpayer losses from the failed solar cell manufacturing company Solyndra, which received a federal loan guarantee, totaled $528 million. Beacon Power and Abound Solar, two other failed alternative energy companies, cost taxpayers $46.5 million and $73.1 million, respectively.
A Congressional Research Service report revealed that among individuals earning $1 million or more, 2,840 received unemployment benefits in 2008 and 2,362 received the benefits in 2009.
The Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers $2.1 billion annually not to farm their land for a period of at least ten years.”
http://herit.ag/YwbQyu
News to Me: OBAMA'S INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR MORE GOVERNMENT
By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of “The Rise of Tyranny” and
“Global Censorship of Health Information” and
“Restore The Republic”
March 25, 2013
The national debt will soon rise to $17 trillion with no end in sight. By 2016 as Obama leaves office, the national debt will be $23 trillion. By 2050 entitlement spending will consume the entire annual receipts of the federal government, leaving nothing for discretionary spending. Along the way, bit by bit, the federal government will falter, incapable of meeting its commitments to seniors and the indigent. Dysfunctional government will increasingly become non-functional government. The weight of the federal government, now the greatest government parasite in world history, will become so great that its private sector host will collapse in fits and starts, incapable of shouldering the combined tax and regulatory burden the federal government expects it to tolerate. Will federal authorities become so prideful and arrogant that they will follow the example of Cypress and confiscate private bank holdings? Perhaps.
The force of excessive taxation and regulation will one way or another forge even greater disparities between the rich and poor as small and medium sized businesses disappear incapable of surmounting the regulatory barriers to entry and affording the taxes imposed by, among other monstrosities, Obamacare. By any sane interpretation, those elements define a present and expanding fiscal crisis, yet for Obama, if he can just manage to avoid the brunt of catastrophe before he leaves in 2016, he is content to let the forces that lead to ruination to continue unabated. Unless his own ox is gored, Obama cares little if everyone else’s is.
In his now famous “Good Morning America” interview with George Stephanopoulos, the President pronounced confidently (as is his way with everything): “We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt … In fact, for the next 10 years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.” Those few words speak volumes. Just how much debt must the nation amass before this President considers it a crisis? Apparently $16.7 trillion leaves him unmoved. Why would any responsible person with authority to make a difference wish to do nothing until the game is up and the United States dissolves into a sea of insurmountable red ink? Although by sheer magnitude federal spending commitments are fast approaching a level of debt that forces down America’s credit rating even further, fails to keep pace with the financial and medical needs of our aging population, and leads providers of federal services to start abandoning Medicare and Medicaid, this President is content to let the consequences flow, waiting until the impending disaster is felt by nearly all Americans before doing anything at all, let alone doing something extraordinary.
In short, because of the massive amount of debt being amassed, of stifling regulation being promulgated, and of new federal and state taxes hitting an overtaxed market, the squeeze is now on and will worsen into the foreseeable future. Rather than lead and define a path toward fiscal stability and economic revival through actual cuts in federal spending and elimination of barriers to market entry, this President refuses to budge, making clear in his “Good Morning America” interview that he would rather wait until the inevitable happens than do anything now, apparently electing to dig out from under a collapsing economy and government (something that is a Herculean challenge beyond him and perhaps beyond any future President) rather than avoid the calamity through major reforms today.
Surely this refusal to lead is not the product of a feeble mind. Obama is intelligent. His every move is calculated in advance. His principal problem is his love of the welfare state and state sovereignty and his disdain for the constitutional ideal of a limited federal republic and individual sovereignty. He fundamentally distrusts the American people and believes he knows better what is in their interest than they do themselves. He will not accept any change in the movement toward bureaucratization of everything (i.e., federal power over every aspect of our lives), and he expects the market to sustain him in that quest. He would rather raise taxes; ensnare more American business in a net of expanding federal regulation whereby federal bureaucrats decide the course for all private enterprise; and continue to expand entitlements, than do anything to save the nation from economic ruin even if that means ignoring business failures, higher unemployment levels, and fewer net gains in tax receipts.
In short, he would rather court disaster than avoid it, if courting disaster means that he can remain the leader of an all-encompassing, ever expanding welfare state. He would rather allow Obamacare to take hold, despite its extraordinary cost and tax effects even if those costs and tax effects mean maintenance of levels of the uninsured equal to the numbers that begat the argument for Obamacare in the first place and even if those costs and tax effects mean higher levels of unemployment, less quality care, and more suffering.
n short, just as Obama is a person with no shortage of love for himself, he is also a person who believes that the nation needs to reflect the image he considers ideal rather than an image that hundreds of millions of Americans acting independently define as ideal. A friend of energetic government, so long as he dictates the direction of that energy, Obama is more like an arrogant dictator than a humble servant of the people. All of his decisions lead to more centralized power in the hands of the executive, i.e., in his own hands. For Obama, the United States truly is his country, not ours.
