Posted on 02/10/2003 10:22:36 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Last Friday, the President Bush issued his annual Economic Report. Press coverage focused heavily on the chapter relating to taxation. The lead was that President Bush favors a shift toward consumption taxation.
As is so often the case, the news stories gave the barest hint of what the report actually said. And the spin was designed to frighten voters into thinking that a new tax was being imposed on top of all the others, one that will be especially injurious to the poor.
In fact, the Economic Report was more of a philosophical discussion than a concrete proposal. But the points that it makes will be central to any effort at fundamental tax reform.
The idea of taxing consumption rather than income has been around for almost 500 years. In 1651, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote in "Leviathan" that taxing what people consume is more fair than taxing what they earn. The former, he thought, represented what people take out of society, while the latter showed what they contributed.
Hobbes asked, Why should a rich man who saves much and consumes little be more heavily taxed than one of modest means who consumes all he earns and more by going into debt? The first is giving something to society by saving, while the second makes society poorer.
At almost the same time, Sir William Petty also made a strong case for taxing consumption on the grounds that the goods and services that people consume are a truer measure of their well being than what they earn. "Every man should pay according to what he actually enjoyeth," Petty wrote in 1662. And taxes should be light on those "who please to be content with natural necessities."
In the 18th century, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that a principal benefit of consumption taxes is that they are to a certain extent voluntary, because people can choose whether or not to consume the taxed commodity. This view was endorsed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 21. Consequently, he thought that taxes on consumption were less likely to become excessive.
I bring this history up only to indicate that taxing consumption, rather than income, is not a radical new idea, but one that has a long and distinguished pedigree. It fell out of favor in the 20th century because of Keynesian economics and the popularity of income redistribution as a central tenet of liberalism. Keynes saw saving as bad for growth, and income taxation discourages saving by including it in the tax base, which would not be the case under a consumption tax. And income taxation also supported liberalism by justifying heavy taxes on forms of income mainly accruing to the wealthy, such as capital gains and dividends.
Unfortunately, the 20th century's greatest champion of taxing consumption, economist Irving Fisher, got the reputation of being a bit of a crank and thus did not have the influence that those favoring income taxation had. The latter had their greatest success in the 1960s, when the tax expenditures concept was developed. Henceforth, all deviations from a theoretically perfect income tax would be considered illegitimate and Congress often abolished them when looking for new revenue.
The case for taxing consumption had a revival in 1977, when the Treasury Department issued a study titled, "Blueprints for Basic Tax Reform." However, since it was a Ford administration initiative that came out just three days before Jimmy Carter took office, it went nowhere legislatively. But it did have a profound impact on those who think about tax policy and really made the idea respectable again. The principal author of the Blueprints study, economist David Bradford of Princeton, has continued to write extensively in favor of its basic outlines.
Consumption-based taxation would have made more progress in the years since except that a few eccentrics got the idea that the entire tax system needed to be rooted out and replaced with a retail sales tax, like those at the state level. This is a silly idea that never had any chance of enactment and would be impossible to implement if it were ever tried.
What the Bush administration proposes is something much more sophisticated and workable. It wants to work within the existing tax system to get rid of taxes that burden saving and investment. If this were done consistently, we would have a tax system that falls only on consumption, without the administrative and political problems inherent in trying to tax sales directly.
Supplementing the effort to explain this initiative, President Bush has included a section in his new budget detailing specific deviations from a consumption tax base. (Look on page 130 in the Analytical Perspectives volume.) Taken together with the Economic Report, these constitute the most powerful case for consumption taxation since the 1977 Blueprints study, and the first to come out of the White House itself.
What the Bush administration proposes is something much more sophisticated and workable. It wants to work within the existing tax system to get rid of taxes that burden saving and investment. If this were done consistently, we would have a tax system that falls only on consumption, without the administrative and political problems inherent in trying to tax sales directly.
Ahhh, Bruce Bartlett the flat income tax proponent trying to sell his favorite income tax varient as a consumption tax.
In economics there exists the equivalency of Consumption = Income - investment.
