Time for Another Tax Revolution: ABOLISH the INCOME TAX and the IRS WITH IT! | Eastern North Carolina Now

    In fact, long before the federal income tax was in place, multimillionaires such as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie had their foundations set up and operating. What they needed to do was make certain that the tax bill passed by Congress contained a provision specifically exempting their treasure houses from taxation. And sure enough, the Underwood bill included such a provision (Section 2, paragraph G). The bill borrowed language from the 1894 and the 1909 tariff bills, both of which provided exemptions for charitable organization. Under these statutes, tax exemption was granted to "any corporation or association organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, or educational purposes..." In other words, these organizations were to be considered "non-profits." Under the 1913 bill, charitable (non-profit) organizations could earn tax-free income from both mission-related activities and commercial business activities that were unrelated to the purpose for which they were exempt, as long as they used the net profits for exempt purposes. (That would change with the Revenue Act of 1950; In 1950, Congress established the "unrelated business income tax," or UBIT, which would be imposed on any activity that was not "regularly carried on" and "substantially related" to the organization's charitable purpose).

    Section 2, paragraph G provides: "Provided, however, that nothing in this section shall apply...to any corporation or association organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific or educational purposes." This magical provision locked up the riches of the super wealthy for all of their foundations were specifically designed to qualify under one or more of these categories.

    Within a few years, President Woodrow Wilson would hijack the income tax to pay for WWI. He would tax the very wealth at 67% and then up to 77%. On April 2, 1917, he stood before a joint session of Congress, requesting a declaration of war. This, of course, led to an even greater need for additional revenue. The debate over taxing versus borrowing to finance the war raged over several months across the country. Taxes would have to be increased. But what taxes should be imposed, and by how much? Once again the question was raised as to whether to broaden the tax base or raise the rates on the wealthiest. The War Revenue Act of 1917 imposed a 2% tax on individual incomes over $1,000 (or $2,000 for married couples), featured graduated surtaxes reaching as high as 67% (63% on incomes over $1 million and 67% on incomes over $2 million), and increased a variety of excises and duties (including on automobiles). It also added an additional tax of 4% to the existing corporate income tax. Revenue grew exponentially. In the years prior to 1917, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) took in an average of about $281 million. In the years following the War Revenue Act of 1917, the average was $2.78 billion.... ten times the amount of tax revenue!

    The Agency grew dramatically; it had to. The number of income tax returns that were filed after the Act of 1917 increased by over 1000%.

    In his famous "Politics is Adjourned" address to a joint session of Congress on May 27, 1918, President Wilson

    made a strong pitch for more revenues. He urged: "Our financial program must sustain it to the utmost. Our financial program must no more be left in doubt or suffered to lag more than our ordnance program or our ship program, or our munitions program or our program for making millions of men ready." In defense of the new taxes requested on war profits, he said the American people were not just willing to send their men to possible death overseas, but "to bear any burden or undergo any sacrifice" to win the war including taxes. "We need not be afraid to tax them, if we lay taxes justly." If the American people know that the burden is being distributed equally, he went on, "they will carry it cheerfully and with a sort of solemn pride." Wilson made it sound almost as if Americans were actually seeking a tax increase in order to feel the joy of sacrificing their hard earned money for a righteous cause.

    And so, the Revenue Act of 1918 (which actually passed in early 1919) increased taxes further. Corporations were given an exemption of $2,000, but rates were raised to 12% on net taxable income and the surcharge on the highest incomes was increased to 77%. The income tax now occupied a central place in the federal revenue system. In 1916, income taxes had been providing 16% of federal revenue, but from 1917 to 1920, that percentage ranged as high as 58%. The tax was now a pillar of federal finance. Still, however, it remained a narrow levy on the American people. In 1920, only 5.5 million returns showed any tax due.

    By 1919, there was a clear and broad consensus that held that steep wartime tax rates were unsustainable. Even Wilson himself finally agreed, and in his State of the Union that year, he suggested the possibility of reducing taxes. A series of tax cuts (called Mellon tax cuts, for Andrew Mellon, the Treasury Secretary at the time) began in 1921, as legislators from both parties set about revising the wartime tax system. In the end, the tax cuts in the Revenue Act of 1921 were generally a disappointment for everyone and actually included a hike in the corporate tax rate.

    Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, using the excuses of depression and war, permanently enlarged the income tax. Under Hoover, the top rate was hiked from 24 to 63%. Under Roosevelt, the top rate was again raised - first to 79% and later to 90%. [If he had his way, in 1941, a 99.5% marginal tax rate of 99.5% would have been imposed on all incomes over $100,000. That was his proposal. After that proposal failed, Roosevelt issued an executive order to tax all income over $25,000 at the astonishing rate of 100%. Congress later repealed the order, but still allowed top incomes to be taxed at a marginal rate of 90%].

    It was one thing to impose taxes but another to collect them. The collection process was greatly facilitated in 1943 by a device created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to pay the costs of WWII. It was the tax withholding provision, also called "withholding from wages and salaries." In other words, income tax would be collected at the source - collected at the payroll window before it was paid to the taxpayer. Economists point out that this device, more than any other single factor, shifted the tax from its original design as a tax on the wealthy to a tax on the masses - mostly the middle class.

    In 1946, Beardsley Ruml, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, wrote an article in American Affairs in which he explained the real function of the income tax. The article was entitled "Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete." Ruml theorized that with the Federal Reserve, an institution and mechanism were in place to provide the federal government with a constant and virtually unlimited flow of dollars. That, of course, is inflationary, so Ruml believed that income taxes served the purpose of dampening inflation by lowering demand, a measure achieved by reducing the purchasing power of the masses by taking money out of their paychecks.

    That was but one purpose of taxation, according to Ruml. The other was the redistribution of wealth from one class of citizens to another. Though done under the banner of social justice and equality, the real purpose was to supplant the decisions of a free people in a free market with the rule of the masters of a planned economy. As Ruml put it in his own words:

    "The second principal purpose of federal taxes is to attain more equality of wealth and of income than would result from economic forces working alone. The taxes which are effective for this purpose are the progressive individual income tax, the progressive estate tax, and the gift tax. What these taxes should be depends on public policy with respect to the distribution of wealth and of income. These taxes should be defended and attacked in terms of their effect on the character of American life, not as revenue measures."

    T. Coleman Andrews, who served as Commissioner of the IRS for nearly 3 years during the early 1950s, made the following remarks after his resignation in 1955:

    "Congress, in implementing the Sixteenth Amendment, went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.

    The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.

    The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.

    The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.

    [As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.]

    The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.

    I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."

    Taxation today is clearly used as a scheme of wealth distribution. In his bid for the presidency in 2008 and again in 2012, Obama talked about increasing taxes on the wealthy. His favorite line was: "We can restore the American dream where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules." He was referring to some sort of "advantage" that those who work hard and earn more money have over those who don't have much. Even Joe Biden, in 2009, urged the wealthy to pay more in taxes, to "do their patriotic duty." And as we see, what President Obama wasn't willing to do outright (raise taxes on the wealthy) because of political backlash, he did deviously. Obamacare contains a whole host of new taxes, only a few of which apply to middle-class Americans.

    Under what notion of fairness is it OK for people to be relieved in their economic "discomfort" by using the funds that taxpayers have to work 1/3 of the year for and then surrender to the government? Under what notion of fairness is it OK for people can be relieved in their decisions not to become educated, seek training, or look for work by simply living off the finances that taxpayers have to work 1/3 of the year for and then surrender to the government? Under what notion of fairness is it OK for people to have lots of children without adequate ability to provide for them while the funds to raise them come from taxpayers who take money from their own families (affecting their own decisions to have more children) and who have to work 1/3 of the year for and then surrender to the government? President Obama should not surrender the American Dream of one segment of society to serve the dreams of another segment.

    Audits for Enemies -

    FDR became the first president to practice on a large scale what James Madison called "the spirit of party and faction" and what Justice Stephen Field called the "war of the poor against the rich." With a steeply progressive income tax in place, Roosevelt used the federal treasury to reward, among others, farmers (who were paid not to plant crops), silver miners (who had the price of their product artificially inflated), and southerners in the vote-rich Tennessee Valley (with dams and cheap electricity). In the 1936 presidential election, Senator Hiram Johnson (D-CA), a Roosevelt supporter, watched in amazement as the President mobilized "the different agencies of government" to "dole out subsidies for votes." In other words, he was using government funding to ultimately serve his re-election. Johnson calculated: "He started out with probably 8 million votes bought. The other side will have to buy their votes one by one, and they cannot hope to match his money." In that campaign, Roosevelt defeated the Republican Alf Landon by an electoral vote of 523 - 8.

