Or the federal government limits what it controls to only what the constitution gives it power to control and devolves other functions to the states, and the federal government works within its constitutionally gathered revenues.
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I believe you misinterpreted what I wrote which was: Are you suggesting our Supreme Court, will not do its job and strike down unconstitutional applications of the Sixteenth Amendment?
Even if the Federal Government was shrunk to to its intended limits, national defense, foreign affairs, interstate commerce and other delegated powers, it still would require an income tax to fund.
Raising tariffs, imposts and excises to the level necessary to fund even a reduced Federal Government would be extremely destructive.
Yes, that too …
What about a 0.1% transaction tax? This would hit poorer people’s wages much less and money traders profits much more.
Paul,
Safiel’s comment which suggests, if we returned to our Constitution’s original tax plan, which would end the allowance of Congress taxing “incomes” and require Congress to raise its ordinary revenue from imposts, duties and excise taxes, and that under such circumstances there would not be sufficient revenue to fund our federal government’s authorized functions, and there would still be a need for a federal tax on “incomes”, is fundamentally flawed and a misrepresentation of our Constitution’s original tax plan, as it was intended to operate by our Founders.
What Safiel is leaving out of his representation of our Constitution’s original tax plan is, if imposts, duties and excise taxes [indirect taxes] are insufficient for Congress’s spending practices and Congress needs extra revenue to finance its functions, it then has the option to lay and collect a “direct tax” for any additional revenue it may need. But doing this actually creates a very real moment of accountability for every member of Congress, which they fear with a passion, who must then bring home a bill to their constituents to pay for Congress’s additional spending needs which would deplete their State’s Treasury!
The formula for this direct tax, and each State’s fair share to finance Congress’s extra needs is as follows:
States’ population
---------------------------- X SUM TO BE RAISED = STATE’S FAIR SHARE
Total U.S. Population
Note also that each State’s number or Representatives, under our Constitution’s fair share formula is also determined by the rule of apportionment:
State`s Pop.
------------------- X House size (435) = State`s No. of Representatives
U.S. Pop.
The above formulas, as intended by our founding fathers, is to ensure that each state’s share of a total amount being raised by Congress by a “direct tax” is proportionately equal to its representation in Congress, i.e., representation with a proportional financial obligation whenever a direct tax is laid! Or, one man, one vote and one vote one dollar ___ an idea which our current socialists and reckless spenders in Congress dread with a passion as it would promptly end Congress love affair with being free of the immediate accountability our Founders wrote into our Constitution.
Having corrected Safiel’s misrepresentation, see: An Act to lay and collect a direct tax within the United States August 2, 1813 showing each state’s fair share of the first direct tax laid by our Founders.
Also see Section 7 of the direct tax of 1813 allowing states to raise their fair share in their own way and pay their respective quotas and be entitled to certain deductions in meeting their payment on time.
Finally, our Founders’ legislative intent regarding this issue concerning taxation can be found in several of our Constitution’s ratification documents, e.g. see the Ratification of the Constitution by the State of New Hampshire:
Fourthly That Congress do not lay direct Taxes but when the money arising from Impost, Excise and their other resources are insufficient for the Publick Exigencies; nor then, untill Congress shall have first made a Requisition upon the States, to Assess, Levy, & pay their respective proportions, of such requisitions agreeably to the Census fixed in the said Constitution in such way & manner as the Legislature of the State shall think best and in such Case if any State shall neglect, then Congress may Assess & Levy such States proportion together with the Interest thereon at the rate of six per Cent per Annum from …….
JWK
When Federal Reserve Notes were made a legal tender in violation of our Constitution, and a direct un-apportioned tax was imposed upon the people without their consent, America’s free enterprise, free market system was subjugated, and the tools of oppression and thievery were made available to some very immoral and nefariously evil people.
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Hopefully you are wrong. If you are not, then federal taxation can be used, with the Courts’ blessing, to not only attack political opponents, but also used to subjugate the "Bill of Rights’ , including the 1st and 2nd amendments. Is that what you are suggesting?
You’re doing all the suggesting here, I’m just saying they won’t rule it unconstitutional.
Samm,
I did ask you: Are you suggesting our Supreme Court, will not do its job and strike down unconstitutional applications of the Sixteenth Amendment? You did answer by writing: “Yes, that too …”
I’m just trying to understand what you mean? If our Supreme Court is unwilling, or won’t strike down unconstitutional applications of the Sixteenth Amendment, that would indicate there is no longer a check on unconstitutional legislation, and Congress would then be free to apply the Humpty Dumpty theory of language to our Constitution when enacting legislation . . .