Unfortunately a tax on (Income - investment) is merely a VAT with a wage tax. EU style taxation at its most horrific, and just more slight of hand relating income taxes as equivalent to consumption taxes on objects of commerce.
Why buy a political fiction when you could have the real thing (National Retail Sales Tax) and get rid of the IRS and intrusive government annal exams of family finances while you are at it.
H.R.25
SPONSOR: Rep Linder, John (introduced 01/7/2003)
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 & http://www.salestax.org
What we know about the Flat Tax from it's primary designers:
None other than the father of the flat tax, Robert Hall of Stanford University (along with Alvin Rabushka), in his 1995 Ways and Means Committee testimony said, "The Hall-Rabushka flat tax is a value-added tax."
Which was pointed out again in additional hearings in April of 2000:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/fullcomm/106cong/4-11-00/4-11kotl.htm
"Robert Hall, one of the originators of the proposal(Flat Tax), who describes his Flat Tax as, effectively, a Value Added Tax. A value added tax taxes output less investment (because firms get to deduct their investment.)"
"The Flat Tax differs from a VAT in only two respects. First, it asks workers, rather than firm managers, to mail in the check for the tax payment on that portion of output paid to them as wages. Second, it provides a subsidy to workers with low wages."
The Flat Tax; Chapter 3, by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka
| In our system, all income is classified as either business income or wages (including salaries and retirement benefits). The system is airtight. Taxes on both types of income are equal. The wage tax has features to make the overall system progressive. Both taxes have postcard forms. The low tax rate of 19 percent is enough to match the revenue of the federal tax system as it existed in 1993, the last full year of data available as we write. Here is the logic of our system, stripped to basics: We want to tax consumption. The public does one of two things with its income—spends it or invests it. We can measure consumption as income minus investment. A really simple tax would just have each firm pay tax on the total amount of income generated by the firm less that firm’s investment in plant and equipment. The value-added tax works just that way. But a value-added tax is unfair because it is not progressive. That’s why we break the tax in two. The firm pays tax on all the income generated at the firm except the income paid to its workers. The workers pay tax on what they earn, and the tax they pay is progressive. To measure the total amount of income generated at a business, the best approach is to take the total receipts of the firm over the year and subtract the payments the firm has made to its workers and suppliers. This approach guarantees a comprehensive tax base. The successful value-added taxes in Europe work this way. The base for the business tax is the following: Total revenue from sales of goods and services less purchases of inputs from other firms less wages, salaries, and pensions paid to workers less purchases of plant and equipment The other piece is the wage tax. Each family pays 19 percent of its wage, salary, and pension income over a family allowance (the allowance makes the system progressive). The base for the compensation tax is total wages, salaries, and retirement benefits less the total amount of family allowances. |
FLAT TAX, VAT TAX, ANYTHING BUT THAT TAX; Duke Law Magazine, Spring 96:
CONSUMPTION TAX PROPOSALS; 1996 Deloitte & Touche LLP
The Flat Tax is a VAT even as the current income/payroll tax structure now in place is a subtraction method VAT, in that it is a levy imposed on businesses at all levels of production, it is passed on to the consumer hidden in the price of goods and services.
As long as government is able to play a shell game with hiding taxes from the Voter(i.e. individual) it can rely on the old maxim:
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
and keep right on growing without bound.
Milton Friedman as quoted by Northwest Florida Daily News, 10-16-2000:
Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813). Scottish jurist and historian:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Are we supposed to just accept this assertion as proven, I wonder?
Keep the income tax. But treat it as buying "shares" in the US government. Do the following:
1st, your vote would be multiplied by the total amount of taxes that you have ever paid. So the effect is that bottom-feeding non tax paying folks have minimal voting power. Those who have paid a bunch of taxes suddenly have lots of voting power.
2nd, vote fraud is minimized since voting is not anonymous and the votes of dead people can be screened out. Plus, the votes of "illegals" are eliminated - if they don't pay taxes, their "votes" have no value. 0 x anything == 0.
Do you think that a national sales tax could be controlled?
Yes.
Every time I turn around our state and local sales tax increases because the argument "it's only a penny" fools a majority of the dimwitted voters.
If that is true, why is it only 6%?