Handbagged by Nigel - EU is the New Communism (by ukipwebmaster)
News to Me: 100 Years Old And Still Killing Us: America Was Much Better Off Before The Income Tax
By Michael Snyder
Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in American history was during a time when there was absolutely no federal income tax? Between the end of the Civil War and 1913, there was an explosion of economic activity in the United States unlike anything ever seen before or since. Unfortunately, a federal income tax was instituted in 1913, and this year it turned 100 years old. But there was no fanfare, was there? There was no celebration because the federal income tax is universally hated. Sadly, most Americans just assume that there is no other option to an income tax. Most Americans just assume that it has always been with us and that it will always be with us. This year, the American people will shell out approximately $4.22 trillion in state and federal income taxes. That amount is equivalent to approximately 29.4 percent of all income that Americans will bring in this year, and that does not even take into account the dozens of other taxes that Americans pay each year. At this point, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long, and those that are honest and pay their taxes every year are being absolutely shredded by this system. But wouldn’t the federal government go broke if we didn’t have a federal income tax? No, actually the truth is that the federal government did just fine before there was an income tax. In fact, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger since the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were created by Congress back in 1913. As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve system was actually designed to trap the United States in a debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape, and the federal income tax was needed to greatly expand the size of the federal government and to soak the American people of the funds necessary to service that debt. But it doesn’t have to be this way. America was once much better off before the income tax and the Federal Reserve were created, and we could easily go to such a system again.
What we desperately need to do is to teach the American people a little history lesson. The truth is that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913 when there was no federal income tax at all. The following is from Wikipedia…The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873. The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.Sadly, most Americans cannot even conceive of an economy like that. Most Americans cannot even imagine having a nation without a massively bloated federal government and without an unelected central bank centrally planning our financial system.
But you know what?
It worked. In fact, it worked fantastically well.
The period between the Civil War and 1913 propelled the United States to greatness. Just check out all of the good things that Wikipedia says happened for the U.S. economy during those years…The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy. By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.
An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the “Second Industrial Revolution.” Railroads greatly expanded the mileage and built stronger tracks and bridges that handled heavier cars and locomotives, carrying far more goods and people at lower rates. Refrigeration railroad cars came into use. The telephone, phonograph, typewriter and electric light were invented. By the dawn of the 20th century, cars had begun to replace horse-drawn carriages.
Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation’s industrial infrastructure. Coal was found in abundance in the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania south to Kentucky. Oil was discovered in western Pennsylvania; it was mainly used for lubricants and for kerosene for lamps. Large iron ore mines opened in the Lake Superior region of the upper Midwest. Steel mills thrived in places where these coal and iron ore could be brought together to produce steel. Large copper and silver mines opened, followed by lead mines and cement factories.
In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, a step in the process that became known as mass-production.But if we didn’t have an income tax, how did we fund the government? Well, we mostly did it with tariffs and excise taxes. The following is from a recent article by Thomas R. Eddlem…
Prior to ratification of the 16th (income tax) Amendment in February 1913, the federal government managed its few constitutional responsibilities without an income tax, except during the Civil War period. During peacetime, it did so largely — or even entirely — on import taxes called “tariffs.” Congress could afford to run the federal government on tariffs alone because federal responsibilities did not include welfare programs, agricultural subsidies, or social insurance programs like Social Security or Medicare. After the Civil War, tariff revenues sometimes suffered under a protectionist policy ushered in by the Republican Party that supplemented federal income via excises on alcohol, tobacco, and inheritances. But before the war, the need for tariff revenue to finance the federal government generally kept the tariff at reasonable levels. During wartime throughout early American history, the Founding Fathers were able to raise additional revenue employing a different method of direct taxation authorized by the U.S. Constitution prior to the 16th Amendment. These alternative taxing methods gave the young American nation embarrassing peacetime budget surpluses that several times came close to paying off the national debt.So why didn’t we stick with that system?
Well, early in the 20th century the “progressives” and the social planners started to take control in Washington.
And one of the things that “progressives” and social planners love is an income tax. In fact, the second plank of the Communist Manifesto is a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax”.
