Is it time to repeal the XVI Amendment (federal income tax)?

Few Americans know the history of how their government is now, and has been funded over its history. So as to recap that history in summary, the Federal government ran up until the 1920's on the taxes generated from liquor sales. Politicians of the time wanted the tax revenues, but that dried up with no sales on alcohol. So they pushed for an income tax. The SCOTUS ruled against that, ruling it unconstitutional. Prohibition became popular, and Democrats pushed for and got the XVI amendment added to the Constitution, to make confiscating income taxes 'legal'. Prohibition itself then became Federal law with the addition of the XVIII amendment, and we all know how well that went. But we are now, and have been since that time, saddled with the income tax.

The problem we have now is, there are no controls on spending, yielding a national debt of some $32T and climbing, such that the national debt is now larger than GDP (Gross Domestic Product), meaning we actually owe more in interest on the debt than we generate. Unsustainable.

SOLUTION: Repeal the income tax, ending unlimited access to funds to the federal government, and their ability to tax into the stratosphere to satisfy in insatiable appetite for every dime earned by taxpayers. Delete the IRS in total. In place of the current system, fund the federal government by appropriations provided by each of the 50 state legislatures. Each would then have control over their support, or lack thereof, for the spending, and supply the missing check and balance to the federal spending problem. It would have the effect of forcing Congress to get the approval of the 50 states to support their spending. Pork barrel politics would take a major hit, and the current corruption brought about by an endless tax stream would bring normalcy back to spending policies.

Think this over, add your thoughts, and give this idea a hearing.

 

No.

 

Good idea. That way food inspection goes away, social security goes away, no more inconveniences like medicare and related programs , no more military, no more fire departments, police departments, no outrageous constraints on mega businesses, ( well, they and millionaires and billionaires and many huge corporations don't pay much in taxes anyway. so that's already done for them), roads-bridges falling apart, ect,ect. I guess that's enough---I have to go clean my six gun and water my horse, but I'll be back after I go gun down a few pesky varmints. Remember , states can be trusted to do the right thing--for example--Florida--Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Wisconsin, etc.

 

The best government is the least government. It makes nothing and is completely and totally overhead, taken from those who do produce goods and products

 

How Taxes Enabled Alcohol Prohibition and Also Led to Its Repeal
October 5, 2011

Joseph Bishop-Henchman
Something like 4 million Americans watched documentarian Ken Burns’s three-part series on Prohibition that aired this week on PBS. Full of historical details, one key point it raised that is generally not known widely is the impact of tax policy on alcohol prohibition.

Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1933. One of the stumbling blocks advocates of Prohibition faced before 1913 was that the federal government was heavily dependent on taxes on alcohol. The passage of the income tax constitutional amendment that year allowed government the luxury of banning alcohol without reducing tax revenue.

From The Los Angeles Daily News interview with Lynn Novick, Burns’s co-documentarian:

“I had no idea how important liquor was to the federal government,” says Novick. “It started in the Civil War with the levy on beer and whiskey to help fund the war, and it never really went away. Some 30 percent to 40 percent of the government’s income came from the tax on alcohol. So Prohibitionists realized that the only way they’re going to have a ban was through income tax, which was a progressive cause and was really supposed to distribute wealth and to make things equitable during the robber baron era, where the wealth was being accumulated in a very small segment of the population.”

The 16th Amendment of 1913, allowing Congress to levy a federal income tax, helped pave the way for Prohibition, but World War I helped stir up the pot. When the United States entered the war in 1917, anyone of German heritage was suspect. Since most brewers were of German decent, the Anti-Saloon League used this to equate migrants and drinking with being anti-American.

On the other side, as the Great Depression deepened in the 1930s, income tax revenues plummeted and there was a question about why we were foregoing all that tax revenue and jobs from alcohol sales and production. Burns himself talks about that around the 10 minute mark in this video put out by Reason TV:

How Taxes Enabled Alcohol Prohibition and Also Led to Its Repeal (taxfoundation.org)

 

Today in History: Income Tax Ruled Unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers Loan Trust Co.
April 8, 2013

Joseph Bishop-Henchman
On this date in 1895, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Pollock v. Farmers Loan Trust Co., striking down the federal income tax of 1894. The bill had passed as part of a general reduction in tariffs, although President Cleveland was no fan, letting it become enacted without his signature.