How they will feel about such increases when there is a federal and state and local tax is in place and they go looking to increase on top of the total, especially when the sales tax is across the board an all goods and services with no exemptions for carefully selected "necessities".
I suspect things are going to change significantly.
IMHO the solution is to
a)Eliminate withholding - everyone pays their taxes just like any other bill - even better would be to pay taxes once per year and
b)Schedule the general elections for one week after the day that taxes are due.
Why do you support income taxes?
- It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.
I would rather be free government's intrusive nose out of my families financial privacy personally. At least a properly constructed retail sales tax leaves income alone to be allocated as the individual decides to invest vs. spend, unlike the income tax where govenment gets first grab at dollars off the top under income taxes.
This would guarantee that the candidates who are willing to cut spending and taxes get elected.
As long as personal exemptions and deductible expenditures are in place that is highly unlikely. Someone who does not owe an income tax is not faced with a problem with others not saddled with witholding.
It is much easier for politicians to play the soak the rich game while making sure their voting majority is relieved of paying significant tax through personal exemptions and targeted income deductions.
- "There has been a shift in the relationship between individuals and government, he argues, such that fewer and fewer are paying taxes at the same time that more and more are receiving increasingly generous benefits. If it becomes the case that most voters do not bear a financial burden for this largess, then there will be little to restrain--and significant political incentives to encourage--the continued growth of government. And at that point, DeMint warns, we have reached a major crisis in our democracy."
Milton Friedman as quoted by Northwest Florida Daily News, 10-16-2000:
- "If we're to have an income tax, it's a good thing for everyone to pay at least a nominal amount," he said. "If non-taxpayers become a majority in society, what would restrain them from voting for ever higher taxes on others?"
Walter Williams, World Net Daily, 10-25-2000
- If you're among those who pay little or no federal income taxes, what do you care about tax cuts? Moreover, if you think tax cuts pose a threat to government handout programs, you might be openly hostile and support Al Gore's silly "risky scheme" talk. So many Americans paying little or no federal taxes makes for a natural spending constituency. It's like me in the restaurant: What do I care about extravagance if you're footing the bill?
"As a matter of fact, what the income tax does — and this is the debate that I think we always try to get into in order to let you and him fight, see — and the people of this country are led down a path where the actual control of their resources, which in the end is the control over their will, is handed off to the government."
. . .
"The government then manipulates that will in order to destroy the freedom of our electoral system through the income tax structure, and we call the resulting slavery a free system."
"In point of fact, it is not as the founders understood, and the only way to restore real freedom is to give people back control over the income that they earn so that they won‘t, at the voting booth and in other phony issues, be subject to that manipulation."
- KEYES TRANSCRIPT (01/28/02)
To remove taxation of the individual, is to remove the goad which assures accountability of government to the electorate. Federal tax rates are high because a majority of the electorate do not share proportionately in the burden their demand for largesse imposes on the minority of citizens.
The siren call for representation without taxation is the formula that got us where we are at today. The ability to hide or disguise taxation from the view of large sectors of the electorate allows the Congress to get away with the creation of the evergrowing monster that it fosters.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
Liberty and freedom have a price, responsibility. If that price is avoided there are no brakes on the growth of government, the ultimate result is the end of freedom through creeping socialism.
Right now the bottom 60% perceive little to no "Individual Income Tax" burden,(in many cases even a handout) and 70% of the voting public clamors for more from government looking for the top 40% of income earners/producers to foot the bill. That perception continues to grow ever stronger by eliminating even more participants from the Federal Individual Income Tax rolls as proposed in the tax reduction proposals through changes in personal exemption limits and other mechanisms such as the EITC.
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.
Keep the income tax. But treat it as buying "shares" in the US government. Do the following:
- Go back through the tax records and sum up the total of all taxes paid by everyone.
- Send everyone a "share certificate" showing the total shares they "own", where $1 == 1 share.
- Each year, after paying taxes, you get a new certificate.
- Here's the kicker. For each federal election, your vote is no longer anonymous. Instead you are uniquely identified and your vote is multiplied by the total number of "shares" you hold in the US government.
A couple of minor problems, what you describe is a poll tax, which is unconstitutional by virture of amendment to the constitution.
