Unfair Taxation Violating Our Sacred Constitution

Over two centuries ago, the Battle Cry in Boston - “No Taxation without Representation!”- was heard around the world. This Battle Cry led to the debates, and then a war to form “a More Perfect Union.” And when the new government, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, was finally formed, the Founding Fathers assured us that there would be no “unfair tax” to contradict that doctrine. According to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, “The Congress shall have to Power to lay and collect Taxes . . . but all . . . shall be uniform throughout the United States.” More specifically, according to Section 9 of Article I, “No Capitation, or other direct Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

In 1894, a misguided Congress passed an income tax, and in the following year, the United States Supreme Court found that this “direct” tax violated the sacred provisions of the Constitution, and ruled that this act was unconstitutional. It was not until 1913 that the 16th Amendment allowed this previously unconstitutional tax to come into being. And it was another forty years before the deduction of $4000 (equivalent to $60,000 today) subjected the average American citizen to the unfair tax which all the Founders had risked their lives - and many had lost their lives - to prevent.

I have battled for a quarter of a century to defend citizens from the overreaching of this once unconstitutional, unfair tax. Geraldo Rivera on one side of the political spectrum, and G. Gordon Liddy on the other, have graciously said that I have won more criminal cases against the I.R.S. than anyone else in America. My “secrets” are contained in my books: "How to Survive the I.R.S.: My Battles Against Goliath" and "The Underground Lawyer".

I’ll share one of those secrets now: The tax is unfair! The government officials who administer it are corrupt. Ordinary citizens, given the chance, would defend each other on the jury (that’s why there are no tax court juries). Each political party has at times bought and sold tax breaks at the expense of those who have no lobbyist in Washington. The tax code has turned into a nightmare that even King George would have been embarrassed to enforce. The I.R.S. has become more tyrannical than King George ever was, and more intimidating, since it doesn’t reside across the Ocean, but in every city and borough in America.

While my work has received a certain amount of praise by national figures and landed me on major talk shows - CNN, MSNBC, and other networks - the truth is that I am only able to help a few individuals. I have never been able to make a dent in the power or the corruption of the I.R.S. The Internal Revenue Service is an organization of over 140,000 people, larger than the F.B.I., C.I.A., D.E.A., Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Congress put together. Many are gun-toting number crunchers with bad attitudes and no firearm safety training. That does not mean that there is no hope and there are no solutions. The FairTax organization has a solution that would restore the legitimacy of government collections and make the tax fair - a tax based on the equality of human beings, a tax based on consumption.

I feel like a doctor during the plague years - like Dr. Benjamin Harris, one of the founding signers of the Constitution. Dr. Harris fought yellow fever, and for each patient he saved, a hundred were lost to the disease. How happy he would be to see that we have a cure for yellow fever today. How sad he would be to witness the degradation of Article I, Sections 8 and 9, that he signed upon pain of death.

The FairTax bill was not designed to cure yellow fever, but it will restore the legitimacy of our government and restore the original intention of Article I, the tax section of our sacred Constitution.

Our "sacred constitution" was abandoned many decades ago. That battle has already been waged ... and, unfortunately, lost.

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
"There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, 'Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out.' These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when 'one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.'
"Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern.
"But it could not be so embarrassed and all that line was wasted, because, in the first place, it never intended to make that kind of sense, and secondly, it took off from nothing that was implicit in the American scheme. It took off from a revolutionary base. The design was European. Regarded from the point of view of revolutionary technic it made perfect sense. Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. For what it meant to do it was from the beginning consistent in principle, resourceful, intelligent, masterly in workmanship, and it made not one mistake.
"The test came in the first one hundred days.

"No matter how ..." --The Revolution Was by Garet Garrett (1938)

In 1894, a misguided Congress passed an income tax, and in the following year, the United States Supreme Court found that this “direct” tax violated the sacred provisions of the Constitution, and ruled that this act was unconstitutional. It was not until 1913 that the 16th Amendment allowed this previously unconstitutional tax to come into being.

The author errors in that only a portion of the 1894 income tax was actually held to be unconstitutional, that dealing with rent from real estate and income derived from personal property in the form of stocks, and bonds. Since the dominant portion of the income tax at that time was laid on such income, the entire income tax was declared void while recognizing that taxes on vocations and labor were valid, but it was not the intent of congress to tax such in the absence of taxes on the income from capital.

POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 U.S. 601 (1895):

"We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such."