Of course they promised us that income tax rates would always remain low. And at first they were quite low. The following is from an article by Adam Young…The presidential election of 1912 was contested between three advocates of an income tax. The winner, Woodrow Wilson, after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, called a special session of Congress in April 1913, which proceeded to pass an income tax of 1% on incomes above $3,000 and applied surcharges between 2% and 7% on income from $20,000 to $500,000.But once the “progressives” and the social planners get their feet in the door, they always want more.
And we have seen how things have worked out. Today, the American people are being taxed into oblivion.
In a previous article entitled “Show This To Anyone That Believes That Taxes Are Too Low”, I listed dozens of other taxes that the American people pay each year in addition to federal and state income taxes…
#1 Building Permit Taxes
#2 Capital Gains Taxes
#3 Cigarette Taxes
#4 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#5 Dog License Taxes
#6 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)
#7 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#8 Fishing License Taxes
#9 Food License Taxes
#10 Gasoline Taxes
#11 Gift Taxes
#12 Hunting License Taxes
#13 Inheritance Taxes
#14 Inventory Taxes
#15 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#16 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#17 Liquor Taxes
#18 Luxury Taxes
#19 Marriage License Taxes
#20 Medicare Taxes
#21 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
#22 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don’t buy “qualifying” health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)
#23 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income that goes into effect next year)
#24 Property Taxes
#25 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#26 Toll Booth Taxes
#27 Sales Taxes
#28 Self-Employment Taxes
#29 School Taxes
#30 Septic Permit Taxes
#31 Service Charge Taxes
#32 Social Security Taxes
#33 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#34 Tanning Tax (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)
#35 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#36 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#37 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#38 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#39 Tire Taxes
#40 Tolls (another form of taxation)
#41 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#42 Utility Taxes
#43 Vehicle Registration Taxes
#44 Workers Compensation Taxes
Yet even with all of these taxes, our local governments, our state governments and our federal government are all absolutely drowning in debt.
In another previous article entitled “24 Outrageous Facts About Taxes In The United States That Will Blow Your Mind”, I listed a number of reasons why our federal income tax system has become a complete and utter abomination that can never be fixed…
1 - The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.
2 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.
3 - 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.
4 - There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.
5 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.
6 - Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.
7 - In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.
8 - The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes.
9 - According to The Tax Foundation, the average American has to work until April 17th just to pay federal, state, and local taxes. Back in 1900, “Tax Freedom Day” came on January 22nd.
10 - When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent, and the highest marginal tax rate was just 7 percent.
11 - Residents of New Jersey pay $1.64 in taxes for every $1.00 of federal spending that they get back.
12 - The United States is the only nation on the planet that tries to tax citizens on what they earn in foreign countries.
13 - According to Forbes, the 400 highest earning Americans pay an average federal income tax rate of just 18 percent.
14 - Warren Buffett had an effective tax rate of just 17.4 percent for 2010.
15 - The top 20 percent of all income earners in the United States pay approximately 86 percent of all federal income taxes.
16 - Sadly, as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
17 - The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world (35 percent). In Ireland, the corporate tax rate is only 12.5 percent. This is causing thousands of corporations to move operations out of the United States and into other countries.
18 - Some tax havens are doing a booming business in setting up sham headquarters for U.S. corporations. For example, the city of Zug, Switzerland only has a population of 26,000 people but it is the headquarters for 30,000 companies.
19 - In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
The wealthy have become absolute masters at avoiding taxes, and the poor are not able to pay much.
So who always gets squeezed?
The middle class does.
No matter what our politicians promise us, the hammer is always brought down on the middle class.
And now, according to The Huffington Post, the IRS says that it can even read our old emails without a warrant to make sure that we are paying all of the taxes that we should be…The IRS apparently interprets that authority very broadly, the documents show: as long as you’ve stored your email in a cloud service like Google Mail, and as long as those emails haven’t been deleted after a few months, the agency thinks it doesn’t need a warrant to read them.
The idea of IRS agents poking through your email account might sound at the very least creepy, and maybe unconstitutional. But the IRS does have a legal leg to stand on: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 allows government agencies to in many cases obtain emails older than 180 days without a warrant.
That’s why an internal 2009 IRS document claimed that “the government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage for more than 180 days” without a warrant.It should be noted that the IRS is claiming that it does not use emails “to target” specific taxpayers, but notice that they are not promising not to use old emails against taxpayers once they are officially being audited or investigated…
“Contrary to some suggestions, the IRS does not use emails to target taxpayers. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.”In any event, the truth is that we have one of the most complicated and one of the most intrusive tax systems in the history of the world.
Don’t the American people deserve better?
What do you think?
Should America go back to a system where there is no income tax and no Federal Reserve?
