Posted on 10/03/2013 12:58:41 PM PDT by ThethoughtsofGreg
Alexander Hamilton won in the end. As Treasury Secretary in the 1790s he championed an array of “internal” taxes to supplement federal revenues from import tariffs. Thomas Jefferson despised Hamilton’s internal taxes as assault on liberty, and when elected in 1800 he made sure that they were abolished.
The Jeffersonian view held sway for decades, but by the late 19th century the growth in government and concerns about high tariffs led to calls for new revenue sources. The first income tax was imposed to fund the Civil War and lasted until 1872. Another income tax was imposed in 1894, but it was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Free Traders love income taxes and hate tariffs. The bastards....
Yup!
The income tax is a failed experiment.
It should go the way of that other failed constitutional experiment, prohibition.
The “income tax” is not even a tax on all income. It is a tax on production and only certain forms of income are subject to taxation. The rather strange and convoluted determinations of what is “taxable” income leads to some mathematical models that completely pervert the original purpose of the structure of the tax table in terms of yields and recovery of value.
The fairest and most equitable tax would be a consumption tax only on the end user, at a flat rate of every dollar spent for consumption. A national sales tax.
Sales taxes work just fine in a number of states as the primary source of revenue. The mistake comes when there is a combination of income taxes and sales taxes, all at differential rates, and which seem to be applied capriciously.
I use ‘free traitors’, as a more descriptive term.
National sales tax still gives the government power to levy taxes where the Constitution says they shouldn’t.
Its not fair or equitable to the American people to slough off their Constitutional rights.
A century is enough for the property tax and sole proprietorship tax.
No time is short enough for impact fees and homeowners’ association fees, and national sales taxes are a radical communist answer.
Where does the Constitution say that?
As the U.S. Supreme Court held in The License Tax Cases (1866), "the power of Congress to tax is a very extensive power. It is given in the Constitution, with only one exception and only two qualifications. Congress cannot tax exports, and it must impose direct taxes by the rule of apportionment, and indirect taxes by the rule of uniformity. Thus limited, and thus only, it reaches every subject, and may be exercised at discretion."
Our Scotus did something medieval alchemists never accomplished. Being void of the word “tax,” Scotus transmuted Obamacare’s penalties into taxes. It was another social justice miracle on the order of Roe v. Wade and Wickard v. Filburn!!!
I refer you to Article I, Section 8, which reads:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States...”
A national sales tax would be similar to an excise tax, but not one buried in the cost of an item, but necessarily itemized separately. Gasoline taxes are an example of an excise tax. An excise tax differs from a sales tax in that it may be laid upon one specific class of produced goods, a sales tax is not limited only to certain products.
Duties and Imposts are taxes laid upon imported goods - defined as a tariff.
“An excise tax differs from a sales tax in that it may be laid upon one specific class of produced goods, a sales tax is not limited only to certain products.”
-In MA they apply sales tax to the excise tax on cigarettes. That’s right,they tax the tax.
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I agree, and furthermore, a sales tax would bring in income in two areas now untaxed:
1. Imported goods. One of the reasons why manufacturing has moved to China is that they have a very low tax scheme on producers.
If we had a NRST, those imported goods would lose their tax advantage.
2. We’d be able to tax more of the underground economy, especially goods purchased by illegals who are paid under the table with no withholding made by the employers.
Since 65 to 70% of the US economy is derived from consumption, it only makes sense that the fairest tax of all would be on consumption, so that everyone has some skin in the game, not just the productive class.
Income and real property taxes are just the rent you pay for the privilege of living on king government’s land, and the bar to entry to join the speculative class. Outside of the internet, where have you seen the next Thomas Edison? Maybe in china or india, but not here. Multiple generations have been taught that we cannot compete against cheap foreign labor, and now that is coming back to bite us in the ass.
Alexander Hamilton is not to blame for what we see now.
Liberals, beginning in earnest with Woodrow Wilson onward, ARE.
Taft proposed a Constitutional amendment for an income tax in 1909. It was passed by the House and Senate, and then ratified by the states in early 1913.
How did they get this past the people?
By claiming it to be only a very small percentage of income and that it only applied to the very wealthy.
My, how times change when you consider the politician's thirst for ever more revenue to spend.
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