But officials anticipated that a market economy, with money, would spontaneously return (a perceptive observation, for that is what would happen). Because of that, the government would have to be ready with a tax system. At first a flat-rate gross-receipts tax would be adequate. Since the range of post-attack incomes would be small, the memo said, the income tax as we know it would not be necessary. But the income tax would be waiting in the wings. As the memo put it:
Nevertheless, it would be desirable to have on the books a personal income tax at the outset of the emergency. The reasons for the very early establishment of a personal income tax, even though the private economic sector may have ceased to function, are that (1) the Revenue Service should have time to plan the administration of the tax … and (2) liability should be established at the earliest phases of the emergency to tax illegal gains made by speculators and black market operators. [Emphasis added.]6
Hold on a minute. Illegal gains? Speculators? Black-market operators? What was the treasury secretary talking about? When people begin to trade after a nuclear war, what would count as an illegal gain? Presumably the government would control prices, and anyone charging a higher price would be guilty of making an illegal gain. Who would be a speculator — anyone who buys low and sells high? What does “black market” mean in this context? Typically, a black market is the underground trade in illegal products. The Treasury memo implies that any trade that is not authorized or monitored by the government would be illegal. Dazed Americans would be trying to rebuild their lives, but the national government would be busy controlling economic activity and making sure taxes were collected.
A later Treasury study recommended a 24 percent general retail sales tax in lieu of an income tax if IRS records are destroyed. Interestingly, the study stated that the sales tax would encourage savings and allow the rebuilding of the capital stock. (The growing movement to replace the income tax with a national retail sales tax makes exactly that argument.)
The government’s chief worry about nuclear war was that in the chaos, the American people would go untaxed. If the government were cut off from the money, how would it maintain its operations? What if people discovered they can get along without the bloated national state we labor under today?
For David Burnham, author of A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS, this concern with collecting taxes after nuclear devastation validates Benjamin Franklin’s famous maxim that nothing is certain but death and taxes. As Burnham puts it, “In a most concrete way, the unswerving determination of these officials to complete their mission no matter how desperate the nation’s condition confirms the wisdom of the death-and-taxes observation of the sage of Philadelphia.”7
Who is surprised to learn that government officials regard protection of the revenue flow as a key consideration when planning for nuclear war? They are the same people who raise estate taxes retroactively, upsetting the plans made by people before they died. What better indicates the true relationship between the citizen and the state?
The Income Tax under Attack
Today we hear more criticism of the income tax and the IRS than ever before. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Archer of Texas, has called for abolition of the tax and the IRS (and its replacement with a national retail sales tax). Sen. Richard Lugar made repeal of the income tax a pillar of his short-lived presidential bid. Presidential candidate Robert Dole promised to end the IRS “as we know it.” Whether they would actually rid America of the IRS is beside the point. They thought it was worth telling the American people that there is something gravely wrong with the income-tax system. They targeted the IRS and its reviled practices. That is progress.
Of course, we’ve heard this before. President Jimmy Carter called the tax code a disgrace. President Ronald Reagan said something similar and oversaw so-called tax-reform legislation. Changes were made, rates were cut (then raised by his successors), the code was simplified in places (before being made more complicated again), and brackets were indexed for inflation. But overall, it’s the same old tax code. Meanwhile, the other income tax, the payroll tax that supports Social Security and part of Medicare, was raised for several years running. Tax reform has become one of the biggest scams in America. No wonder no one got excited when Robert Dole tried to make it the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
This book has essentially one theme: taxation of income is bad. All taxation involves coercion and thus violates individual rights. If you don’t believe that, ask yourself why there are penalties, including imprisonment, for nonpayment and failure to file a return, that is, report to the government on your financial activities. Libertarians believe taxation is theft. That matter will be taken up in detail in the next chapter. For now, let’s leave it at this: when you take someone’s money without his consent, it is stealing. It doesn’t matter that the majority of the victim’s fellow citizens voted for it. It is theft and nothing but theft. The nineteenth-century political philosopher and constitutional lawyer Lysander Spooner said he could see no difference between the government and a highwayman. Actually, he could find one difference: the highwayman does not hector his victim, insisting that the thievery was good for him.
But this is not a general book about taxation. As bad as any taxation is, the income tax is worse. It is aggravated theft, robbery with malice aforethought. Theoretically, all forms of taxation could be draconian. If a sales tax caused mass evasion through the cash economy, the government could conceivably conduct house-to-house searches demanding receipts for all the products you own. If a revenue tariff were sufficiently evaded, one can imagine the government torturing consumers to get them to identify the smugglers. The late economist Murray Rothbard was right when he insisted that ultimately what counts is how much the government transfers from the productive sector to the parasitic sector, not how it does so.
