Have you ever wondered how the framers of the Constitution might view
our annual ritual of collectively performing billions of hours of slave labor
just to calculate how much money to pay in taxes?
I believe our Founding Fathers would be horrified, mainly because they tried
to protect us from an income tax. Indeed, the Supreme Court found income
taxes unconstitutional just over 100 years ago, but then Congress wrote the
16th Amendment about 20 years later, so here we are today.
I know I am horrified. Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor to win the right to draw up our Constitution.
When they declared America's independence, they were irreversibly
committed to proving that men should be free to govern themselves. If they
had then failed to win that right, they would have been executed by the
regime they opposed.
Fortunately for us, they won their fight for freedom and immediately drew
up the best rules of governance ever designed: the Constitution of the United
States of America.
Have we jealously protected the rights and freedoms these visionaries
died for? Have we been worthy stewards of the product of their sacrifices?
Let's compare just three articles of the Bill of Rights, the 4th, 5th,
and 8th Amendments (under 200 words), with our tax collection system (over a
million words) and see what the income tax has done with the rights these
amendments guarantee.
The 4th Amendment says we are to be "secure in our persons, houses,
papers, and effects." Yet, the IRS can review our private records at will
and without a court order. Furthermore, the practice of "lifestyle audits,"
where IRS agents inspect one's personal belongings and demand answers
about value and origin, seems just too Orwellian to be true, but they are a
fact of life.
The 5th Amendment says no person can be "compelled in any criminal
case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law." Yet, our tax code instructs us to
swear, sign, and submit a tax return that may be used against us in court.
And persons accused of violating the tax code regularly forfeit property
long before they ever get an opportunity to defend themselves before a
judge.
We can include the 8th Amendment here in its entirety: "Excessive bail
shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
punishments inflicted." So how do we reconcile this with stories like that
of a chemical manufacturer which, in 1983, submitted $4.5 million in
payroll taxes, only to be fined $46 thousand because the IRS claimed the
check was ten cents short?
No one can defend our income tax system. In the words of veteran House
Representative Sam Gibbons, "it is broken and cannot be fixed." We must
oppose this terrible system, and we now have a rare opportunity to do
exactly that.
We can be worthy of our legacy of freedom if we help recover the rights
and the freedoms we have lost to our failed tax system. We can start the new
millennium with a fair tax system by supporting the efforts of legislators, like
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Bill Archer, and Reps.
Barney Frank (D), W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R), and Daniel Schaeffer (R), among
others, who propose that we abolish the IRS and replace federal income taxes
with a National Retail Sales Tax (NRST).
An NRST bill, HRI325, was announced recently in Congress, and should be
supported by anyone interested in fair taxation and preserving our Constitutional
freedoms.If you want to help, please call the office of one of the above
mentioned members of Congress, or contact Citizens for an Alternative Tax
System (CATS),at cybercast@nrst.org or (800)767-7577.
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