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In 1913, the 16th Amendment gave the government the power to levy an income tax, and saddled the American people with the most burdensome, intrusive and abuse-prone revenue-generating system imaginable. (It bears noting that the federal income tax is a product of the same Progressive Era of American history that gave us Prohibition.)

Given that it was imposed by constitutional amendment, one cannot argue that the income tax is unconstitutional per se. But certainly, it is at odds with the spirit, if not the letter, of many of our most basic constitutional rights.

Consider that the income tax system has the following attributes:

 Notwithstanding our 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination, as well as our 9th Amendment right to privacy (see Roe v. Wade), the government requires us to provide a tax return signed under penalty of perjury, in which we are obligated to provide detailed testimony regarding every aspect of our financial activities and relationships, legal or otherwise.

 Notwithstanding our 4th Amendment rights against search and seizure, any American citizen is subject at any time -- even in the complete absence of probable cause – to an intrusive federal audit in which the government has the unmitigated right to demand and search our private papers and financial records.

 Notwithstanding our 5th Amendment rights against seizure of our property without due process, the government can seize and hold our financial assets indefinitely without a trial.

 The complexity of the Tax Code generally requires that Americans hire professional advice, often at significant expense, to help ensure compliance.

 The Tax Code is so complex that its meaning is not always clear even to experts or employees of the federal government, and its enforcement may be subject to arbitrary interpretation by federal employees who may, in fact, disagree with each other.

 The income tax requires citizens to bear the burden of preparing, maintaining, storing and recovering voluminous sets of records over a period of years, where such records otherwise have no useful purpose except to assist the government in enforcing the tax code against the citizen.

 The Tax Code provides our federal legislators with a means of bestowing specifically targeted benefits on favored special interests.