5 ms·

Except you forgot to fast forward to the part where politicians, having even more funds at their disposal to try to gain more power, decide to use that extra mo

Except you forgot to fast forward to the part where politicians, having even more funds at their disposal to try to gain more power, decide to use that extra money to increase spending even more. And contrary to the faux Mother Theresa like notion of government that some people like to project, that money will not mostly go towards relatively positive things like feeding hungry children, giving a helping hand to out of work people, or building libraries. This extra cash will mostly go to agencies like the NSA to spy on people more, subsidies to big farming companies, payoffs to the right corrupt dictators, to the FBI to throw more people in cages for consuming a plant, or to corrupt military contractors to build more useless bombs for the next war. The 16th Amendment (income tax) was only instituted in 1913 and the whole income tax is based on the disgraceful concept that you don't own the fruits of your labor but the government gets it before you do and only allows you whatever cut of it that they can decide on. The US was incredibly prosperous up until that time and was completely functional mostly running on limited tariffs. We would be even more prosperous today without the government sucking up such a large portion of creative wealth that exists in this country. The IRS should flat out be abolished not just for economic reasons, but also for political reasons. It is unacceptable that they are spying on people even more and that their power can be used to target political enemies.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> The 16th Amendment (income tax) was only instituted in 1913 The 16th Amendment was instituted in 1913, but the first US federal income taxes were adopted during the Civil War, and the first peacetime federal income taxes were adopted in the 1894. The 16th Amendment wasn't passed to give Congress the power to collect taxes on income, it was passed mainly to expand Congress well-established existing power in that domain to include the power to tax income from on sales of real and personal property without apportionment according to population as a direct tax (and to avoid future similar problems that might apply to some other sources of income), in response to Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust, 157 U.S. 429 (1895).
- 1123581321 13y ago
  It wasn't well established. Income tax had been found to be unconstitutional. An "excise tax", which was the same thing, was implemented as a workaround. The income tax amendment eliminated the unconstitutionality decisively and was championed by the Prohibition movement.
  - daywalker 13y ago
    Has anyone ever sued the government over income taxes being unconstitutional? How far did they get? Has there been a Supreme Court ruling on this?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Income tax had been found to be unconstitutional. No, it hadn't. As I stated earlier (and cited the case in which the decision was made), tax on certain forms of income (specifically, income from sales of property) was ruled to be a direct tax requiring apportionment under the Constitution. > An "excise tax", which was the same thing, was implemented as a workaround. Presumably, this is a reference to the Corporate Excise Tax of 1909, which wasn't the same thing, as the Court had explicitly previously ruled that a tax on corporations that was an excise for the privilege of operating a corporation, even when assessed by income, and even when the income included income from sales of property, was not a "direct tax" under the Constitution and thus did not require apportionment. > The income tax amendment eliminated the unconstitutionality ...of Congress taxing income from sale of property without apportionment, yes. That was the problem with the tax act that had been struck down -- the fact that it included taxes on that one particular source of income in a non-apportioned tax.
    - 1123581321 13y ago
      At no point do you disagree with me.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The 16th Amendment (income tax) was only instituted in 1913 The 16th Amendment was instituted in 1913, but the first US federal income taxes were adopted during the Civil War, and the first peacetime federal income taxes were adopted in the 1894. The 16th Amendment wasn't passed to give Congress the power to collect taxes on income, it was passed mainly to expand Congress well-established existing power in that domain to include the power to tax income from on sales of real and personal property without apportionment according to population as a direct tax (and to avoid future similar problems that might apply to some other sources of income), in response to Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust, 157 U.S. 429 (1895).

1123581321 13y ago
It wasn't well established. Income tax had been found to be unconstitutional. An "excise tax", which was the same thing, was implemented as a workaround. The income tax amendment eliminated the unconstitutionality decisively and was championed by the Prohibition movement.
- daywalker 13y ago
  Has anyone ever sued the government over income taxes being unconstitutional? How far did they get? Has there been a Supreme Court ruling on this?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Income tax had been found to be unconstitutional. No, it hadn't. As I stated earlier (and cited the case in which the decision was made), tax on certain forms of income (specifically, income from sales of property) was ruled to be a direct tax requiring apportionment under the Constitution. > An "excise tax", which was the same thing, was implemented as a workaround. Presumably, this is a reference to the Corporate Excise Tax of 1909, which wasn't the same thing, as the Court had explicitly previously ruled that a tax on corporations that was an excise for the privilege of operating a corporation, even when assessed by income, and even when the income included income from sales of property, was not a "direct tax" under the Constitution and thus did not require apportionment. > The income tax amendment eliminated the unconstitutionality ...of Congress taxing income from sale of property without apportionment, yes. That was the problem with the tax act that had been struck down -- the fact that it included taxes on that one particular source of income in a non-apportioned tax.
  - 1123581321 13y ago
    At no point do you disagree with me.