Secondly, why are you so enamored by an income tax at all? The income tax is the most intrusive and prone to political manipulation of all tax systems know. That is why it is the favorite of Karl Marx and company make an income tax the second plank of the Communist manifesto.
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.
The concept I was presenting was that if we pay an income tax, this is a good way to skew control of the government over to those who actually pay taxes.
So, if you have paid $250K in taxes to date, you get 250,000 weighted "votes" when you vote. Some person who is either:
(a) Poor and has never paid taxes gets no vote.
(b) Rich and has weasled out of paying taxes - also gets no vote.
As for it being a poll tax...nope. No extra tax. Just the plain old taxes you have already paid.
(a) Poor and has never paid taxes gets no vote.
(b) Rich and has weasled out of paying taxes - also gets no vote.
Tell me do you include the fact that everyone pays taxes now that are embedded into the price of goods and services today?
The Individual Income Tax return(1040) that captures everyone's attention each April, is merely a partial VAT accounting sheet the government cons individuals, held at ransom, into filling out. Its misdirection puts blinders on the eyes of the electorate, and totally distorts their perceptions as to the real impact of taxation in their lives.
Every man woman and child in the nation, pays federal taxes through that VAT.
DO YOU PAY YOUR INCOME TAX
AT THE SUPERMARKET?
by D. Sherman Cox J.D. L.L.M. Taxation
The full impact of the federal tax system(taxes in gross wage/salaries & other compensation + business income/payroll taxes) added onto the base(taxfree) price of retail consumption goods and services is 36% for federal taxes alone.
All wages and the taxes on them are paid for out of sales receipts to business,(i.e. consumption expenditure).
Federal tax revenues collected as % of current family expenditure = fed/(1-state-fed-savings) =
23.5/(1-.235-0.102-0.012) = 36.09%
If we add in the cost of federal tax compliance, planning, litigation & enforcement, the percentage that truely represents the burden on the family due to the Federal income/payroll tax system, product prices are increased by more than 55% over taxfree prices.
Where Have All the Dollars Gone?
How the government robs Peter to pay him back.
By economist James L. Payne, Reason Magazine February '94When the overhead costs are added together, (24 percent compliance costs, 33 percent disincentive costs, and 8 percent other costs), they total 65 percent of tax revenue.
Current total Federal tax revenues are about $1900billion, more than $1,000 billion additional dollars are added on onto consumption prices due to the business costs of complying with the federal income/payroll tax laws.
The percent total current federal burden (taxes + compliance costs) of consumption dollars = 36*(1900+1000)/1900 = 54.95% economic burden added on to base retail(i.e. taxfree) prices.
Too bad that citizens don't get a receipt detailing those "hidden sales taxes" buried in their consumption purchases. If they ever did, some of those 70% of the public clamoring for more from government, thinking someone else foots the bill, might be tempted to change their mind.
For me one of teh main attributes of of a Retail Sale Tax, is that it make the tax burden, all people are saddled with, visible and less costly to comply with, and less intrusive from the viewpoint of the individual and business, and not for any particular advantage for government.
As for it being a poll tax...nope. No extra tax.
Predicating voting on any payment of taxes is a no no under the Amendment, the amendment's limitation is not limited to a specific tax to that end the purpose:
The collection of taxes according to the Consitution, is only for the enumerated purposes of Article I Section 8:
Article I Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises,
to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;
I don't see restriction of the right to vote, or enhancement of value of a person's vote as one of the enumerated powers of Congress, do you? If you figure it their, what's to keep Congress Critter's from increasing the value of peoples votes on the basis of how much largess they receive from government to assure the perpetual growth of socialism?
Furthermore,
AMENDMENT XXIV
Passed by Congress August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.
Pretty much lays an express prohibition on such activity.
Lacking authority in the body of the Constitution and an express prohibition by amendment pretty much covers any hopes of predicating ones vote on paying taxes whatever their kind.
Seems to me the best alternative is to make sure everyone participates in and perceives paying taxes whether they vote or not becomes irrelavent as well as allowing tax rates to be the lowest possible by broadening the base from which they are collected. That provides incentive to be involved in keeping the size and scope of government down to everyone, not just some smaller subset of the electorate that are perceptually hit the hardest as in the current income/payroll tax system.