    The flip side of rewarding supporters was investigating political opponents. It started with an investigation of Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, who had threatened to run for president against Roosevelt. Next came an audit of William Randolph Hearst, whose newspaper empire strongly opposed Roosevelt for president in 1936. Moses Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, criticized the New Deal and vehemently opposed Roosevelt's re-election campaign in 1936 and 'coincidently,' became a target of a full-scale audit the following year (which was followed by a prison term). But perhaps no one was harassed more aggressively than Andrew Mellon, a powerful Republican and former Treasury Secretary. Remember it was Andrew Mellon who fought so hard to reduce the federal income tax rate, both for individuals and corporations. The Roosevelt administration tasked the IRS and an army of tax inspectors and prosecutors to scrutinize Mellon's financial records, especially to find out whether deductions for his vast philanthropic activities amounted to tax evasion. Even after IRS agents found nothing irregular, the Justice Department pursued the investigation. Historians have found no documents explaining the Roosevelt administration's focus on Mellon, but a comment Roosevelt made about him in 1926 may offer a clue: Roosevelt dubbed him "the master mind among the malefactors of great wealth. A federal grand jury declined to indict Mellon for tax fraud in 1934. But the IRS was still pursuing claims against Mellon for at least $3 million in back taxes. Mellon's "tax trial" before the Board of Tax Appeals in Pittsburgh and Washington lasted 14 months. At a private meeting with Roosevelt during the trial in 1936, Mellon offered to build the National Gallery and endow it with his own collection. Roosevelt accepted the offer, but instructed federal prosecutors to make "no change whatsoever" in the government's position on the Mellon tax case (according to Mellon biographer David Cannadine). Mellon died the next year, and the suits, including any against his estate, died with him.

    The president's own son, Elliott Roosevelt, conceded in 1975 that "my father may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution."

    President John F. Kennedy - together with his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General - used the IRS to go after mobsters and similar types suspected of racketeering for possible tax evasion. But JFK soon expanded the scope of IRS investigation to include political enemies as well. In November 1961, President Kennedy turned to the IRS to challenge the tax-exempt status of "right-wing extremist groups," as well as fundamentalist Christian ministers who had been openly opposed him for president because of his religion - a Roman Catholic. In a move not made public at the time, the Kennedy administration established an "Ideological Organizations Audit project" within the IRS, which targeted conservative groups, such as the John Birch Society. In November, the IRS launched audits of 22 "extremist organizations," several of which lost their tax-exempt status, jeopardizing their fundraising.

    President Richard Nixon used the IRS as his own special gestapo agency. In effect, he re-directed Kennedy's "Audit Project" to target left-wing groups. After he took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff to mastermind what a memo called "all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations." More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted for tax audits because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling (a left-wing critic of the Vietnam War) and the far-right John Birch Society. Nixon went after quite a wide range of political "enemy" groups, including anti-war groups (and the churches and other nonprofits that sheltered them), civil rights groups, reporters, and prominent Democrats.

    Additionally, the IRS was also given Nixon's enemies list to, in the words of White House counsel John Dean, "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Luckily, as a result of Watergate investigation (1973-4) and, especially, the disclosure of White House tapes, many of these unethical, unauthorized activities became public. The tapes provided a direct line of accountability from the IRS to the Oval Office that was often missing in previous administrations. They provide unambiguous evidence that Nixon used his power to direct aides to use the IRS to get back at political enemies. In a taped conversation on Sept. 8, 1971, Nixon told his chief domestic policy adviser, John Ehrlichman, to direct the IRS to audit potential Democratic rivals, including Sens. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Edmund Muskie of Maine. "Are we going after their tax returns? I ... you know what I mean? There's a lot of gold in them thar hills," Nixon said.

    Article 2 of the Articles of Impeachment brought against President Nixon in 1974 charged him with "acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, to endeavor to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

    Bill Clinton liked to deny that he would ever use the IRS to target political and personal enemies. Yet the audits speak for themselves.. The list of women, and other persons who faced tax audits - some immediately after going public with their accusations of sexual harassment or rape (Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick), who alleged sexual affairs (Gennifer Flowers and Liz Ward Gracen), or who agreed to offer testimony in such cases (such as Linda Tripp), as well as persons involved with the Whitewater scandal - suggests a pattern of political retaliation. Even Bill O'Reilly was audited three times by the Clinton administration and the watchdog group, Judicial Watch, was audited as well. It was no wonder the IRS targeted Judicial Watch. The organization alone filed more than 50 lawsuits against the Clinton administration for improper targeting of individuals by the IRS, in violation of privacy rights and IRS policy. In a meeting with Judicial Watch officials in January 12, 1999 to discuss the audits, an IRS agent boldly stated: "What do you expect when you sue the President?"