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.”
. . . and our Executive office would be free to enforce unconstitutional legislation.
JWK
Why have a written constitution, approved by the people, if those who it is meant to control are free to make it mean whatever they wish it to mean?
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John … You are over thinking my answer. The only thing I expressed an opinion on was that the SCOTUS would not find income taxes in any form to be unconstitutional.
And John’s point, I believe, is that if the SC allows this clause of the constitition to be breached for convenience, the door is open for Congress to make laws that infringe on other constitutional clauses that they ignore out of convenience.
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That may very well be, but it doesn’t change my opinion that the Court will let it stand. One case at a time on its own merits … that’s how the Court works.
That is what I thought you were indicating. And if the Supreme Court will not strike down misapplications of the Sixteenth Amendment, i.e., the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes being used in a tyrannical fashion, then the question immediately comes to mind, what other misapplications of our Constitution, and Congress’ powers, will also be allowed to stand?
Do you not see where a failure of our Supreme Court to do its job with respect to Congress abusing its taxing powers is likely to lead to?
How much misery has our country suffered from the Supreme Courts’ failure in 1973 to do its job in Roe v. Wade, which I might add has finally been corrected by our Current Justices?
Is there not a likelihood that these same Justices, if presented with a case involving a misapplication of Congress’s taxing powers, they would rise to the occasion and do the job which they took an oath to do? Hopefully they will, for if they won’t, our country is headed down a path of painful misery and abuse, which our Constitution and its various protections, were specifically created to prevent.
JWK
“If the Constitution was ratified under the belief, sedulously propagated on all sides that such protection was afforded, would it not now be a fraud upon the whole people to give a different construction to its powers?”___ Justice Story
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It is not “the job” of the Supreme Court to do your bidding.
Yes! That about sums it up.
Let us also keep in mind our Supreme Court has never ruled on a case in which a federal tax on a working person’s earned wage was challenged as being a direct tax and requires apportionment, nor how to calculate from a working person’s earned wage an alleged, and taxable, profit and/or gain, collectively called “incomes” within the meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment, as was done by our Supreme Court with reference to stock dividends in Eisner v. Macomber.
So, the questions remain, is a federal tax on a working person’s earned wage a direct tax and requires an apportionment, and if a federal tax is laid upon a working person’s earned wage, how is a profit and/or gain to be calculated for “income tax purposes”? Is a wage earner not entitled to deduct from an earned wage investments made, and necessary expenses and outlays in order to arrive at a supposed taxable profit and/or gain?
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My goodness, Safiel, you would have done well with your sales pitch in 1909 which basically was the same used to con America’s working-class citizens into supporting the rope-a-dope Sixteenth Amendment.
Let us take a walk down Memory Lane and recall how the Sixteenth Amendment and an income tax was sold by the Democrats during the 1909 Congressional debates on the Sixteenth Amendment, which today robs the bread working people earn when selling the property each has in their own labor.
Representative HENRY:
“It is undeniable that an income tax will reach millions of wealth—bonds and stocks—that would never be touched by a corporation or inheritance tax. It is advocating no new and strange doctrine to favor an income tax. On many occasions during great emergencies this method of taxation has been resorted to, and proved abundantly satisfactory. And now, with a depleted Treasury, with swollen fortunes all around us evading taxation and receiving the protection of Government, and civilized communities everywhere recognizing the economic fairness of such a tax, and with the admitted contention that it contains the humane and sublime blessing of equality to all men, the time is ripe and appropriate for this Government to go forward and keep apace with the progress and civilization of mankind.” July 12, 1909, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE, Page 4412, right column.
Representative RUCKER
“I am in favor of an income tax. If I cannot get the resolution amended as suggested, I will gladly vote for it as it is, because if adopted by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States, it will become a part of the organic law of my country, and it will make the rich constituents of the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. HILL] pay a part of the revenues necessary to support the Government. It will make the constituents of the gentleman from New York [Mr. PAYNE] contribute from their wealth. It will make the rich constituents of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. McCALL] contribute their part; and with this amendment to the Constitution, no future Congress, I trust, would even feel called upon or compelled to enact any such iniquitous law as the pending tariff bill, thereby increasing the burdens of the people and extorting from them an additional $200,000,000 in a single year for the clothes they wear.” ___ CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE, JULY 12, 1090, PAGE, 4426
As we can see, the amendment and a tax on incomes was sold as a way to lower the tariff burden being paid by poor working people on articles of necessity, and making up that lost revenue by allowing for a tax on those having money working ___ taxing the “unearned” incomes of millionaires (their profits and gains from investments in stocks, bonds, etc.) ___ to help finance the functions of government which was asserted at the time to benefit the wealthy disproportionately?
