The tax code of the United States is an abomination. It is almost
impossible to tell the truth about it without sounding like a demented
extremist of some kind. But from time to time, we need to face the awful
reality that many Americans live in fear and dread of a vicious, infernal
revenue monster, created to feed the greed of a government gone amok.
We are in the middle of a national debate over what to do with a huge,
projected budget surplus, which exists because of overtaxation. It is hard
to image a better time for looking at taxation in general, and the Internal
Revenue Service in particular.
In 1894, Congress passed an income tax law, but the Supreme Court ruled
it unconstitutional. In 1913, the effort of the founders to protect us from
disproportionate taxation was overridden by the ratification of the 16th
Amendment, which reads, "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect
taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among
the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
The tax amendment to the Constitution has no caps or limits. It is a
single sentence that says that the government has the power and the
constitutional authority to confiscate all the wealth generated in the
country.
Those who were seduced into voting for this amendment were told that what
was intended was a modest 1 or 2 percent on very high incomes. It would
never touch the lives of ordinary citizens.
The depth and destructiveness of that lie is detailed in a new study
entitled, "Taxes," written by Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D. It will appear as
one section of a volume called "The Candidates' Briefing Book," which is
being published by The Heritage Foundation, a highly prestigious tank of
thinking scholars and experts.
Mitchell's report is full of important nuggets of information, all
thoroughly documented and referenced. I will cite three:
- Taxes are too high. The average American household pays more
in taxes than it pays for food, clothing, shelter and transportation
combined. In 1999, every dollar the average taxpayer earned from Jan. 1 to
May 11 went to pay taxes. All told, government collects more than 40 percent
of family income, the highest level since World War II. Since 1940,
inflation-adjusted tax revenues are up 2,000 percent, and now, approach $2
trillion annually, more than $7,000 for every man, woman and child in the
nation. - The tax code is incomprehensible. There are 101,295 pages of IRS laws
and regulations, and more than 700 tax forms. In the past 13 years, Congress
has passed 50 bills changing the tax code. In the 10 years following the
1986 Tax Reform Act, there were 6,000 cumulative changes in the tax law. In
1997, Money magazine asked 46 professional tax preparers to calculate the
income tax for a hypothetical family -- and got 46 different answers. In
1999, taxpayers asking for help in complying with the tax code received 9.8
million wrong answers from the IRS -- but these taxpayers are held strictly
accountable for errors in their returns that resulted from bad advice given
by the IRS. - The tax system is too expensive. It costs the economy more than $250
billion annually to comply with the tax code. Just to comply with the law,
it costs small- and medium-sized corporations $7,240 for every $1,000 they
pay in taxes. Americans spend 5.4 billion hours a year filling out tax
forms, more time than it takes to build every car, truck and van produced in
the United States.
A few years ago, former vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp
chaired the Commission On Economic Growth and Tax Reform, which detailed how
the income-tax system serves purposes even more insidious than the
heavy-booted extraction of money from hapless citizens. The commission
described the system of income taxes as "beyond repair -- impossibly
complex, outrageously expensive, overly intrusive, economically destructive
and manifestly unfair."
The Kemp report continued: "Twice as big as the CIA, and five times the
size of the FBI, the IRS controls more information about individual
Americans than any other agency.
"Without a search warrant, the IRS has the right to search the property
and financial documents of American citizens. Without a trial, the IRS has
the right to seize property from Americans."
It is time for Americans to comprehend that taxation has become an
instrument for the transfer of power, freedoms and treasure from the people
to the government.
We Americans suffer the abused-nation syndrome. We are wimps to have ever
submitted to these assaults on our individual liberties, and we are fools
for continuing to send back to office those who empower this infernal,
fascist system.