[Willie Green]

"It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption,

The Founding Fathers preferred the import tariff over the excise tax as the least oppressive form of taxation.

Excerpted from: 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,...

Congressman John Laurence of New York supported Madison's proposal, arguing that "the more simple a plan of revenue is, the easier it becomes understood and executed."/84/ Madison elaborated. 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")

President Washington signed the bill into law on July 4th, 1789, making it the second federal law enacted under the Constitution (the first established the oaths of office for federal officials). The law was four pages long. Reflecting the basic compromise between Madison and Fitzsimons, it had two express purposes: one was "the support of government [and the] discharge of the debts of the United States," the other "the encouragement and protection of manufactures." To accomplish these purposes, the law established specific tariffs on 63 products and a flat five-percent tariff on all other products, except a few that were completely exempt.

---

In 1791 Alexander Hamilton released his Report on Manufactures, calling for protective tariffs to encourage fledgling industry. Federalists rejected the tariff idea at the time, worried about preserving a relatively open market for international trade. Such a protective tariff also stood to hurt Hamilton’s merchant allies, while restricting the influx of government revenue. The tariff was the only one of Hamilton’s major economic proposals to be rejected.

Nevertheless, Hamilton pushed Congress for a mild upward revision of the tariff schedules. Duties were not designed to exclude foreign goods as originally conceived in the Report on Manufactures, but as a means to generate revenue. In fact, between 1789 and 1816, Congress revised the tariff schedule over two dozen times. In this period, a broad consensus existed for utilizing the tariff to raise needed funds for various federal activities, and this remained its primary function for about three decades. Receipts from customs duties continued to rise steadily, ultimately providing about 90% of the national government’s income from 1790 to 1820,

Also at Hamilton's behest, Congress approved a Whiskey excise tax in January. Unlike the tariff, it constituted a direct tax on a specific class of producers ­ spirit distillers...
Designed to raise $800,000, the measure levied a tax on spirits ranging from 7 to 18 cents per gallon, and created an internal revenue service to collect it.
(It was the imposition of this first excise tax that led to The Whiskey Rebellion)

[Remedy]

FROM TAX.ORG, et al.

It's income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta.-- Dave Barry 4/6/99

The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. -- President Thomas Jefferson in his second inaugural address, March 4, 1805.

Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on income, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration. -- 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified February 25, 1913.

Every good citizen...should be willing to devote a brief time during some one day in the year, when necessary, to the making up of a listing of his income for taxes...to contribute to his government, not the scriptural tithe, but a small percentage of his net profits. -- Cordell Hull, addressing the U.S. House of Representatives, April 26, 1913.

It is not too much to hope that some day we may get back on a tax basis of 10 percent, the old Hebrew tithe, which was always considered a fairly heavy tax. -- Andrew Mellon

Thanks alot for tax reform. I am spending about 5 hours now working on my taxes and paying my accountant twice as much. It sure would be nice to vote for a politician who can get this tax reform under control. -- letter from a taxpayer to the Office of Management and Budget, April 17, 1989.

I hold in my hand 1,379 pages of tax simplification. -- Delbert L. Latta

The IRS has had substantial success in Chicago. Al Capone was convicted on tax evasion here, and that was probably the last time a majority of Americans applauded the IRS on anything.-- Sheldon L. Banoff

. . . In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.-- Benjamin Franklin discussing the Stamp Act passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765

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

There's only one way to kill capitalism-- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes. -- Karl Marx

The greatest tax bill in American history. -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the October 21, 1942 passage of the Revenue Act of 1942.

Read my lips -- no new taxes. -- George Bush on August 18, 1988, at the Republican National convention.

I have no intention of raising taxes.-- President Bill Clinton

I wish I could promise you that I won't ask you to pay any more. -- President Bill Clinton at a February 10, 1993 nationally televised town meeting.

The biggest tax increase in the history of the universe. -- Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole, R-Kan., on President Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package.

Probably there are people in this room still mad at me because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know the I think I raised them too much, too. -- President Bill Clinton, October 1995

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. -- Plato, in The Republic

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.-- New Testament

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape obligation to pay it. -- Alexis de Tocqueville

Ripping out the system by its roots is a proposition we readily support.-- W. Henson Moore during a July 31, 1996 Ways and Means Committee hearing

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy. -- Daniel Webster

Taxes are the killing fields of Democrats.-- Grover Norquist

I believe that the 16th amendment has created a system that is economically destructive, impossibly complex, overly intrusive, unprincipled, dishonest, unfair, and inefficient-- Rep. Sam Johnson R-Texas on April 10, 1997

I can't make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side and they seem right -- and then I talk to the other side and they seem just as right, and here I am where I started. God, what a job! -- President Warren G. Harding, born in November 1865.

