Harassing Trump on IRS Returns Part of Our Federal Income Tax Nightmare

The Democrat attempts to compel President Donald Trump to release his personal IRS returns shows again the insidious horror of federal income taxes in all our lives. Having failed with the Robert Mueller Special Investigation to find “Collusion with Russia,” the Democrats in both Washington, D.C., and in the New York State Assembly in Albany now feel that they can demand President Trump’s personal tax returns despite no compelling government reason.

Thankfully, the Trump Administration has replied with an emphatic, “No.” But that has not stopped Democrats from launching other attacks on President Trump, including the House Intelligence Committee investigating the Trump inauguration in 2017 and the House Judiciary Committee calling upon Attorney General William Barr to release the complete Mueller report, even though its chair, Needless Jerold Nadler, as he is now becoming known in New York City, said many years ago that those special reports should never be released when President Clinton was subject to the same type of scrutiny during his presidency. And where were the “concerned” Democrats in Congress demanding answers when the IRS stymied conservative political organizations when they tried to apply for tax exempt status during the Obama Administration? Let’s be clear: the Federal Income Tax is the oxygen tank for the progressive administrative regulatory state, which invariably leads to the United States printing money and going into debt. Progressivism is the belief that the government could and should mandate something called the public good as opposed to traditional values of limited government and individual responsibility. The federal income tax has been a 100-year-long national nightmare with a now omnipotent Internal Revenue Service. Americans waste endless hours each year doing their taxes or spend money on accountants to do the work for them. To paraphrase the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the federal tax code has made more Americans into “lawbreakers” than anything else. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it wasn’t always either. Ratified in 1913, the 16th Amendment gave Congress the authority to collect taxes on income. At the dawn of the 20th Century, the U.S. Constitution had been unchanged for more than 40 years since the three amendments of 1865-1870 that prohibited slavery. Before the 16th Amendment, it was not considered the prerogative of the federal government or anybody to know what an individual earned much less collect taxes on those earnings.

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The 16th Amendment was passed as a “tax on the rich,” and to get them to pay their “fair share.” Sound familiar? The late 19th Century became known as the Progressive Era, the attempt to correct perceived excesses of the prosperous post-Civil War “Gilded Age,” and to curb the power of corporate and financial interests. This populist movement centered upon farmers and laborers in Western and Southern states and even won third-party Electoral College votes in 1892. The result: a graduated federal personal income tax with “The Rich,” paying income taxes at a higher rate, became a central tenet of liberal and/or progressive ideology and subsequently modern-day socialism. The subject of taxation is central question of the American Experiment. “Taxation Without Representation” was the foundational philosophy that propelled the British colonists to become American Patriots in the 1760s when they came to believe that their rights as Englishmen were being denied by having to pay all manner of British taxes without receiving representation in the British Parliament across the Atlantic Ocean in London. This wariness of “Taxation Without Representation” guided American political leaders until the Civil War. Up until then, the federal government was funded primarily by tariffs, which had the dual purpose of raising revenues and protecting U.S. businesses and industries. In 1862, though, the Congress of the North passed an income tax to cover the cost of fighting the war with the South. The standard income tax rate was three percent with those making more than $10,000 annually paying a higher percentage. In 1868, the re-united U.S. Congress added a tax on tobacco and distilled spirits, and in 1872 eliminated the temporary war-time income tax. Congress passed a new two percent income tax in 1894, only to see the Supreme Court reject it in the following year for being unfairly apportioned and therefore unconstitutional. In 1896, the Democrats absorbed the populist People’s Party into its fold by nominating Nebraska firebrand William Jennings Bryan as its presidential standard bearer. From that point forward, “progressives” in both the Democrat and Republican parties coalesced to campaign for healthier food production, easy money, and to dissolve the business trusts to name three other progressive issues in addition to a graduated federal income tax. In 1909, Congress passed a new income tax law, and by 1913, three fourths of all the states had adopted it. The 16th Amendment, the first change to the Constitution since the Civil War, was approved and set to change American Life forever.

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The 16th Amendment was passed to “tax the rich,” but it eventually ensnared everyone, as taxes invariably do. Fifty years after the 16th Amendment became part of the Constitution, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs would initiate the redistribution society, the concept that government ought to create “fairness.” A federal income tax designed to assist fairness has not, because the wealthy have always found ways to avoid taxes because they can hire the best advisers and the poor pay no federal taxes. The only appropriate way to collect taxes on the federal level is by tariffs as it was done primarily in the first 120 years of the United States. This was a good system because as mentioned earlier in addition to funding the government it also regulated trades. In exchange for ending the personal income tax, we ought to return taxes on consumption, specifically on products that we would ought to want to limit their use: such as tobacco, drugs, alcohol, and gasoline, to name a few. It’s perverse that the federal government has the authority to tax personal income, although it may be appropriate on the state and local level. Restoring the Republic means having a government as close to the people as possible. People are more engaged in government on the state and local level, so taxation ought to reflect this need. That’s one of the main points of the American Revolution: self-government as close to locally as possible. The American war machine would probably also be tempered if military actions didn’t have an unlimited credit card. The political harassment of President Trump reflects another sordid low point in the history of the 16th Amendment and the federal income tax. The 16th Amendment ought to be repealed as soon as possible and a new tax code developed that does not include personal federal income taxes. President Trump and his administration are absolutely correct in not bowing to the onerous demands of the Democrats to release his taxes. Federal income taxes that fuel the Deep State apparatus must be repealed and replaced, just like Obamacare.