Posted on 12/10/2003 7:05:23 AM PST by Remember_Salamis
This is one of the silliest statements I have read on FR in a long time. People don't buy houses to get a tax deduction, they buy a home so that they own one. The tax deduction isn't a great deal because you pay the bank 100 to save 30 on your taxes. We did not have an income tax until WW II, and yet folks owned houses before that. Also, if you eliminate the income taxes, people have more of their OWN money to spend on things such as........... a home?!?!
As a mortgage broker I have to tell you I can't count the number of people who call me every day and beg for a loan so they can get a tax break < / sarcasm off.... People buy homes because they believe (correctly) that owning a home means your monthly housing dollars go towards paying for your property and not the landlords.
I like that comparison. International space station imagery conjures up some appropos correlations. For instance, a space station is suspended in mid-air - just as the foundation for right and wrong are today in America. If God is not the source of right and wrong, then man is in all of his varying opinions - no foundation for morals. Man's moral feet are suspended in mid-air just as that space station is.
I am not disagreeing with your observations but I fear you have ignored a few amendments to the Constitution that "we, the people" saw fit to ratify.
Bear with me a moment and you may see how all this came to be. Know these facts.
Article 1 Section 2;
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers. Apportioned means that the results of a count or enumeration need be acquired, hence Article 1 Section 2 also mandates that an enumeration shall be made every ten years. We call this the census.
Article 1 Section 8;
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
Okay, do you have the picture at this point? We the people established a government having unlimited powers to tax things, not people. In taxing people, and not things, we the people established a government that could not directly tax people unless in proportion to the population. i.e. if the population of the several states were 100 million and the federal government wanted to fund something that cost $100 million the cost would be $1 each.
Two other facts that will have a bearing on this.
Article 1 Section. 2;
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States
Article 1 Section. 3;
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.
Now let us jump ahead to 1913 when Article 16 proposed in 1909 was ratified to become the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. This Amendment adds an additional power to the federal government that the original Constitution forbid.
Article 16;
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
A short review of the Congress. The people elect members of the House of Representatives because the House represents the people. The state elects members of the Senate because the senate represents the state. The House members have unlimited power to directly tax the people. House members are beholding to the people for their votes. House members could offer favors from the public treasury to those willing to exchange their vote to acquire those favors from the public treasury.
Now onto Article 17 which was proposed in 1912 and also ratified in 1913;
Article 17;
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof,
Now what we the people have wrought is a House and a Senate beholding to the people for their votes and the power to destroy them with taxation. The constitutional experiment envisioned by the framers of the Constitution is failed.
What we have today is a government with the power to impose unlimited taxation on the people and the necessity to promise favors from the public treasury in order to garner votes from those people. What each of your state’s Representatives and Senators are obligated to do each year is to come to Washington D. C. and join in the vast corruption in order to secure his state’s piece of all the unconstitutional funding available from the taxation of the people. And there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policies followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years.
Teddy Roosevelt’s comments on the Fall of the Republic.
"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the Republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing."
In simpler terms, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."- George Bernard Shaw
#1 Don't call me a Losertarian.
#2 You are a case study in what is wrong with American tax policy. Like those we oppose, you seek to use the tax system as a tool to your own engineering rather than reform a horrible system. You target different industries and have some different goals but use the same tyrannical, elitist approach.
I didn't propose anything, you did. I responded to your idea. I have my ideas on tax reform and I have shared them. Primarily, we should progress to a sales tax. It's Constitutional (regulation of interstate commerce) and those who can produce what they need for sustanance are able to participate as much as they choose in the economy and tax base. It doesn't target the individual, it targets businesses and commerce. Obviously, the tax is then passed on to the rest of us in the form of prices but, again, we can choose whether we participate and that's nature's law.
You are phrasing the question differently now. If income taxes are oppressive, and they are, people will seek shelter. HOWEVER, no, I don't think property values would be significantly impacted by this. I'm in the financial industry and I think you've been posted to by mortgage brokers... just accept that you are wrong on this point.
Again, you wrote a good article above. Let go of this other nonsense.
Article I, Section 9: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. (over ridden by 16th Amendment)
--------------
The two amendments above say (and this is the law of the land, not just words after the fact) that the national government may not look on us citizens individually. Taxes may be levied on the States only.
--------------
Amendment XVI: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
--------------
As I said earlier... it's been all downhill from there...
"Direct taxes" (which the federalist papers defined as "property taxes") had to be apportioned among the States; "excises" and "duties" did not. From the earliest days, Congress taxed U.S. citizens directly, without apportionment. (Remember the Whiskey Rebellion, repressed by President Washington?)
Apples and oranges.
direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States
As I said earlier... it's been all downhill from there...
Yep right from the day of the ratification of the Constitution:
Now I'm not aware of any Federal Property Taxes being laid on my land, perhaps you can provide such an example. Or even that the states are to collect such taxes even when such were in place.
The requirement is to apportion such taxes among the states, the Congress was still afforded the authority to "lay and collect" even "direct taxes".
I suggest you actually look at the early "Direct" tax statutes, where you will find that a provision was made for National accessors & surveyors, and collectors for land taxes imposed by the federal government from individuals of the day, as well as the collections of excises and other indirect taxes from individuls as well.
If you want to get rid of the income tax, You will find it necessary to explicitly prohibit their use. Merely repealing the 16th is not going to do the job, nor will merely claiming that the National government cannot collect taxes from individuals prove fruitful other than aquiring and invite to a federal iron bar hotel.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #21:
Those [taxes] of the direct kind, which principally relate to land and buildings, may admit of a rule of apportionment. Either the value of land, or the number of the people, may serve as a standard.