"If that[rents from land] be stricken out, and also the income from all invested personal property, bonds, stocks, investments of all kinds, it is obvious that by a r the largest part of the anticipated revenue would be eliminated, and this would leave the burden of the tax to be borne by professions, trades, employments, or vocations; and in that way what was intended as a tax on capital would remain, in substance, a tax on occupations and labor. We cannot believe that such was the intention of congress."

"We do not mean to say that an act laying by apportionment a direct tax on all real estate and personal property, or the income thereof, might not also lay excise taxes on business, privileges, employments, and vocations. "

Flint v. Stone Tracy Co.(1911), 220 U.S. 107

"The Pollock Case construed the tax there levied as direct, because it was imposed upon property simply because of its ownership."

The reason to get rid of the income tax lays not with being unconstitutional, but rather that is is simply an impostion that is too open for abuse of the individual and subverts representative government by creating a readymade constitutency voting for largess on the backs of a minority of the rest of the populace.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw

Right now the bottom 60% perceive little to no "Individual Income Tax" burden,(in many cases even a handout) and they continue to clamor for more from government looking for the top 40% to pay for it, corroborated by many recent polls on the subject of people attitudes about tax reduction. That perception continues to grow ever stronger by eliminating even more participants from the Individual Income Tax rolls as proposed in the current tax reduction proposals currently on board through changes in personal exemption limits and other mechanisms such as the EITC.

A prime example of what is happening comes from an analysis of Individual Income Tax effective rates in comparison with the Total rates of Federal taxation:

Those who perceive little burden play the role of Poor little Paul:

Effective Individual Federal Income Tax Rate (Percent of gross income)
Income Category	1977	1979	1981	1983	1985	1987	1989	1991	1993	1995	Projected 1999
Lowest Quintile	-0.6	-0.8	-0.2	-0.5	-0.2	-1.3	-1.9	-2.9	-3.4	-5.6	-6.8
Second Quintile	3.6	3.9	4.6	3.5	3.9	3.2	3.3	2.7	1.8	1.8	0.9
Middle Quintile	7.1	7.5	8.3	6.8	6.8	6.1	6.5	6.3	5.9	6.1	5.4

Those that readily perceive some of the burden.

Effective Individual Federal Income Tax Rate (Percent of gross income)
Income Category	1977	1979	1981	1983	1985	1987	1989	1991	1993	1995	Projected 1999
Fourth Quintile	9.7	10.4	11.3	9.5	9.3	8.7	8.9	8.7	8.5	8.7	8.4
Highest Quintile	15.8	16.3	17.1	14.5	14.3	15.1	15.1	14.8	15.5	16.2	16.1

To play the role of mean ole Rich Peter.

Data from IRS collections statistics and The Bureau of Economic Analysis as compiled in tabular form by the Congressional Budget Office.
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1545&from=4&sequence=0

We live in a world where Paul sees Peter as a walking pocketbook.

The NRST provides the monitor to allow Vigilance. Public demand and spending go hand in hand with perceived cost, that is simple economics. Obscure cost, government spending runs rampant and will continue to do so until such time as a voting majority of the citizens become informed, on a personal level, of the true cost of government largess in their lives. The NRST provides that where the income/payroll tax system does not.

We are all paying through the nose, rich and poor while politicians play the tune of envy and resentment that Americans continue to respond to not understanding the full picture what is happening to them. The NRST is a means to open VOTERS eyes to the reality.

Alan Keyes refers to the income tax as the slave tax and supports a National Retail sales tax to replace it. The Original Intent of the individual income tax is for political and social control not revenue collection. The Individual Income tax is maintained to establish and hold every person in the country perpetual legal jeopardy. That is a situation that must end with the repeal of the income tax from the statutes, and the prohibition of its use by Constitutional amendment that future generations will not face the same manner of manipulation and interference in their lives.

It is long past time to end the Income Tax once and for all,and support the enactment of the only bills before congress that would actually achieve that.

H.R.2525
SPONSOR: Rep Linder, John (introduced 07/17/2001)
A bill to promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national retail sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.
Refer: http://www.fairtax.org

the modification then enactment and ratification of:

H.J.RES.45
Sponsor: (introduced 4/25/2001)
Latest Major Action: 5/9/2001 Referred to House subcommitte.
Title: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the Untied States Government from engaging in the business in competition with its citizens.

