An income tax is the most degrading and totalitarian of all possible taxes. Its implementation wrongly suggests that the government owns the lives and labor of the citizens it is supposed to represent. Tellingly, “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax” is Plank #2 of the Communist Manifesto (http://www.criminalgovernment.com/docs/planks.html), which was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and first published in 1848.
Our national debt is currently over $14 trillion, with the government spending nearly $2 trillion more per year than it collects. The American people should not have to pay for Washington’s reckless and out-of-control appetite for debt. In 1960 middle-income Americans paid less than 30 percent of their earnings in local, state, and federal taxes; today that figure is closer to 45 percent. Furthermore, many middle- and upper-income families living in the states that have the highest taxes, such as New York and California, pay nearly half their incomes in taxes. By one calculation Americans work from January to the end of the first week in May just to pay their tab to the government.
The worst part about this is that most americans have no idea how much total taxes they are actually paying. This happens through the magic of withholding, where the money is gone before the wage earner even gets the slightest whiff of it. It’s almost as if it was never really there in the first place.Withholding was sold to the American wage earner as a purely temporary measure to speed up cash flow to the government during World War II.A bit of theft from the extremely rich, which politicians even then had decided, ‘didn’t need it.’ As soon as the war was over, things were supposed to return to normal and the wage earners would get their entire checks, just as before the war. Like all government plans to steal, transfer, subsidize and re-distribute wealth, it simply has not worked. Social security and medicaire and going bankrupt. Our educational system is a total failure. 1 out of 7 Americans is currently on food stamps. Understanding the tax code has been come nearly impossible. A 2005 study found that Americans spent a total of 2.8 billion hours, or $110 billion on tax compliance. Nonprofits spend 141 million hours or $6.8 billion and businesses spent 3.1 billion hours or $148 billion on tax compliance. (http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf). Today, some corporations spend more on tax preparation than on any other single expense, including raw materials and labor.
The IRS has become a social tool, the true “Elixir of Life” for the social manipulators and denizens of D.C. High taxes reflect the growth of government, at all levels, in the United States. High taxes stifle innovation, prevent saving, destroy production, crush the middle class and the poor, and discourage investment. Every American is entitled to the fruits of his labor, especially during these tough economic times. How do we pay for the “needed” government programs without the income tax? Simple. Stop spending so much money. Government needs to be reduced to the small size intended by the founding fathers and our constitution. We also need to stop spending $1 trillion a year trying to to be the policeman of the world and just bring our troops home. We will not need the income tax when we stop the monster of huge government.