Brinker claimed that were prices to drop in such a manner, it would cause massive deflation and would wreck the economy.
Taxes always depress expenditure regardless of kind, in the case of income taxes, expenditure is limited by takehome pay after taxes have been garnered by government and by higher than taxfree prices at the retail register due to embedded taxes plus costs of tax compliance.
The NRST merely replaces income & payroll taxes with a retail sales tax. The total cost to the customer of a basket of goods actually remains nearly constant with an enhanced purchasing/investment power due to not paying individual income and payroll taxes.
So, would prices, in the absence of an income tax, go down or not?
Shelf price of goods and service overall are expected to decline about 20-30% depending on time frame after enactment of the tax.
There would be no deflationary effect on overall amount paid at the register for a basket of goods and services, as the (NRST + newshelf price) would essentially be the same as the current embedded (tax burden + theoretical taxfree price).
The following article covers the mechanism on how the current Federal tax system propagates and is embedded into consumption expenditure.
DO YOU PAY YOUR INCOME TAX
AT THE SUPERMARKET?
by D. Sherman Cox J.D. L.L.M. Taxation
The 24% in the article considers only those factors actually paid to government out of impositions on the business in complying with the income, payroll, excise & tariff tax laws.
I also refer you to the section of the following article about the Income/Payroll tax system and its impact on our economy "A. Hidden Upstream Taxes. " paragraph 39.
"[39] Dr. Dale Jorgenson, Chairman of Harvard University's Economics Department, believes that the price of goods and services are inflated by about 20 percent or more by upstream taxes consumers ultimately bear. In a recent paper Dr. Jorgenson estimated the built-in taxes contained in the price of goods and services. /22/ In the chart above, he quantified the hidden component of tax, estimating that producer prices would fall on repeal of upstream taxes an average of about 22 percent."
Looking at the accompanying chart, the range of values from industry to industry appears to be about 12-25%.
Economists Gary and Aldonna Robbins of the Texas-based Institute for Public Policy examined the case of dry cleaning a shirt, with a particular eye toward uncovering the hidden costs of taxes in price.
The Robbin's attributed over 33.6% of "consumer prices" to be due to federal taxation passed on to the customer.
The Federal Tax System
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=2125&sequence=0&from=1#pt1
From the Table 1 we may extract the proportionate contributions of each sector of taxes as they contribute to consumer price for the year 2000.
Those tax components which will not change prices as a consequence of enactment of HR2525
============================
Adjust for a conservative $600billion(1995 figure, AGCA '00, Payne '95, PillaBartlettNorquist '95 ) interest & cost of compliance effects.
Estimated change in consumption prices as consequence of enactment of a National Retail Sales Tax, repealing all business income and payroll taxes:
33.6*(1186.5/1945) = 20.5% in consumption prices
Which compares well with the Jorgenson empirical study of 22% fall in producer prices.
The two sources are in reasonable agreement, and I see 20-23% a reasonable value to expect prices to fall not only for customers here in the United States, but in our exports as well making them far more competitive on international markets.
The 23% NRST offsets the expected fall in consumer prices with a net payment at the register being the same after the enactment of the NRST as existed under the current income/payroll tax system.
In point of fact, since the avg family would actually receive their full gross pay check plus a compensory Family Consumption Allowence(fulfilling the role of personal exemption of the current tax system) under the Linder version of the NRST:
H.R.25
SPONSOR: Rep Linder, John (introduced 01/7/2003)
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 & http://www.salestax.org;
rather than the after tax takehome pay of today, they would have additional funds available for investment or expenditure as they select.
That is hardly the makings of "massive deflation" to "wreck the economy."
With this heinous tax scheme, Dubya merely shifts the tax burden from income to consumption, creating a naturally regressive tax system that overburdens those who must devote the largest proportion of their scant resources to simply obtain the necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter and medicines. In the mean time, he expands the federal bureaucracy whose burdensome regulations place our bountiful resources off limits, and unilaterally lowers our tariffs to assist foreign entities in undermining our domestic commercial ventures.
