Under the Articles of Confederation, the Federal Government had NO authority to tax states and basically had to ASK for money.
Not quite true, Continental Congress had the authority to lay tax directly on states and demand payment by a date certain:
"All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.
The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled."
The federal government just had no effective means beyond civil war to enforce a tax on the state that is adament about not paying, as a point of fact neither does the Constitution for that matter. That is the primary reason why authority was granted to Congress under the Constitution to lay a taxes with respect to the individual bypassing the Articles' direct taxation of the states based on the assessed value of property in the state.
refer: Federalist #21:
- The principle of regulating the contributions of the States to the common treasury by QUOTAS is another fundamental error in the Confederation. ... Neither the value of lands, nor the numbers of the people, which have been successively proposed as the rule of State contributions, has any pretension to being a just representative.
refer: Federalist #45:
- "The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present [Continental] Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future [Constitutional] Congress will have to REQUIRE them of individual citizens; and the latter will be no more bound than the States themselves have been, to pay the quotas respectively taxed on them. Had the States complied punctually with the articles of Confederation, or could their compliance have been enforced by as peaceable means as may be used with success towards single persons, our past experience is very far from countenancing an opinion, that the State governments would have lost their constitutional powers, and have gradually undergone an entire consolidation."
States will be able to collect their share of the tax bill whichever way they want, whether that be through sales taxes, income taxes, capital gains taxes, property taxes, or some ingenious method we haven't even thought of. Over time, states will demand that those federal programs the state can provide itself be eliminated.
Actually there is no requirement for Congress to allow the states to collect the tax in any manner of their choosing under the Constitution, though the direct taxes laid by Congress under the Constitution usually did do it that way, should the state fail to meet payment the National Government made provision to collect the tax from the individual property owners itself.
Refer:
United States Statutes at Large
Thirteenth Congress Session. I. Ch. 16. 1813
Chapter XVI. An Act for the assesment and collection of direct taxes and internal duties.(a)
"The federal government just had no effective means beyond civil war to enforce a tax on the state that is adamant about not paying, as a point of fact neither does the Constitution for that matter."
-- If that is the case, then how the hell is the NRST going to be collected by the states? I know I know, the Feds will step in and collect it for them. But can't that solution be applied to taxation of states? By refusing to pay their share of the tax burden, a state is waiving their responsibility to collect federal taxes, and a bit of their sovereignty. If that happens, residents of that state (or states) will be subject to a direct tax imposed by Congress equal to that state's burden. If that state's tax burden is $50B, then Congress will impose a direct tax on that state sufficient to collect it. If excess taxes are collected, they will be refunded to those residents. Under this scenario, a State has to pay it's taxes either way. But the state can either choose to retain it's sovereignty and decide how it wants to collect taxes, or it can waive it's sovereignty and let the Federal Government decide. That's a pretty good reason to pay up.
And if states are already collecting the tax, I don't think it would be long before they decided to give themselves MORE sovereignty by transferring certain programs from the Feds to the States. After that, we would end up with states offering radically different types of government, ranging from socialist to welfare state to Lassie-Faire. With free population among the states, the socialist states and some of the welfare states would have to put up walls to keep their populations, just like East Germany had to. Since that would be illegal, states would have to adopt more lassie-faire policies to compete with the other states. This would move all states away from socialist/welfare policies.
I don't really see any problems with this argument, at least not any that wouldn't already arise under an NRST collected by the states.