The tax – 2 percent on all income over $4,000 (roughly $90,000 today) – was America’s first peacetime national income tax. It was promptly challenged on the grounds that the Constitution requires direct taxes to be levied in proportion to each state’s population. The federal government had levied indirect taxes (such as on carriages, whiskey, and other specific products), but Pollock raised the question of whether the income tax was a direct tax or an indirect tax. Charles Pollock, a stockholder in Farmers Loan Trust, sued the company to stop it from paying the income tax (and notifying the government about who it paid income to).

In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the income tax is a direct tax. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, writing for the majority, first showed a surprisingly keen awareness of economic concept of incidence:

Ordinarily, all taxes paid primarily by persons who can shift the burden upon someone else, or who are under no legal compulsion to pay them, are considered indirect taxes; but a tax upon property holders in respect of their estates, whether real or personal, or of the income yielded by such estates, and the payment of which cannot be avoided, are direct taxes.

However, he went further and analyzed the writings of the Framers, the tax writings of Adam Smith, the ratification debates in the states, and observations by early justices and members of Congress. From this he concluded that it was well understood that “all taxes on real estate or personal property or the rents or income thereof were regarded as direct taxes.”

Since direct taxes must be apportioned by state population under the Constitution, the 1894 law was void. While admitting that such a method of imposing income taxes would be considered unfair by many, its purpose was “to restrain the exercise of the power of direct taxation to extraordinary emergencies, and to prevent an attack upon accumulated property by mere force of numbers.”

Justices Edward White and John Harlan, dissenting, repeatedly disparaged “the views of economists” as irrelevant to the legal inquiry, instead noting that the early Supreme Court held that a tax on carriages was not a direct tax, and in dicta, that only taxes on land would be a direct tax. He urged that the Court defer to Congress with respect to its powers of taxation.

After a rehearing, the Court reissued opinions on May 20, 1895, extending its holding from just rental property income to income from bonds and stocks also, a fatal enough blow to strike down the entire income tax law. Justice Harlan dissented again (echoing Justice White’s views from the month before). Justice Henry Brown also rejected the idea that “the definitions of a direct tax given by the courts and writers upon political economy” were binding, showing (in my opinion) his bias by concluding that “the decision involves nothing less than a surrender of the taxing power to the moneyed class.” Justice Howell Jackson and Justice White also dissented.

The decision was highly unpopular, in part because the 1894 law was a hard-fought compromise that reduced tariffs and imposed the income tax, and the decision voided half of that political compromise. Champions of progressive taxation found their voice for the first time, arguing that the federal tax burden should be on “accumulated wealth” rather than consumption. Populists and Progressives pushed hard for other taxes on wealth and high incomes, leading to a federal inheritance tax (1898), a corporate income tax (1909), and ultimately, the Sixteenth Amendment (1913). That amendment conceded that the income tax is a direct tax, but removed the constitutional requirement of apportionment for income taxes.

Today in History: Income Tax Ruled Unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers Loan Trust Co. | Tax Foundation

 

The closest thing in nature with which you can compare the concept of a government to is cancer. Once you have it, its entire purpose becomes to metastasize and grow without limit, eventually overwhelming and killing the host

 

Moving to Somalia soon are you?…a failed state.

 

My pronouns are Captain or sir .... I'm a military veteran, whose earned the right to bitch about the self-inflicted failures of our government. The alternative is not no government, the alternative is LIMITED government

 

My, just imagine what would happen if our Gvmt. was cut off from its revenue stream?

I do think that Fed. Chairman, Jerome Powell should comment on the issue of our public debt load, and the possibility of default or gross devaluatioin of currency.

When in his testimony, on TV, Chairman Powell was directly questioned on the growth of our public debt. Powell took a pass with a mealy mouthed answer about debt levels bening the responsibility of "politicians" As he is America's chier financial officer he has a duty here but he took a pass.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did a lot of scolding recently about the need to raise the debt ceiling, but said nothig about the risk of such indebitedness.

These public servants are not performing thier duty to inform an otherwise indifferent mainstream media to this issue.

 

Let’s talk about the continuing erosion of government revenue to pay for reducing taxes for those who have a disproportionate and increasing share of America’s wealth. It isn’t that the conservatives believe in fiscal responsibility; it’s that they believe the rich should not have to pay anything like a fair share. The amount of money in your wallet at the end of the day depends on how much you spend AND how much you put in it.

 

It's a symbiotic relationship: You pass laws that are favorable to me-IE: lower my taxes--then I give you money to pay for getting you elected. The obverse: I give you money to get elected--you pass laws favorable to me IE: Lowering my taxes. Works like a charm.

 

Nobody seemed to mention how Emperor Orange cranked up the national debt with his big business and wealthy tax cuts which seemed to only help the 0.001%.