"the present Constitution was particularly intended to affect individuals, and not states, except in particular cases specified: And this is the leading distinction between the articles of Confederation and the present Constitution." "Uniformity is an instant operation on individuals, without the intervention of assessments, or any regard to states," "[T]he DIRECT TAXES contemplated by the Constitution, are only two, to wit, A CAPITATION OR POLL TAX, simply, without regard to property, profession, or any other circumstance; and a tax on LAND."
Springer v. United States(1880), 102 U.S. 586
"The central and controlling question in this case is whether the tax which was levied on the income, gains, and profits of the plaintiff in error, as set forth in the record, and by pretended virtue of the acts of Congress and parts of acts therein mentioned, is a direct tax." "Our conclusions are, that direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that instrument, and taxes on real estate; and that the tax of which the plaintiff in error complains is within the category of an excise or duty." "[W]henever the government has imposed a tax which it recognized as a direct tax, it has never been applied to any objects but real estate and slaves."
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895)
POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 U.S. 601 (1895):
First. We adhere to the opinion already announced,-that, taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally direct taxes.
Second. We are of opinion that taxes on personal property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.
Third. The tax imposed by sections 27 to 37, inclusive, of the act of 1894, so far as it falls on the income of real estate, and of personal property, being a direct tax, within the meaning of the constitution, and therefore unconstitutional and void, because not apportioned according to representation, all those sections, constituting one entire scheme of taxation, are necessarily invalid.
16. The injustice of the conclusion points to the error of adopting it. It takes invested wealth, and reads it into the constitution as a favored and protected class of property, which cannot be taxed without apportionment, while it leaves the occupation of the minister, the doctor, the professor, the lawyer, the inventor, the author, the merchant, the mechanic, and all other forms of industry upon which the prosperity of a people must depend, subject to taxation without that condition.
Choosing to believe in that which is false causes one to take inappropriate actions correct the problem. In the case of income taxes, ignoring the national authority to lay and collect those taxes only lead to fines and imprisonment for violating National law.
Better to work for legitimate repeal of the income tax law, and amending the constituion to explicitly prohibit their use.
The Whiskey Rebellion was sparked by a tax on a particular product
There were folk who had their properties sold out from under them excises on the equipment (i.e. farm property) that could be used in production of alcohol, such as the still tax levied on farmers which led to the Whiskey Rebellion.
George Washington's Proclamation Whiskey Rebellion August 7, 1794:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/proclamations/gwproc03.htmGeorge Washington's address on October 20 1794
to General Lee at Bedford, PA
Congress didn't tax the citizenry directly as we do now.
Washington LED Federal troops into Western Pennsylvania enforcing the Federal tax on UNUSED AND OUT OF PRODUCTION private stills owned by individual citizens and farmers as appliances of the land(i.e. private non-commercial Real Property) in Pennsylvania.
United States Statutes at Large, 1st Congress, 3rd Session Ch 15, 1791,
page 202, 204 Sec 21-24;
Sec. 21. And be it further enacted, That upon stills which after the last day of June Next, shall be employed in distilling spirits from materials of the growth or production of the United States, in any other place than a city, taown or village, there shall be paid for the use of the United States, the yearly duty of sixty cents for every gallon, English wine-measure, of the capacity or content of each and every such still, including the head thereof.
Sec. 22. And be it further encted, That the evidence of the employment of the said stills shall be, their being erected in stone, brick or some other manner whereby they shall be in a condition to be worked.
Sec. 23. And be it futher enacted, That the said duties o stills shall be collected under the management of the supervisor in each district, who shall appoint and assing proper officers for the surveys of the said stills and the admeasurement thereof, and the collectio of the duties thereupon; and the said duties shall be paid half yearly wihtin the firest fifteen days of January and July, upon demand of the proprietor or proprietors of each still, at his, her or their dwelling, by the proper officer charged with the survey thereof: And in case of refusal or neglect, to pay , the amount of the duties so refused or neglected to be paid may either be recovered with costs of suit in an actoin of debt in the name of the supervisor of the district, within which such refusal shall happen, for the use of the United States, or may be levied by distress and sale of goods of the person or persons refusing or neglecting to pay, rendering the overplus(if any there be after payment of the said amount and the charges of distress and sale) the the said person or persons.
We have no choice on whether we will earn a living and, therefore, be subject to income taxes.
Somehow those farmers were complaining of that same thing. You see, at the time whiskey was trade goods shipped to Philadelphia from western Pennsylvania, and took the place of hard money which was all but impossible to come by. Whiskey was essentially coin of the realm as far as the farmers were concerned and provided the only means by which they could aquire their livings.
The first income tax was enacted during the Civil War and the Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional. It was later repealed. A second income tax was enacted in 1894 and the Supreme Court, in the Pollock case (to which Ancient Geezer posted a link), held it unconstitutional, but only in part-- it held that a tax on salaries and wages was constitutional (as an "excise"), but that the tax on rents and other income from property was equivalent to a property tax and thus unconstitutional as an unapportioned direct tax. It was politically impossible to tax the incomes of workers but not landlords, so the 16th Amendment was passed to overturn that part of the decision.
I know this only because I had a law school professor who spent one class on the history of the income tax.
Ancient Geezer linked to the two Pollock decisions (the Supreme Court heard the case twice) just above. Warning: they are among the worst-written decisions in the history of the Supreme Court; regardless of what you think of the outcome, they're tough to read.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.