[gunnygail]

In 1943, the government began withholding taxes on the advice of Milton Friedman.[20] After the war ended, this method of stealth taxation (and tax increases) continued.

Those kooky Libs. So greedy. So Socialist.

[xrp]

heads up!

[kellynla]

And maybe a 100th birthday present for Americans, the Congress will repeal the Federal Income Tax by 2013!!!

but I won't be holding my breath! LOL

[Willie Green]

The First Federal Revenue Law

On April 8, James Madison, once again a congressman from Virginia, addressed the House. He went right to the point. Congress, he said, must "remedy the evil" of "the deficiency in our Treasury." He argued that "[a] national revenue must be obtained," but not in a way "oppressive to our constituents." He then proposed that the House adopt legislation, virtually identical to the unimplemented Confederation tariff, imposing a five-percent tariff on all imports...

A single, uniform tariff, he insisted, had two advantages. First, it could be imposed quickly, which was important because "the prospect of our harvest from the Spring importations is daily vanishing." Second, it was consistent with the principles of free trade ("commercial shackles," he said, "are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic").

[outlawcam]

Ping for future reference.

[ancient_geezer]

Ahh, a mises.org article.

It is interesting to take a look at Von Mises himself considered to be appropriate taxes, note the lack of tariffs which dislocate trade and income taxes which hit productivity.

 

Ludwig von Mises as Policy Analyst: Monetary Reform, Fiscal Policy, and Foreign Exchange Controls by Richard M. Ebeling
Heritage Lecture #754

http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/hl754.cfm#pgfId-1023417

"Austria, Mises said, would be a poor country. The destruction of war, the consumption and misuse of capital, the destruction of a large portion of the Austrian entrepreneurial class due to the expelling or murder of so many Jewish businessmen and financiers, and the debilitation of the labor force from death and permanent injury in battle would require Austria to turn its back on its socialist, interventionist, and welfare-statist past. Only economic freedom and hard work could restore Austria from a condition that we might nowadays loosely refer to as "third world" status.

Fiscal policy, therefore, would have to be designed to do everything possible to unleash private sector incentives and opportunities for investment, capital formation, and entrepreneurship. Virtually all taxes, Mises suggested, should be skewed toward consumption and away from production. What type of broadly based consumption taxes? He proposed:

• (1) excise taxes on alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and related tobacco products;
• (2) a sales tax exclusively on the sale of goods and services to the final consumer; there should be no explicit or hidden value added taxes;
• (3) a progressive consumption tax based on housing expenditures, but with an exemption for housing expenditures for those in the lower income brackets;
• (4) a tax on luxury automobiles for private or personal use;
• (5) a tax on lottery winnings;
• (6) a stamp tax on playing cards;
• (7) administrative fees for certain government services, such as issuing patent rights, brand name registrations, determination of weights and measures, and "official stamps" to cover the cost of providing various types of documentation;
• (8) a wage tax paid by employers that was not deducted from the employee's salary to fund existing social insurance programs; and
• (9) a moderate net profits tax on shareholders and limited liability partnerships when annual disbursements exceeded 6 percent of the enterprise's capital assets; retained earnings by the enterprise would be exempt from taxes so as not to discourage capital formation.

Except for the net profits tax and the wage tax for social insurance costs, all income and business earnings would be completely tax-exempt. And a perusal of Mises' proposed list of taxes clearly shows that he thought that, besides the general sales tax, the fiscal burden should primarily be in the form of what nowadays would be classified as "sin taxes" and a narrow selection of "luxury" expenditures. Mises' long recognized advocacy of "laissez-faire" did not mean a hands-off indifference to the path taken by the market economy. What would be produced, where and how goods would be produced, and for which segments of the consuming public would be determined by the pattern of market demand and the profit-driven entrepreneurs. As Mises expressed it in the early 1940s, "If there is any hope for an new [economic] upswing [at the end of the war] it rests with the initiative of individuals. The entrepreneurs will have to rebuild what the governments and politicians have destroyed."

***

It should be mentioned that Mises' apparent concession to the welfare state in his listing among his fiscal suggestions of an employer's tax for social insurance expenditures did not mean his belief in their desirability or necessity. This was clearly an admission that, given the political currents, not everything could be reformed at once. For example, in 1942 Mises was invited to lecture in Mexico for six weeks during which he had the opportunity to studying the economic conditions in the country. The following year, in 1943, he prepared a lengthy monograph for an association of Mexican businessmen on "Mexico's Economic Problems." His recommendation was to not establish social insurance programs in the first place. If part of the cost of such social insurance schemes falls on the shoulders of the employers, it would only succeed in raising the cost of employing workers, with the negative effect of pricing some members of the work force out of the job market. At the same time, such government-mandated insurance policies restricted the freedom of the employee to weigh the opportunity costs of allocating his income in various ways more reflective of his own preferences and that of his family.

[y2k_free_radical]

ping

[Fiddlstix]

[2banana]

"The Sixteenth Amendment owes its existence mainly to the West and South, where individual incomes of $5,000 or over are comparatively few."[13]

Good bait and switch. Shame on these people who thought the tax would only be paid by rich yankees...

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[c-b 1]

Ping

[k2blader]

Bump for later read.

[tuliptree76]

another tax ping ;-)

[FreedomProtector]

"When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily be cured of it."

The New York Times, in a 1909 editorial opposing the introduction of the income tax