(Modified to prohibit all income, payroll, gift estate taxes as HR2525 calls for, or we will see European VAT style hidden taxes along with payroll excises to take over in the place of the of the current individual income tax(i.e. personal income tax) that Ron Paul amendment prohibits.)

And to keep em reminded that there is indeed a Constitution to pay attention to:

H.R.175
Sponsor: (introduced 1/3/2001)
Latest Major Action: 2/12/2001 Referred to House subcommittee
Title: To require Congress to specify the source of authority under the United States Constitution for the enactment of laws, and for other purposes.

Taxes - This term in its most extended sense includes all contributions imposed by the government upon individuals for the service of the state, by whatever name they are called or known, whether by the name of tribute, tithe, talliage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply, excise, or other name.
The 8th section of Art. I, Const. U. S. provides, that "Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay," etc. "But all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."
In the sense above mentioned, taxes are usually divided into two great classes, those which are direct, and those which are indirect. Under the former denomination are included taxes on land or real property, and under the latter taxes on articles of consumption.

Sales Tax -- Any tax levied on, with respect to, or measured by, sales, receipts from sales, purchases, storage, or use of tangible personal property. 4 USC

Tangible personal property - Property that has physical substance and can be touched; Anything other than real estate or money, including furniture, cars, jewelry and china. Intangible property (example; a check account) lacks this physical quality.
Real Property - Land and all the things that are attached to it. Anything that is not real property is personal property and personal property is anything that isn't nailed down, dug into or built onto the land. A house is real property, but a dining room set is not.
That which consists of land, and of all rights and profits arising from and annexed to land, of a permanent, immovable nature. In order to make one's interest in land, real estate, it must be an interest not less than for the party's life, because a term of years, even for a thousand years, perpetually renewable, is a mere personal estate...
The principal distinctions between real and personal property, are the following:

Real property is of a permanent and immovable nature, and the owner has an estate therein at least for life.
It descends from the ancestor to the heir instead of becoming the property of an executor or administrator on the death of the owner, as in case of personalty.
In case of alienation, it must in general be made by deed and in presenti by the common law; whereas leases for years may commence in futuro, and personal chattels may be transferred by parol or delivery.
Real estate when devised, is subject to the widow's dower personal estate can be given away by will discharged of any claim of the widow.

By focusing soley on Americans' antipathy toward the IRS and the Income Tax, the NRST attempts to fulfill Marx's assualt on individual property rights by imposition of a sales tax on Real Property as though such property were merely a consumable good ( - Cargo shipped by sea, land or air) or service ( - The being employed to serve another.)

As NRST advocates also attempt to redifine "rent" as a "service", we should also take a closer look at the difference in legal definition of these two words as well:

Service - The being employed to serve another.
Rent - The consideration paid for the right to use and possess property.
A certain profit in money, provisions, chattels, or labor, issuing out of lands and tenements in retribution for the use. (In feudal times, in some cases, essentially an INCOME TAX placed on the tenant!!!)

If one were to click on the links provided for the fuller, more complex definitions, we would learn that there is a relationship between the terms "rent" and "service". However, it IS NOT that the landlord provides a service to the tenant!!! Quite the opposite!!! The tenant performs service to the landlord!!!!

So once again, NRST must completely mutilate centuries of English Common Law regarding Real Property and Property Rights (by totally reversing the fundamental definition of "service") in order to impose a different form of Marxist taxation on the American People.

From Marx's Communist Manifesto:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1.Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2.A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Of course, it is not the "proletariat" who are imposing these Marxist atrocities against individual property rights. It is the political elites in fascist collusion with business investor/landlord interests who stand to benefit from such change.

You blithering moron!!!

I've read your trash on this (and other earlier threads) many times. It never changes and has no relation to reality. I certainly agree with E/V that CHIEF would be laughing at your continued stupidity in the face of having been rebutted many times by many posters.

Since you haven't the decency to shut up for a while, neither will I since leaving your nonsense unrebutted is anathema.

You are quite off base Willie Green and it seems that your definitions are conveniently tailored to show only the certain points you wish to make. Instead of your tailored definitions (which are actually examples drawn from legal cases to explain the meaning of the laws applying in those cases - descriptive examples of current usgage in other words; not definitions) let's use the Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions which are not tailored to any specific purpose. It appears that you have selectively and carefully elicited your descriptive examples drawn from usage in some existing tax statutes. Such definitions are, of course, specific to the thing being legislated and very much tailored to show how a particular meaning applies in a case at hand (and not in general).