    Under Clinton, the IRS was notoriously used as a tool to harass and intimidate. As was done by the administrations before him, the IRS was tasked with auditing a wide range of organizations that were viewed as hostile to the White House agenda. These included leading conservative publications, think tanks, and interest groups, among them The American Spectator, the National Review, the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the National Center for Public Policy Research, the American Policy Center, American Cause, Citizens for Honest Government, Citizens Against Government Waste, Progress and Freedom Foundation, Landmark Legal Foundation, and Concerned Women for America.

    IRS official Paul Breslan knew exactly what the organization was doing. And a memo was used to tie Clinton himself to the audits. In the memo, White House Associate Counsel William Kennedy is documented as saying that the IRS is "on top of it." In a speech on the House floor in 1996, Rep. John Mica (R-FL) said: "The fact is, the White House in this case misused the IRS and the FBI in an incredible abuse of power." During the Clinton years, conservatives used to joke back that if Clinton didn't have the IRS audit you, then you weren't a real conservative.

    And now we see that the Obama administration has used the IRS to single out and target Tea Party, patriot groups, and other conservative organizations in their applications for tax-exempt status. According to a House probe, for the past 18 months (although it is likely the abuse has gone back as far as 2010), the IRS used "inappropriate criteria" - that is, focusing on groups with conservative-sounding words or phrases in their name, such as "Tea Party," or "patriot - for scrutiny in their tax-exemption applications. As if that wasn't bad enough, IRS agents also misappropriated the information contained in the confidential tax returns of conservative organizations and donors to GOP candidates (such as Mitt Romney) and leaked it to political enemies, in violation of federal law.

    Conclusion -

    Glenn Beck summarized the Tax Code and the IRS rather well a few years ago: "The tax code is not meant to be read and understood by the people. It's meant as a shelter for those who've taken power from us, and a weapon of selective enforcement to be used against any who would dare to raise an opposing voice. The law is not for them; it's for you." I guess what we are seeing right now is this explanation being exposed for the truth that it offers. Beck continued: "Right now, at least a hundred thousand federal employees together owe a billion dollars in back taxes, and the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, himself is one of them. There is no reason why the person who runs the IRS, the congressmen who writes our tax code, including repeat tax cheat Charlie Rengal, or the CEO who has friends in the White House, should get a free pass when you and I must pay taxes and pay the consequences of our decisions not to do so."

    John Adams once said: "We are a government of laws, not men." Somewhere along the way, we've lost this fundamental truth.

    Also, somewhere along the way, the government has gotten off track in its goal of enlarging its powers and responsibilities. Of course, government couldn't grow without the financial resources to do so. First it created the Federal Reserve to print the money and provide the loans it needed and then came the unlimited ability to tax citizens. There is a fine line between taxation and plunder. What isn't such a fine line is that which is constitutional and what is unconstitutional. The Founders wrote our Constitution for the common man to understand. The average citizen was meant to read the Constitution and easily understand the bounds of government and its extent in his life. Again, transparency and simplicity are what is expected in a free society. Our Founders never expected the Constitution to be interpreted according to the whims and views of nine justices who too often have rejected the principles on which the nation was founded and have lost the ability "to see the forest for the trees" (meaning, they've lost the ability to see the most relevant points because they're too busy focusing on smaller issues that take their eye off the big picture). The pressure of necessity (the need for government to take control of matters) has often clouded their view of what government was instituted for.

    Our government is bloated because it is funding too projects not authorized by the Constitution. In addition to its constitutional responsibilities, Congress is taxing for unconstitutional purposes as well. State grants (to coerce financially what it can't require constitutionally) is an example. And this brings us to the current state of taxation, which amounts to plunder - legal plunder.

    Frederic Bestiat (1801-1850), the French economist who championed private property, free markets, and limited government, defined legal plunder: "Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. We have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole - with their common aim of legal plunder - constitute socialism."

    We know our federal government was able to sell its plan of progressive income taxation - its plan of legal plunder - on its promise to "soak the wealthy." After all, who doesn't look at the very wealthy and conclude that they have more than enough and that they won't miss millions of their dollars. The current administration continues to sell this plan as a "patriotic duty" and a "fairness" thing. Bestiat explained why legalized plunder is such an attractive plan by explaining the human nature behind its mentality: "Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.... It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder."