Through polls and nuance, the government is forever trying to convince you that the money you throw down their inefficient rat holes is, somehow, fair to you. It isn’t – on any level. Sales taxes are too high, property taxes are too high, state income taxes are too high and federal income taxes are nothing short of criminal. Plus the feds get another trip around your wallet when you sell something for more than you paid for it and they get to tax you a second time on whatever’s left when you die. It fits the constitutional definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Often is heard the phrase that, ”you know, historically speaking, taxes are low.” That is a bald-faced lie. In most years from 1776 to 1913 there were no federal income taxes at all and local taxes were slight.
We Americans don’t like taxes because it presumes the taxing body has some self-anointed authority – which was not directly given by consent of the governed. Local taxes are notorious for this because of off-date elections designed to limit turnout in such a way that constitutionally demanded consent of the governed is in fact not granted.
In most of America’s history prior to the 1913 16th amendment, which granted the feds the right to steal from you, taxes came and went with wars. If you notice that since the guaranteed flow of tax money began in 1913 there have been precious few years without wars, then you get to move to the head of the class.
But let’s take a closer look at tax history in the colonies from this passage: “When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, Americans had never before experienced direct taxation. They rebelled. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied taxes on an array of British goods. The colonists responded by boycotting British imports. Parliament repealed most of the Townshend Acts in 1770 (except the tax on tea), and in 1773 passed the Tea Act, which essentially told Americans they had to buy their tea from the East India Co. through government-approved merchants. Though the act actually lowered the cost of British tea, Americans were so outraged at Britain's assertion of authority that they forbade tea-bearing ships from docking. And, of course, in Boston they threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor.”
The operative phrase there is “Britains assertion of authority.” And so it is today. We don’t care much who you claim to be or what you plan to do; we are just concerned with your “assertion of authority.” It concerns us because we got and get so much done without the help of those who assert their authority via taxation.
Early in our history we taxed ourselves to pay off the war for independence and tussles with France but Thomas Jefferson ended that taxation in 1802. We stayed tax-free until the War of 1812, which cost us until 1817. We had no direct taxation in the country again until 1861.
An excellent historian noted, “That means that "Manifest Destiny," including James K. Polk's war with Mexico, and the expansion of the country from coast to coast, was financed without a single direct federal tax being levied upon the American people.”
“The federal income tax imposed to finance the Civil War had two tax brackets – 3 percent and 5 percent – and was repealed in 1872. It remained off the books until 1913, when the 16th Amendment was ratified. The federal income tax rates in 1913 ranged from 1 percent to 7 percent. That highest rate applied to people earning $500,000 a year or more. Today, a married couple earning that much would pay a federal income tax rate of 35 percent, and with all taxes combined could pay more than half their income in taxes.”
There’s nothing fair about those numbers.
Locally, at the state level and the federal level, taxation is totally out of control. Monies are thrown at all kinds of issues and problems governments have no constitutional authority to be involved in and they want more … and our answer should be no.
They spend too much, they tax too much and they borrow too much – all on that “assertion of authority” that remains ungranted.