And here we are today with America’s wage earners not only having been placed under the heel of a new tax on their earned wages, but also paying hundreds of hidden federal taxes on the articles of necessity they purchase, while special rules are made to calculate the unearned profits and gains, of those who have money working, which lowers their taxable income under the Sixteenth Amendment,
For those who are interested in the Democrat Party Leadership’s con-job performance encouraging an income tax in order to have the “rich” contribute a share of their unearned incomes as distinguished from earned wages, take some time and study the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD July 12th, 1909. You may very well learn the true nature of the scoundrels who work to defend a patently evil system of taxation.
JWK
“We often give enemies the means of our own destruction.” – Aesop.
And, it was not the intent of the Sixteenth Amendment to be used to reestablish slavery in America by creating a tax code with deductions for those who have money working, which are denied to others who work for their money, but is embraced by the rich and powerful who would have poor black working folks believe was the intent of the Sixteenth Amendment in order to continue the slavish taxing scam which today robs the bread working people earn when selling their labor to the rich, who then deduct the value of such labor from gross earnings in order to arrive at their taxable profit and/or gain from said labor, while the working poor are denied the same deduction [the value of their labor sold] when calculating their federal tax which rich white folks enjoy.
Come on man! We all know rich white folks released poor black folks from the slave plantation, only to re-enslave them in a more clever and devious fashion, with a tax on the property each has in the sale of their own labor, the theft of such property being the very object of plantation slavery.
Having said that, Samm, let us recall the prophetic words of our Supreme Court, which I agree with. Justice FIELD wrote:
“If the provisions of the constitution can be set aside by an act of congress, [the rule of apportioning a direct tax] where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich,-a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness. ‘If the court sanctions the power of discriminating taxation, and nullifies the uniformity mandate of the constitution,’ as said by one who has been all his life a student of our institutions, 'it will mark the hour when the sure decadence of our present government will commence.”, Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company (1895)
And in respect of the above words, is why I support the Fair Share Balanced Budget Amendment which begins with the following words:
“SECTION 1. The Sixteenth Amendment is hereby repealed and Congress is henceforth forbidden to lay any tax or burden calculated from profits, gains, sales, interest, salaries, wages, tips, inheritances or any other lawfully realized money.
NOTE: these words would return us to our Constitution’s original tax plan as our Founders’ intended it to operate! They would also end the experiment with allowing Congress to lay and collect taxes calculated from lawfully earned “incomes” which now oppresses America‘s economic engine and robs the bread which working people have earned when selling the property each has in their own labor, not to mention they would end federal taxation being used as a political weapon to harass and attack political opponents!
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It’s not that complicated John. As they say, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
Samm,
Just as government is a necessary evil [Thomas Paine], so too are taxes. But why do the good people of the United States, after witnessing how destructive to the general welfare of the United States the taxing of “incomes” has become, that the subject of real tax reform should not be on their minds?
Aside from the “income tax” being used to directly tax and target specific identifiable groups of taxpayers to shoulder an disproportionate and unequal share of the “income tax”, and how it is used by a current Administration to attack and destroy specific groups, individuals and businesses based on their politics, and is even used to enforce destructive public policy never specifically agreed to by the people’s elected members of Congress, besides all this, did it ever cross your mind how an evil Empire has grown, matured and now attacks, destroys and is eliminating the very principles and standards under which our country grew to be the greatest and most powerful country on earth?
Tell me Samm, how many tax exempt groups can you name which have grown from tax-deductible contributions and do ill to our country, such as Black Lives Matter, ACORN, ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, NPR, American Federation of Teachers, Tides Foundation, ProPublica, Rock the Vote . . .etc.?
Representative Williams was absolutely correct when he noted, as soon as Rome “. . . changed their system to direct taxation, it operated to their ruin; their children were sold as slaves, and the Empire fell from its splendor.” SOURCE
Tell me Samm, should we not work to get this evil monkey off our backs and return to a system of taxation based upon principles which do not change with the passage of time?
JWK
“…a national revenue must be obtained; but the system must be such a one, that, while it secures the object of revenue it shall not be oppressive to our constituents.”___ Madison, during the creation of our Nation’s first revenue raising Act
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Have at it. I’m too close to the certain death part to spend my last days trying to change the certainty of tax part.
Good luck. You’re gunna need it.