As a citizen, you have an obligation to the country's tax system, but you also have an obligation to yourself to know your rights under the law and possible tax deductions. And to claim every one of them. -- Former IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander

If [a United States Supreme Court Justice is] in the doghouse with the Chief [Justice], he gets the crud. He gets the tax cases.-- Harry Blackmum

Nuclear physics is much easier than tax law. It's rational and always works the same way.- Jerold Rochwald

Dear Mr. President, Internal Revenue regulations will turn us into a nation of bookkeepers. The life of every citizen is becoming a business. This, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business.-- Saul Bellow's "Herzog" (1964)

Contrary to what some people claim, the tax laws have a lot of respect for logic. They use it so sparingly.-- Jeffrey L. Yablon

There is nothing more complicated than trade law, except possibly 'the code.' -- Rep. Barbara Kennelly, D-Conn

For years the IRS has run roughshod over the constitutional rights of our citizens. -- Rep. James A. Traficant, Jr., introducing an amendment on February 8, 1995.

[American tax laws] are constantly changing as our elected representatives seek new ways to ensure that whatever tax advice we receive is incorrect. --Dave Barry

The First Rule of Practicing Tax Law: If someone has to go to jail, make sure it's the client.-- Fred Drasner

A society which turns so many of its best and brightest into tax lawyers may be doing something wrong.-- Hoffman F. Fuller

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward. -- John Maynard Keynes, who was born June 5, 1883.

Income taxes are the most imaginative fiction written today. -- Herman Wouk

It's a game. We [tax lawyers] teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich--and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.-- John Grisham

The nation ought to have a tax system which looks like someone designed it on purpose.-- William E. Simon

Logic and taxation are not always the best of friends.-- James C. McReynolds

American workers spend more of their day working to pay taxes than they do to feed, clothe, and house their families.-- The Tax Foundation 9/6/99

The IRS has 480 different tax forms, plus 280 more to explain how to fill out the first 480. The original Tax Code had 11,400 words; today it has 7 million.-- Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas

This [preparing my tax return] is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. -- Albert Einstein

The Tax Code is a monstrosity and there's only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people.-- Steve Forbes

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.-- Albert Einstein

The United States is the only country where it takes more brains to figure your tax than to earn the money to pay it.-- Edward J. Gurney

Virtually every major accounting firm is an aggressive adversary of tax simplification.- -Stephan Moore

[Congress should] pull the current income tax code out by its roots and throw it away.-- Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, at a Ways and Means Committee hearing

All taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second.-- Jim Fiebig

Are we EVER going to have a federal tax system that regular people can understand.-- Dave Barry

Read my lips. No new taxes.-- President George Bush

All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says.-- Walter B. Wriston

Despite the complexity of today's tax law, I think that tax lawyers must not forget how to be good lawyers. -- IRS Commissioner Margaret Richardson to the ABA Tax Section, August 1994.

It's hard to tinker with a monster. -- Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., discussing the tax code on October 5, 1993.

The federal income tax system is a disgrace to the human race.-- Jimmy Carter

It's getting so that children have to be educated to realize that 'Damn' and 'Taxes' are two separate words.-- Unknown

Isn't it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with April Fool's Day and ends with cries of 'May Day!'-- Robert Knauerhase 4/1/99

Hell hath no fury like vested interest masquerading as a moral principle. -- Rep. Barber Conable

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.-- Denis Healey 4/12/99

Excessive taxation will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.-- Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor (only if elections were held in April)

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.-- George Sewell

Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.-- Will Rogers

[T]he tax code is the single greatest source of lobbying activity in Washington.-- Rep. Richard K. Armey, R-Texas

The current income tax code is the chief source of political corruption in the nation's capitol.-- Rep. Richard K. Armey, R-Texas

The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny.-- President Calvin Coolidge

We must get rid of the IRS. It's a bureaucracy fraught with totalitarianism.

-- Rep. Sonny Bono, R-California

The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.-- Barry M. Goldwater

There is no art which one government sooner learns from another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.-- Adam Smith

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. -- Herman Wouk

The avoidance of taxes is the only pursuit that still carries any reward.-- John Maynard Keynes

The trick is to stop thinking of it as 'your' money.-- Revenue Auditor

Of all debts, men are least willing to pay taxes. What a satire is this on government!-- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Politics," 1844

I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money.- Arthur Godfrey

For every $50 you earn, you get $10 and they get $40.-- Jay Leno explaining Form 1040

I have something my tax doctor calls 'narcotaxis.' Within 20 seconds of hearing someone launch into an explanation of tax laws, my eyes become glassy, my body loses all feeling, and I go into a shallow coma.-- Russell Baker commenting in column "Sunday Observer," the New York Times (4-19-87)

The federal income tax is a complete mess. It's not efficient. It's not fair. It's not simple. It's not comprehensible. It fosters tax avoidance and cheating. It costs billions of dollars to administer. -- Robert E. Hall and Alvin Rabushka

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.-- Bumper Sticker

My uncle claims that if he files his income tax wrong he'll go to jail, and if he files it right he'll go to the poor house.-- Nonnee Coan

The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes-not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt-through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both.-- President William McKinley's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1897

Due to the sheer size of the IRS, waste and mismanagement occur on a massive scale.-- Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif.

Whenever taxes become burdensome, a remedy can be applied by the people; but if they do not act for themselves, no one can be very successful in acting for them.-- President Calvin Coolidge

You [senators] and the American people don't have a clue about how the IRS does its job, and that's just the way they like it.-- Shelley Davis

Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200 and a substantial tax cut saves you 30 cents?-- Peg Bracken

The history of congressional oversight of the IRS does not speak well for how seriously lawmakers have been monitoring the operations of the agency.-- George Guttman

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.-- Daniel Webster

We do not have a rogue agent problem at the Service. -- IRS Commissioner Margaret Richardson, August 6, 1994.

IRS: We've got what it takes to take what you've got.-- Bumper Sticker

That the power to tax involves the power to destroy...[is ] not to be denied. -- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, March 6, 1819.

The income tax people are very nice. They're letting me keep my own mother.-- Henny Youngman

The reward of energy, enterprise and thrift is taxes.-- William Feather

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.-- F. J. Raymond

Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night.-- Otto Von Bismarck

God only knows where we got our tax system...it is completely out of step with the world. -- Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., June 10, 1991.

If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.-- Rush Limbaugh

Taxes and golf are alike, you drive your heart out for the green, and then end up in the hole.-- Unknown

Nothing guarantees more applause and more support than the call to abolish the IRS.- Frank Luntz

If mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer is innocent until proven guilty, why in God's name isn't a taxpayer? -- Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, discussing H.R. 3261 on April 21, 1994.

We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes. -- Leona Helmsley, whose tax evasion convictions were affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on July 30, 1991.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation. -- Herbert Hoover, born in August 1874.

Ronald Reagan will clobber us if we don't go forward with tax reform. -- Speaker of the House Rep. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, D-Mass., October 7, 1985.

A basic tenet of the American justice system is that you are innocent until proven guilty. This principle does not, however, apply to the U.S. Tax Court. -- Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, introducing legislation on October 12, 1993 to switch the burden of proof in federal tax fraud and evasion cases from taxpayers to the IRS.

It is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally or by their representatives. -- Stamp Act Congress, October 19, 1765.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist only takes your skin. -- Mark Twain, December 30, 1902

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government. -- U.S. President Grover Cleveland, December 1886.

It would be great to be a tax attorney paid to search for loopholes in [a flat tax] world. -- William G. Gale

All too often the IRS has used its enormous powers to unjustly and unfairly ruin people's lives and intimidate honest taxpayers. -- James A. Traficant, Jr.

All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says. -- Former Citicorp Chairman Walter B. Wriston

Logic and taxation are not always the best of friends. -- Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court James C. McReynolds in Sonneborn Bros. v. Cureton

Inflation is taxation without legislation. -- Milton Friedman

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. -- Barry Goldwater

America can have a simple income tax law anytime it wants it. -- Lauren Williams

Liberty produces excessive taxes; the effect of excessive taxes is slavery. -- Charles Louis deSecondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu

The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The constitutional principle, "No taxation without representation," is utterly set at nought. -- W.R. Inge

Unlike proportionality, progression provides no principle which tells us what the relative burden of different persons ought to be...the argument based on the presumed justice of progression provides no limitation, as has often been admitted by its supporters, before all incomes above a certain figure are confiscated, and those below left untaxed. -- Frederick A. Hayek

Wherever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it. -- Alexander Hamilton

The Rosetta Stone...whose text in hieroglyphics, dometics, and Greek was the key to revealing the stories of ancient Egypt, was in fact a grant of tax immunity. Which is why, of course, it was engraved in stone and not on papyrus.-- Alvin Rabushka

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is quite as satisfying as an income tax refund. -- F.J. Raymond

It is the part of the good shepherd to shear his flock, not flay it. -- Tiberius Caesar

Cheating on federal and state income tax is all pervasive in all classes of society; except among the compulsively honest, cheating usually occurs in direct proportion to opportunity. -- Richard Neely

To tell you the truth, there is not much difference between the IRS hotline and a fantasy phone sexline except it costs $4 a minute I guess for the fantasy phone sexline. -- James A. Traficant, Jr.

Tarquin and Caesar each had his Brutus, Charles the First had his Cromwell, and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it. -- Patrick Henry on May 29, 1765, attacking the Stamp Act in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

The taxpayer -- that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take a civil service examination. -- President Ronald Reagan, born on February 6, 1911.