The untailored dictionary definitions:

"tax - a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes ".

"direct tax - a tax exacted directly from the taxpayer (by the taxing body)".

"sales tax - a tax levied on the sale of goods and services that is usually calculated as a percentage of the purchase price and collected by the seller ".

"goods - something that has economic utility or satisfies an economic want; something manufactured or produced for sale ".

"services - a facility supplying some public demand (telephone service) (bus service) and also a contribution to the welfare of others ".

Looking at these more general definitions that have not been taken from some existing tax statute and therefore become tailored to be highly specific, we see that your selective definitions are indeed highly selective. Looking at the definition of "direct tax", we see for example in the general definition nothing of the distinction you mention as applying to land or real property and not just articles of consumption as in your definition. Under "sales tax" we once again do not see your distinction of tangible personal property at all, but a tax levied on goods and services (also defined) and collected by the seller. The sales tax on either the sale or the rental of real property clearly falls correctly under this more general definition.

The argument here, Willie Green, is not about rights of property whether real or personal, but about the taxation of such property. Quoting definitions of existing statutes hardly qualifies as a reasonable definition of the general condition, but only of the condition of existing taxation - which is exactly what is needing gross change. Property rights are not affected by such a sales tax so all of your overblown rhetoric about property rights and distinctions between real and personal property are meaningless and are obviously just something you have thrown in to try to inflame the passions of some - that's demagoguery at its finest.

Clearly the rental of a place to live qualifies as either (or both) a good or a service depending upon how you view it.

As I said you have carefully chosen your definitions and tailored them according to your own intent.

Let's look at the definitions from what you have said is the source you linked to.

Your definition of "Taxes" gives an example of direct taxation as being on land and real estate. This is given as an example since presently any taxes on land and real estate are taxed by the taxing authority directly (e.g., are a direct tax). That does not mean that, by definition, real estate taxes are (or must be) direct taxes, but only uses it as an example since that is the present practice. In that same definition, it also says "Congress have plenary power over every species of taxable property, except exports." which means that it is up to congress to make the tax laws - but you knew that didn't you - and they could certainly cause real estate to be taxed as a sales tax (an indirect tax). Your (partial) definition, therefore, does not apply in this instance since it only describes present practices.

Your definition of "sales tax" (and, BTW, it is sales and use tax) similarly is giving illustrative instances of things now normally covered by that sort of tax. It also is not a definition of all possible taxed items. It does not use real estate since, as I just mentioned, real estate is not now handled by indirect tax (sales tax) but by direct taxation (the governmental authority acting directly on or with the taxpayer as stated in the more general definition I gave in my earlier replies). In a few years this definition (as well as the direct tax definition) will be modified to catch up with reality and to reflect the fact that a sales tax on real estate is an indirect tax.

Keep in mind that even in your own definition of "Taxes", it is acknowledged that congress can make the tax laws - and that means they can certainly do as I have said. Even your own definition of "sales tax" allows for taxing of the rental use of real estate.

Your definitions are not drawn from existing specific case law as I thought, but are merely given in specialized definitions as presently used in law. The NRST is indeed a precedent-setting law; no question. No other country has such a tax law and certainly it will change some of these very definitions you are trying to use inappropriately.

As the law changes the examples used to show the intent and/or use of the law will change with it. You do not seem to grasp that all you are quoting are examples conforming to existing law which considers real estate to be an example of direct taxation since it is not presently covered by a sales tax (but is taxed in a roundabout manner by taxing the income of the buyer - and very heavily at that). The existing law was not written based upon these definitions, but the definitions merely give examples of what existing law applies to.

These "definitions" of yours (which are really just examples) will change to reflect changed law, my friend - make book on it. One of us may be a marxist, but it is not me. As I recall, you are the one who thought it was fine to have "the rich" become expatriates to get away from confiscatory taxation. That (along with a number of your other comments) sounds like class warfare to me, Willie Greenski. You would benefit by doing some research into the economic benefits brought about by the NRST so that you would better understand that class warfare is neither required nor brought about by the NRST.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You've earned a special place of enmity in the hearts of many hundreds of FReepers who held Herb Meadows in high regard EVEN IF they did not agree with him. You're the exception that proves the old adage that Abe Lincoln espoused when he said:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt."

Little Willie was "The Worst President In American History".

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