By Mike Cronin

Another dysfunction that has corrupted the fabric of our freedom in countless ways is the confiscatory (i.e. to take) income tax system.  It is a dysfunction because it corrupts all of us.

Income taxation allows lawmakers and appointed bureaucrats to use the coercive power of government to take our property (i.e. the fruits of our labor) from us without our consent. That power then further corrupts our elected leaders by enabling them to “re-distribute” the collected revenue by spending it on government programs that favor their own constituencies. It has corrupted the citizenry by enabling us to obtain “benefits” that exceed the limits imposed on our government by its founding charter. Such “benefits” ultimately come to us from our neighbors’ pockets, which is property we had no right to. Our taxation system has essentially made Americans simultaneously into thieves and slaves.

Prior to the Civil War, there was no income tax. During that war, there was small tax of 3% on high incomes ($600-10,000 per year – a lot of money then!). It was abolished after the war. Congress flirted with income taxes a few more times between the Civil War and the turn of the century. In 1913, the government started taxing our income again, and it hasn’t stopped since.

Our founders went to war with Britain over far fewer provocations, including unfair taxation, than our own government imposes on us today. In fact, their grievances were listed on a single sheet of paper – the Declaration of Independence.  Could we catalog all of the grievances our tax laws generate today on even just one ream of paper? Our taxation bondage may not seem brutal to you, especially compared to what people living under fully tyrannical governments have to endure, but the proper comparison of our burden is not to what others have to endure elsewhere, it is to what it means to be “the land of the free.” If your government takes half of everything you earn, or more, either directly or indirectly, are you free?

Perhaps it sounds to you like I am advocating violent revolution, or that you break the law and dodge your tax obligations.  I am not.  As long we have the freedom of speech, we have the means to peaceably restore a bit of sanity to our system. One possible way is by switching from a confiscatory income tax to a national sales tax, such as that espoused by The Fair Tax proposal.

When it comes to income taxation, you may be happy to “pay your fair share,” or you might deny that withholding income taxes is any kind of slavery, but consider: If your property is taken from you by threat of force by  another, we call it robbery. When people are treated as property and forced to work for others, with no right to keep the fruit of their labor, that is slavery. Our taxation system is a whole lot of both .