The income tax is immoral. The Founders went to war over tea and stamp taxes. Imagine taxing someones income at 50% and not having a revolution?
Back in the 90s a group filed a lawsuit in OK, IIRC, contesting the 16th amendment. Something about it not being actually approved by the necessary number of states, and that they had evidence that the clerk or whomever in DC simply claimed it had been approved. Never heard much about it after that announcement. Wonder if the DSers got to them back then?
The worst thing is tax withholding. The gov’t takes it before you get it. I wonder, if it never appears in any account that I own, how can it be MY income?
Until we end tax withholding, so everyone gets their entire paycheck and has to write a check for the tax, we’ll stay in prison with promises about “take home pay”.
In order to get it passed, The politicians promised that the average forking person would never have to pay even a single thin dime in the new income tax. It was supposedly only going to apply to the very top- most wealthiest (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.). Also, tax withholding was implemented as an emergency war- related revenue acceleration trick that we were promised would not outlast WW2. FYI
The Founding Fathers were correct to not allow an income tax. It creates a Federal monster that has no place in the U.S. Constitution as it takes away State and Individual rights.
I am of the opinion that the current means of federal taxation should be replaced with a system that apportions the taxes due by first determining the per Senator and per representative tax amount. That tax can then be assessed to the states base on their representation in Congress.
Each month, the state taxes get paid to the federal treasury before the state legislature or the state governor gets paid. Failure by a state to pay its taxes due causes the state to first lose any chair or leadership positions in congress. If the balance due goes past a set amount of time, then the state loses votes on the floor.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
What changed between then and now is this. Regardless that the Founding States had established the federal Senate partly to kill House appropriations bills that not only steal state powers, but also steal state revenues uniquely associated with those powers according to the Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt above, the anti-constitutional republic Progressive Movement spooked low-information citizens to twist the arms of their state lawmakers to ratify the ill-conceived 17th Amendment (17A).
State lawmakers caved and ratified that amendment, foolishly giving up the voices of the state legislatures in Congress by doing so.
As a consequence of 17A, not only do federal politicians promise citizens every federal spending program under the sun to get themselves elected, but the low-information citizens who take the bait and elect them on those promises probably do not understand that the states have never expressly constitutionally given Congress the power to establish such programs. “Government” social spending programs are the job of the states, depending on what the legal majority citizens of a given state want.
In fact, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmakers, had clarified the the Founding States had left the care of the people uniquely to the states, not the feds.
”[…] the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphases added].” —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1866. (See about middle of 3rd column.)
So low-information citizens abuse their 17A voting power every election by electing crooks to the senate who not only ignore 10th Amendment-protected state powers by working with the likewise corrupt House to pass unconstitutional bills, but those bills also wrongly bypass the Constitution’s Article V amendment process by effectively unconstitutionally expanding the already unconstitutionally big federal government’s powers.
The 17th Amendment is the rope that low-information citizens are hanging themselves with with respect to being oppressed under the boots of unconstitutionally big federal government imo.
Whoever came up with the idea of taxing the fruits of the labor of a working person’s hand has a very special place in hell....a very special place.
Weapon?
No, no, no, this is all of us hooked up to the “Matrix”.
Instead of tapping our bodies for electricity, that tube leads into our bank accounts.
Repeal the 16th and 17th.
Thereafter, future (inevitable) tax increases for the socialists to expand their power became a long-sought reality that the 16th did not originally include...
If the serfs had to continue paying their taxes on April 15th every year, they saw & felt the 16th's and subsequent increases' full impact...
By stealing it in dribs and drabs from the paychecks, the socialists were able keep the serfs under control and their wallets open to the always increasing theft...
I can remember my grandfather going ballistic when FDR pulled this communist crap... For the rest of his life,, he predicted to me that, if my generation didn't undo this FDR/communist trick, by the time I was a grandfather the communists would be in complete control of the Nation and the Constitution would be a farce...
Well, here I am...A great grandfather seeing it come to pass...
My generation has to shoulder most of the blame because we never forced a reversion to the Constitutional Republic...
The 16th stole the citizen's money...
The 17th stole the citizen's right to elected representation in the Senate...
National elections are now totally fraudulent and all serfs have had their votes diluted/canceled by fake votes and/or many millions of non-citizen migrants votes...
The Nation's serfs now have only two choices:
The feds should be limited to tariffs and perhaps a flat % tax on state budgets.
And property/income taxes need to be banned at all levels.
The 16th amendment is easily one of the worst acts ever perpetrated by our politicos.
Not only does it give the feds the right to reach into your pocket and take whatever they want, but it’s an incredible invasion of privacy, plus it is used as a club to hit you over the head with.
Here are the rates:
Yeah, I'd take those rates, as is without even adjusting for inflation, which has been considerable since 1913. $20k in 1913 is equivalent to more than $500k today.