That said, it is nevertheless the case that in practice the income tax has been more abusive of the people’s rights than other taxes. It lends itself more readily to draconian enforcement. That justifies singling it out for special condemnation. But we should not forget that merely replacing the income tax with another tax designed to raise the same revenue would be a shallow victory.8
The moment the principle of income taxation is granted, the ground is prepared for myriad abuses of the people. As will be elaborated in the pages to follow, if the government is permitted to tax incomes, it will demand reams of personal information about each citizen’s financial endeavors. It will compel people to report on the peaceful financial activities of other people. But more than that, it must have the muscle to check that information, to spy on people, to conduct inquisitions, and to punish — hard. Why? Because there is nothing more natural than people’s trying to keep what they worked to acquire. Regardless of their explicit political philosophy, most people are implicit advocates of property rights. They don’t like being dispossessed of their belongings. Even thieves don’t like to be robbed. Despite years of indoctrination about taxes’ being voluntary and the price of civilization, most people deep down realize that the tax system is seizing something dear to them — the fruits of their labor. And they don’t like it. So they do what they can to minimize the damage. They use every legal means to keep their money (television and radio commercials and books constantly offer ways to reduce one’s tax liability), and they sometimes use illegal ways. The distinction is not always clear. The IRS says collections fall short of what is “due” by about $150 billion a year. That is the total of contested claims; it does not include taxes on incalculable income made in the underground economy, estimated at 20 to 50 percent of GDP.9
Man vs. State
Income taxation inaugurates a permanent war between the people, who want to keep what they earn, and the government, which wants as much of it as it can get. The government tries to make the war less obvious by deadening the pain when possible. The withholding tax makes it unnecessary for most Americans to write checks to the IRS; in
deed, they eagerly await their refunds. But the war is part of the American psyche nonetheless. All Americans sense that an awesome power lurks, ready to grab an increasing portion of anything they earn. That adversary relationship has far-reaching consequences for a society founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, namely, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson said that when government fails to protect rights or itself threatens them, the people have the right and duty to “alter or abolish” it.10 That surely indicates that according to the prevailing philosophy among Americans at the time, government was the dangerous servant. The people were the master. But the income tax turns that relationship on its head. The tax and all the powers that must accompany it turn the people into cowering servants, ever fearful of being accused of concealing income or information and being compelled to prove otherwise. People have lost money, homes, businesses, and liberty to the IRS. A few have committed suicide under the pressure of a tax investigation. The income tax may not be the root of all evil, as the libertarian writer Frank Chodorov believed. But it is the root of many evils. The income tax radically undermined the American revolution.
Every American should ask himself what it was like to live in the United States before there was an income tax. Imagine not having to give up more than 30 percent of your income to the federal government. Imagine living without fear of being audited by the IRS. Imagine starting the new year and not having to think about where you stored the previous year’s receipts. Imagine not worrying whether your records are good enough for the IRS. Imagine not having to pay a tax preparer hundreds of dollars to fill out complicated forms in order to minimize your tax liability and avoid audit. Imagine such a world in which none of those burdens existed.
Americans lived without those fears and burdens for more than one hundred years (except in the Civil War era). They built a decent society nonetheless. Late-nineteenth-century America was the freest society in history. People could run their own lives with little interference from government. Prosperity increased as never before. Products that once only the nobility could afford became mass consumer goods. Specialization and the division of labor increased productivity, which in turn raised living standards. Taxes, mostly excise taxes and revenue tariffs, took only a small portion of people’s wealth. The federal government played only a bit part in the lives of the people. (That role was enlarged by the Civil War but was still small by later standards.11)
The government does not publish figures for how much of GDP the national government absorbed in the late nineteenth century. But it does have them going back to 1930. In that year, before the income tax affected ordinary people, federal receipts were just 4.2 percent of GDP. (Spending accounted for an even smaller part, 3.4 percent.) In 1942, the share of GDP extracted by the federal government hit double digits for the first time, exceeding 10 percent. It essentially has gone up ever since. Today it stands at more than 21 percent, the highest since World War II.
The income tax has been a key factor in the growth of government. When enacted, only the few richest people in America paid the tax. In 1934 individual income taxes provided about 14 percent of federal receipts. It became a tax for ordinary people during World War II, ironically under that reputed champion of ordinary people, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Today, it accounts for more than 43 percent. Payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare account for about 35 percent. As you can see, Americans’ incomes have provided a rich vein for the government to mine. The income tax makes it easy for the government to raise money. Its sheer complexity often makes it difficult for people to know what any given change in the tax code will mean for their own situations. By the time they realize that their taxes have gone up, it is too late.
An ugly picture emerges. As we will see, the income tax has:
•Given the government unprecedented access to the American people’s wealth.
•Provided the rationale for the government to intrude into our personal affairs.
