Posted on 08/12/2002 2:18:13 PM PDT by Keyes For President
Perhaps the fastest way to make America a free country again would be to repeal all income taxes – the personal income, corporate, gift, estate and Social Security taxes.
This would create at least five very important benefits:
1. An increase for you
The first is an enormous increase in your take-home pay.
Take a look at last year's tax return or your paycheck stub. See how much you pay now in income and Social Security taxes. If yours is a typical middle-class family, that's probably at least $10,000 per year.
When we repeal those taxes, what will you do with that extra money?
Will you put your children in a private school where they'll get the education you want for them?
Will you start your own business?
Will you support your church or favorite charity in a way you never could do before?
Will you buy a new home, or take your family on the vacation you've always wanted but could never afford?
That money is yours. You're the one who gets up every morning and puts in long hours to support your family.
You should have every dollar you earn – to spend, to save, to give away as you think best.
2. An increase for your associates
Everyone you deal with – your employer and your company's customers – will get a similar increase in take-home pay.
If you work for a company, your employer will have far more money to spend on you and other employees. And he'll have to spend a lot of it on you, because his competitors will have more money, too – enabling them to bid more for your services.
If you're in business, your customers will have more money to spend with you.
3. An increase for everyone
In fact, everyone in America will have more money. This will unleash the greatest prosperity America has ever known.
Even those who pay no income taxes now will benefit, because others can hire or help them more easily.
4. Free to do as you please
The fourth benefit is that your life finally will be your own.
You won't have to trust your employer with your retirement money, since tax deferral won't be an issue. You could simply divide your savings among a few banks, or put them in Treasury bills, and be safer and enjoy a better return than Social Security offers – and you won't have to worry about corporate scandals.
No more fear of an IRS audit. No more snooping into your personal financial records. No more having to account for everything you earn and spend.
A flat tax won't end the IRS. Even if you could file your return on a postcard, the government would still force you to verify that all the numbers are correct.
Having an IRS Gestapo may be typical of most nations, but no country is truly "free" so long as there's such an agency.
5. Neutralizing the government
Perhaps the most important benefit of all is simply this:
Politicians will no longer have the resources to cripple the economy and run everyone's life.
Without the income tax to finance them, the politicians can't interfere with health care, education, charity, farming, business or any other area of society.
Before the income tax began in 1913, the politicians sometimes raised rates on tariffs and excise taxes to finance their harebrained schemes. But people simply bought less of the products that were taxed – reducing the government's revenue and forcing the politicians to give up their grand plans.
But with the income tax, there's no limit to how much they can tax us. You can't stop earning a living whenever the tax rate is too high. As a result, the top rate reached 94 percent during World War II – and it didn't fall below 70 percent until 1982.
In 1912, the federal budget (in 2002 dollars) was $12 billion. Today it's $2 trillion – only because the income tax makes it possible.
With no income taxes, economic necessity will force the politicians to abide by the Constitution. America will be a free country once again.
Free at last!
You can, if you choose, rejoice when tax rates are reduced slightly. But I want much more than that.
I want an end to all income taxes. And there's no good reason we can't have that.
If the feds would focus on national defense instead of offense, we'd be better protected with a $100 billion federal budget than we are now.
Social Security could be liquidated by selling off federal properties that serve no constitutional purpose – using the proceeds to buy private annuities for everyone who's dependent on Social Security now or will be in the next 15 years. Everyone else will be ahead just by repealing the Social Security tax.
The benefits of liberty are boundless. The tyrannies of government can be limitless as well.
Which do you choose?
LOL! I need them all the time here, simply because of my screen name. It won't be the first time I've been scorched!
Harry is one of the good guys!
Have been reading too many fairy-tales? I thought it was the Dems that are vulnerable to Utopia; I guess I was wrong.
Can a resident economist from around here help me out here? Wouldn't a sudden infusion of cash into the economy creat lots of inflation rather than prosperity? Or wouldn't it? (I'm honestly not sure.)
Just about anything will be better than this:
The IRS is not only the most feared of government agencies, it also is one of the biggest and most expensive. The agency has more employees than the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Drug Enforcement Agency combined, and its budget makes it a bigger consumer of tax dollars than the Departments of Commerce, State, or the Interior.$13,700,000,000
= The amount of tax money spent by the IRS and other government agencies to enforce and oversee the tax code. Both taxpayers and the economy will benefit from the spending reductions made possible by a national retail sales tax.$800,000,000
= The estimated cost to update the IRS's computers for the year 2000.$23,000,000,000 = The total proposed price for the IRS's computerization and modernization plans by 2008.
$134,347,500,000 = The Clinton Administration's estimate of private-sector compliance costs. If the defenders of the status quo admit compliance costs are this high, the actual costs may well be even higher.
$157,000,000,000 = The amount spent by the private sector to comply with income tax laws. >
$127,000,000,000 = The amount of taxes not paid as a result of tax evasion
I have the feeling you don't want to hear about it - but maybe I'm wrong. I'll post anyway for others who may be lurking to hear it.
It can be changed and be better. Much better.
Thanks for the post KFP!
We owe these scounderals because the congress in 1913 voted to allow them to take over. Or should I say the few congress people that were there on December 23rd 1913 (3 senators that were paid off by the central bankers) took a voice vote and unanimously voted to allow these crooks to take over our money system.
Get rid of the federal reserve and that damned Sir Allen Greenspan and watch this economy really take off.
The IRS is the enforcement arm of the FEDERAL RESERVE and has no actual power. The only reason that it gets away with what it does is because the AMERICAN SHEEPLE allow it.
STAND UP. SPEAK OUT. TO HELL WITH THE FEDERAL RESERVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A great thing about the consumption tax is that it will discourage consumption and encourage investment. Hence, interest rate will be extremely low because everyone will be saving. The neat thing is that once you put a tax only on the point of purchase, then you remove all the double and triple taxation that goes into making a product. For example, the lumberjack has to pay tax on the lumber, the carpenter has to pay tax on the lumber, and finally you have to pay taxes to buy the table. Because of triple and quadruple taxation, prices are already high and once you are only taxing something at the end point of purchase, then you reduce the price already.
Having said all this, I oppose a consumption tax system. It is such an efficient way to raise money, that the federal govt will collect a lot more in tax revenues which will increase the size and scope of the federal government. As such, it is a bad idea, unless the rate is very small.
I've read that the intent would be to start out at 15-17% with the rate set to decrease over time. I would be leery of trusting the politicians to follow through on that and leave it alone - even if it were working perfectly.
I would still support it though, because IMO, anything is better than the deceptive (and possibly illegal) confiscation that we have now.
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