[tim_h]

This article describes public attitudes toward the income tax at the end of the 19th century. How could these people retain such self-control, wisdom, and a sense of honor?

The poignant quote from The Washington Post "[The tax] punishes everyone who rises above the level of mediocrity..." sheds some light on the reasons for such a high level of taxation today. In the 20th century the mob, the masses decided to pretend that they had some claim on the natural elite. The apes wanted the world for themselves. They blithely dismissed the men responsible for the flowering of the Western civilization as evil or irrelevant or at best as convenient beasts of burden.

For the mass-men are content to live under any political system. The chief traits of their personality are mortal fear of being responsible for their own lives, and violent hatred for achievement, wisdom, and virtue. Their minds are weak, their spirits weaker still, and they would have no use for freedom even if they had it. And you'd better believe it.

[kevkrom]

We absolutely need to abolish the income tax and resort instead to a single-rate, single-stage national retail sales tax instead. Such a system would eliminate the "hidden" taxes in the system and would also eliminate the social engineering that goes on with income taxes.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Where and how did the goverment get their monies to run the country before the income tax?

[FreeYourMind]

I think the national sales tax is a good idea as well. I think you'd need to place some restrictions on it (unprepared food, water, medicine, and other essentials), but by and large it would end up working out pretty well...the more you consume, the more you pay. I have no idea how big a tax it would need to be, but I'm assuming it would be something like at least 15 or 20%. I'd pay that to forget about the nightmarish income tax we have to deal with every year.

[tim_h]

Hmm.

I see that nobody is proposing a repeal of the income tax, replacing it with nothing, and cutting spending. How odd and how disappointing.

[ancient_geezer]

In 1895 the Supreme Court declared the income tax measure unconstitutional. It ruled that any such tax had to be levied in proportion to population, and not differentially by income level.

Ahhhh, not quite:

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co.(1895), 157 U.S. 429

• "The people of the United States constitute one nation, under one government, and this government, within the scope of the powers with which it is invested, is supreme."

• "Without the States in union, there could be no such political body as the United States. Both the States and the United States existed before the Constitution. The people, through that instrument[the Constitution], established a more perfect union by substituting a national government, acting, with ample power, directly upon the citizens, instead of the confederate government, which acted with powers, greatly restricted, only upon the States."

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.(1895), 158 U.S. 601:

• "We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such."

• "If that[rents from land] be stricken out, and also the income from all invested personal property, bonds, stocks, investments of all kinds, it is obvious that by a r the largest part of the anticipated revenue would be eliminated, and this would leave the burden of the tax to be borne by professions, trades, employments, or vocations; and in that way what was intended as a tax on capital would remain, in substance, a tax on occupations and labor. We cannot believe that such was the intention of congress."

• "We do not mean to say that an act laying by apportionment a direct tax on all real estate and personal property, or the income thereof, might not also lay excise taxes on business, privileges, employments, and vocations. "

• Mr. Justice WHITE, dissenting.

  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.

[nagdt]

Like we don't pay in enough, we were just asked to give the IRS 1,000 bucks they OVERPAID us last year. Jeez.. damn indian givers..

[winna]

It wasn't always complicated. I have my grandparents' return from 1942. There are only 6 blanks on the 1040A. Here they are:

1. Salary, wages and compensation for personal services
2. Dividends, interest, and annuities
3. Total (add lines 1 and 2)
4. Less $385 for each dependent
5. Income subject to tax (subtract line 4 from line 3)
6. Tax on item 5 (from Column A, B, or C from table on other side)

That's all there is to it. It should never have gotten to the point that you need H&R Block to figure out what to pay (actually we shouldn't be paying it anyway, wasn't it supposed to be 'temporary'?)

[Constitution Scholar]

Rep. Bartlett Income Tax Synopsium