[Loud Mime]

PING

[Bigun]

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

Daniel Webster

"A capitation is more natural to slavery; a duty on merchandise is more natural to liberty, by reason it has not so direct a relation to the person."

Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book

“It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.”

Thomas Hobbes

“The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person, so that the tax payer is not put in the power of the tax gatherer.”

Adam Smith

“Personal property is too precarious and invisible an asset to tax in any way than by the imperceptible agency of taxes on consumption.”

Fed Paper #12 Sec 6

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Ironically, those who call for "good government", i.e. government that is relatively free of waste, fraud, and abuse can tend to encourage increased taxation.

Why is this?

1) Government is found to wasteful, full of fraud, and rife with abuse.
2) A blue ribbon committee composed mostly of practical business folks is created to identify the problems and craft a program to build some market discipline into government processes, e.g. Grace Commission
3) If any of the suggestions of the blue ribbon committee are followed then government may in the short run become a little better run.
4) However, in the long run, the government is now no longer perceived as a separate kind of entity ... one that can enforce its will at the point of a gun and the threat of an IRS audit. Instead it is viewed as just another source of products and services that might otherwise be provided by private businesses.
5) Finally the people buy into this and we no longer have a healthy niggardly attitude towards transferring powers over to government. Instead we have a quasi-pragmatical case-by-case discussion of what things government can do conceivably better or more fairly than business.

Thus do we travel down the road to serfdom.

[orlop9]

Can’t disagree with Voltaire either, though today he’d be called a standout in the tinfoil hat brigade.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I hope to have my new ink on the market before next April 15.
It will have skunk scent mixed in so the IRS agent will spent less time on it and just rubber stamp your bottom line.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

[Paperdoll]

Why do I inceasingly suspect that our government has been taken over by a foreign body already?

[Vision]

“Excessive taxation will carry reason and reflection to every man’s door, and particularly in the hour of election.” Thomas Jefferson

I hope before I die Tax day will be moved to Election day.

[eyedigress]

Thanks for posting.

[MamaTexan]

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

[PGalt]

“History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”
Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781)

and this from...

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G1415

“See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

“Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.”

Thanks to FReeper raygun for the link.

[MosesKnows]

Strangely, we have some people who want more tax because it's a big redistribution scam.

The 16th and the following 17th amendment are at the root of the taxation woes and the related corruption.

The Republic and the vision of the Constitution cannot succeed with direct taxation of the citizens. The founders specifically avoided giving the new government the power to directly tax the citizens.

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,

Article 1, 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.

Could they have been any clearer?

[orlop9]

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” —Voltaire

I think this one deserves a bump today