Face it, George W. Bush's taxation and trade policies constitute economic Treason against the People of the United States.
Whatever happened to the notion that, as a truly free People, Americans should enjoy the fruits of their own hard labor, ingenuity and bountiful resources without federal taxation of income or consumption whatsoever?
Never existed except in the fevered minds of anarchists.
Constitution for the United States of America:
- Article VI: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
- Article I Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises,
to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;
but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; "
- Article I Section 8: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #12:
- "A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events."
James Madison, Federalist #39:
- "The difference between a federal and national government, as it relates to the OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, is supposed to consist in this, that in the former the powers operate on the political bodies composing the Confederacy, in their political capacities; in the latter, on the individual citizens composing the nation, in their individual capacities. On trying the Constitution by this criterion, it falls under the NATIONAL, not the FEDERAL character;"
James Madison, Federalist #45:
- "The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present [Continental] sic Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future [Constitutional] Congress will have to require them of individual citizens;
Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention June 12, 1788:
- "the oppression arising from taxation, is not from the amount but, from the mode -- a thorough acquaintance with the condition of the people, is necessary to a just distribution of taxes. The whole wisdom of the science of Government, with respect to taxation, consists in selecting the mode of collection which will best accommodate to the convenience of the people."
James Wilson, Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention
4 Dec. 1787 Elliot 2:466--68
- No man is obliged to consume more than he pleases, and each buys in proportion only to his consumption. The price of the commodity is blended with the tax, and the person is often not sensible of the payment But would it have been proper to rest the matter there? Suppose this fund should not prove sufficient; ought the public debts to remain unpaid, or the exigencies of government be left unprovided for? should our tranquillity be exposed to the assaults of foreign enemies, or violence among ourselves, because the objects of commerce may not furnish a sufficient revenue to secure tham all? Certainly, Congress should possess the power of raising revenue from their constituents, for the purpose mentioned in the 8th section of the 1st article; that is, "to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States."
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
(Farrand's Records)
James Mchenry before the Maryland House of Delegates.
Maryland Novr. 29th 1787--
Appendix A, CXLVIa, page 149, S9."Convention have also provided against any direct or Capitation Tax but according to an equal proportion among the respective States: This was thought a necessary precaution though it was the idea of every one that government would seldom have recourse to direct Taxation, and that the objects of Commerce would be more than Sufficient to answer the common exigencies of State and should further supplies be necessary, the power of Congress would not be exercised while the respective States would raise those supplies in any other manner more suitable to their own inclinations --"
James Madison, Elliots Debates Vol 3 p128:
- Mr. Chairman, in considering this great subject, I trust we shall find that part which gives the general government the power of laying and collecting taxes indispensable, and essential to the existence of any efficient or well-organized system of government: if we consult reason, and be ruled by its dictates, we shall find its justification there: if we review the experience we have had or contemplate the history of nations, here we find ample reasons to prove its expediency. There is little reason to depend for necessary supplies on a body which is fully possed of the power of witholding them. If a government depends on other governments for its revenues -- if it must depend on the voluntary contributions of its members -- its [*129] existence must be precarious."
- "If the general government is to depend on the voluntary contribution of the states for its support, dismemberment of the United States may be the consequence."
Your NRST tax scam doesn't do that.
It's just a fraudulent scheme, a con-artist shell game that further enslaves the American People
You mean I'd have to pay taxes in order to vote to try to keep the government from passing confiscatory environmental and drug laws? Or overburdensome and arbitrary laws like the ADA? Or to keep it from banning drugs and medical devices that I might find useful? Sounds like extortion to me.
Sure it did. In the early years of our Republic, the federal government was financed primarily by tariffs placed on imported goods. Americans were free to enjoy the fruits of their own hard labor, ingenuity and bountiful resources WITHOUT federal interference.
Hear, hear. If people line their tax bill up with all of their other bills each month, they are probably no longer going to whine about the price of bread.
Another idea is to require a time frame and specific set of objective goals be met for every piece of legislation enacted. The legislation then automatically is repealed after that time unless a vote is made to affirm that the goals have been met. This would wipe out a lot of spending.
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