•Reversed the traditional rule-of-law relationship between government and those suspected of lawbreaking.
•Corrupted morality by labeling efforts to keep one’s own money as “cheating.”
•Bewildered the American people with constantly changing technical rules that no one could possibly comply with perfectly.
•Permitted lawmakers to influence our conduct through selective tax deductions and exemptions.
All this has come from the principle that government may tax incomes. As objectionable as other taxes are, none could permit the government to amass power, abuse citizens, or corrupt society the way the income tax has. That is why repealing the tax, along with the Sixteenth Amendment that permits it, is an essential blow in the struggle against power and for liberty.
This book will not be comforting to those who love freedom. It will show that the tax system is offensive to morality and destructive of civil liberties and prosperity. We will retrace the fateful steps America took on its way to adopting the income tax. If a sense of incredulity — even horror — overtakes readers it will be unsurprising. Looking back, it is hard to believe that a country conceived in liberty could have taken the path it did and permitted the federal government to exercise such awesome power.
If at the end readers come to the conclusion that the income tax was a tragic decision in the history of America, if they come to believe that life would be better for everyone without that tax, if they understand that liberty is worth more than anything the income tax finances, and if they resolve to help rid America of that tyranny — then this book will have succeeded in its mission.
Let’s begin the journey to freedom.
Notes
1 Joan Biskupic, “IRS Is Resting Place of Dead Man’s Error,” Washington Post, February 19, 1997, A6.
2 On paper the IRS faces a statute of limitations. But as we will see in chapter 3, the agency has ways to get around that restriction.
3 Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1993), p. 385.
4 For details see David Burnham, A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 3–6.
5 Quoted from a 1967 memo from Treasury Secretary Henry H. Fowler to Price Daniel, director of the Office of Emergency Planning, in ibid., p. 4.
6 Quoted in ibid., p. 5.
7 Ibid., p. 6.
8 Thanks to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel for contributing to my understanding of this matter.
9 This information was furnished by Patrick Fleenor at the Tax Foundation.
10 Curiously, on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial where portions of the Declaration are reproduced, the reference to the right of revolution is left out. The memorial was built during the Franklin Roosevelt years.
11 For details on how the Civil War changed the American republic, see Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago: Open Court, 1996).
2
The Immorality of the Income Tax
Proponents of the income tax have some explaining to do. By what right does the government take a portion of each person’s income without his consent before he even gets his hands on it? By what right does the government require each citizen to furnish highly personal information about the sources and amount of money he makes each year? By what right does the government threaten fines, property seizure, and imprisonment if it deems that information false and is unsatisfied with a citizen’s response?
The income tax has become such an accepted part of life that most people never think to ask those questions. But those questions — and the income tax itself — should stick in the craw of a society that prides itself on being free. There was a time when it did just that. At an earlier period in American history, when the glow of the memory of the American Revolution shined far brighter that it does today, citizens of the United States were repelled by the thought of having
their earnings taxed. They thought it was unseemly for the government to make inquiries into such private matters as one’s income-producing activities and then to take even a small percentage of it. (The word “inquisitorial” was often used to describe such a tax.) Adam Smith, whom the Founders admired, wrote, “By subjecting the people to frequent visits and odious examination of the tax gatherers, [the government] may expose them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation and oppression.”1
In our time, one of the few men to shine the light of morality on the income tax was the great libertarian writer Frank Chodorov. His little classic, The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil,2 remains an unanswered indictment of the very principle of income taxation. In it Chodorov pointed out that America was based on the principle of man’s natural rights and that “any political action which attempts to violate these rights violates his human-ness, and thus becomes ‘evil.’” He sought to trace the many evils committed by the U.S. government to the power granted in the Sixteenth Amendment. “That is the ‘root,’” he wrote.3
Chodorov recognized how drastically the amendment altered the nature of the national government. Rather than a protector of rights, he said, “it is fast becoming a government that conceives of itself to be the source of rights.… In short, America is no longer the America of the Declaration of Independence.”4
Taxation Is Theft
Before we discuss the morality of income taxation in detail, we should consider taxation per se. All forms of taxation have an essential characteristic in common. Taxation is the government’s commandeering of money from its citizens. The state compels people to surrender that sum under threat of fine or imprisonment if they fail to do so. It takes something that belongs to someone else. At the most intuitive level, that is unjust. That power is unique to government. Where others can only ask payment (and withhold goods and services if it is not forthcoming), the state can demand it no matter what the taxpayers’ wishes are. Regardless of the kind of tax, the state says: “Pay or else — no questions asked.” The amount surrendered may be computed on the price of a product bought (the sales tax), or on the value of real estate (the property tax), or on annual wages and salaries (the income tax). The central fact remains: the state demands a sum of money, and refusal is punishable. Coercion is what makes taxation immoral.
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