Apr 15, 2021
It was Benjamin Franklin that said,
“in
this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” On this
episode of the Resistance Library Podcast, Sam and Dave talk about
the 16th Amendment, which implemented a federal income
tax.
The American Revolution was sparked in part by unjust taxation.
After all, the colonists in Boston rebelled against Britain for
imposing
“taxation
without representation,” and summarily tossed English tea into the
harbor in protest in 1773.
Nowadays Americans collectively spend more than
6 billion hours each year
filling out tax forms, keeping records, and learning new tax rules
according to the Office of Management and Budget. Complying with
the byzantine U.S. tax code is estimated to cost the American
economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually – time and money
that could otherwise be used for more productive activities like
entrepreneurship and investment, or just more family and leisure
time.
The majority of these six billion hours sacrificed by Americans to
Washington each year goes to complying with a tax that didn’t even
exist until 100 years ago – the federal income tax.
Worse still, this tax has become a political weapon for Washington
to incentivize certain activities
(home
ownership, charitable giving, etc.) and to punish others. It’s a
tax that follows Americans wherever they go in the world, and it’s
one that was originally sold to the American people by President
Woodrow Wilson as a means of
“soaking
the rich” during the so-called Gilded Age.
How did a country that was founded on the concept of limited
government come to embrace such a draconian policy? And what does
it say about Washington that tax reform has become synonymous with
class warfare and corporate lobbyists?
Listen now to learn the history of the 16th Amendment – which
authorized the federal collection of an income tax – and how that
power has ultimately meant the growth of Washington at the expense
of just about everyone else.
You can read the full article “The
16th Amendment: How the U.S. Federal Income Tax Became D.C.'s
Favorite Political Weapon” at Ammo.com.
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