So you believe the method of funding the government before the 16th amendment was defective?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! The “income tax” as we know it today was passed in 1862. The statute is called the “Internal Revenue Act of 1862”. What changed to bring forth the 16th Amendment was the Supreme Court case of Pollack v. Farmers Loan & Trust, 1895. What the court did was say that “to tax the fruit (gains/profits) was to tax the tree (stock in federal corporations) and thus said that the income tax was a direct tax and that the source (stock) could not cause the gains/profits to become taxable. What this did was created an unconstitutional loophole that enabled crony capitalists who were engaged in making profits from the use of & investments in federal government resources to skirt paying taxes otherwise owed to the federal government.
After the 16th was passed, there came the case of Brushaber, same scenario, trying to deny the gains/profits from investments in federally owned property were taxable. This time, the SCOTUS upheld the law. The SCOTUS rightly ruled that the 16th Amendment ‘income tax’ was indeed an excise tax limited to activities subject to the income tax. Later, in 1944, the SCOTUS again ruled:
“The Government is an abstraction, and its possession of property largely constructive. Actual possession and custody of Government property nearly always are always in someone who is not himself the Government, but acts in its behalf and for its purposes. He may be an officer, an agent, or a contractor. His personal advantages from the relationship by way of salary, profit, or beneficial personal use of the property may be taxed...”
And in 1992, John R. Lucky, Legislative Attorney with the Library of Congress, “Frequently Asked Questions Concerning The Federal Income Tax” (CRS Report for Congress 92-303A (1992)) stated:
“When a court refers to an income tax as being in the nature of an excise, it is merely stating that the tax is a fee for the privilege of receiving gain form property. The tax is based upon the amount of the gain, not the value of the property.”
Your earnings that your employer pays you for the services you perform for him, unless they are connected to the federal purse in some way, those earnings are not “wages” as stated in 26 U.S.C. 3402(e) Included and excluded wages. The code itself states that NOT all that is paid to an employee are “wages” subject to the ‘income tax”, only if the services performed for the private employer are connected to the federal purse via a contract that employer may have with the federal government do those earnings become “wages” subject to taxation.
And we know this personally as we used to haul meat to the west coast that would then be shipped to military bases overseas. Every penny of the revenue we collected for hauling those loads was 100% taxable revenue as the ultimate source of that revenue came form the federal purse. We have not hauled anything for over 10 years that is in any way connected to the federal purse, therefore, our revenue is no longer subject to the “income tax”.
IRS Manual 4.10.4-9: Total receipts deposited LESS nontaxable receipts deposited
We can either educate ourselves, or continue to be ignorant slaves of the beast our ignorance created. The choice is up to us, the American citizenry at large who are ultimately the final check upon ALL federal government activities, to make sure those activities are being applied according to the Constitution and the subsequent constitutional laws passed by Congress.