Not long ago, I did some software development for a business owner whose firm provided a support service to the insurance industry. The service he provided was one that reduced the costs involved in determining the level of risk an applicant for homeowners’ insurance represents to the insurer. Among his talents, he was expert at promoting his services to insurance brokers and salesmen. One of the statements he relied upon to underscore the value of his service was the title of this piece.
Legitimately earned money as the rightful property of its owner? What a concept! Perhaps you recall that that concept was challenged not too long ago. But my customer was serious about it. His customers took him seriously – and he delivered for them.
President Trump has unflinchingly declared his desire to do away with the income tax:
[Gateway Pundit Reporter Jordan] Conradson: President Trump has spoken about replacing income tax with tariff revenue. Especially with all this waste, fraud and abuse that we’re seeing cut, is that a possibility?
[Economic Advisor Kevin] Hassett: Absolutely, and in fact, if you think about the China tariff revenue that we’re estimating is coming in from the 10% that we just added, plus the de minimis thing, then it’s between 500 billion and a trillion dollars over 10 years is our estimate. And that’s something that is outside of the reductions that markets are seeing through the negotiations up on the Hill. And so we expect that the tariff revenue is actually going to make it much easier for Republicans to pass a bill, and that was the President’s plan all along.
The mind reels, especially when one factors in what that would mean for the most disliked of all federal agencies:
Hold on, patriots! Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dropped the bombshell today: the Trump administration plans to abolish the IRS, that nest of leftist bureaucrats squeezing decent Americans dry.
Yes, you read that right: Donald Trump, the champion of freedom, wants to rip out the Internal Revenue Service and replace it with a tariff-based system that makes foreigners pay for our greatness.
This is not a drill—this is the conservative revolution in action!
A pipe dream? Possibly. It depends on what’s in the pipe.
The income tax is not a new idea; it’s been around for more than a century. But for longer than that, the United States got along quite well without it. Hearken to the greatest of the Founding Fathers, the third President of these United States, Thomas Jefferson:
The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from reaching, successively, every article of property and produce.
Give that a moment’s thought: As of 1805, there were no internal federal taxes in the United States. Federal revenues came from two sources: tariffs and the sale of federal lands. That was after the Louisiana Purchase, too. But note Jefferson’s citation of how he did it: The suppression of unnecessary offices. Kinda like what the Trump Administration is doing, isn’t it?
So a functioning federal government without the income tax is possible. The U.S. remained free of internal federal taxes on its people until 1913. Moreover, for most of the post-Civil War period, the federal government ran a surplus.
The dream is intoxicating. Whether or not President Trump and his aggressive downsizing of the federal government make it a reality, it’s an ideal to be striven for – if you’re a private citizen. If you’re a politico, or a federal bureaucrat, it’s much less appealing. For the income tax is Washington’s chief way of enriching itself and its favored hangers-on, and of controlling us.
The income tax has justified an exception to the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. It’s also justified sweeping surveillance of every aspect of banking, finance, and investment. And of course, it provides livelihoods to many thousands of persons, both inside government and in the private sector. With the income tax and its reporting requirements upon us, there is no privacy in financial matters: a clear distinction between our money and our other sorts of property.
The possibility of jettisoning the income tax also holds out the possibility of regaining privacy in our financial dealings: two benefits in one package. And what enormous benefits they would be!
There would be a price. Import tariffs would raise the prices of imported goods. If other nations were to reciprocate with their own import tariffs, the revenues of American exporters would be reduced, with consequent effects on their finances and the incomes of their people. But we would be freed from the many impositions that flow from the income tax.
Once again, your money would be your money. What you choose to do with it would be your business alone.
After six decades of coping with the income tax and everything in its train, I can’t help but enjoy the dream, however unlikely its fulfillment. No question that from here to there is a road strewn with pitfalls. The assembled power-mongers in the federal government, to whom the revenues and surveillance privileges justified by the income tax are indispensable tools for controlling us, will not go down easily.
1 comments
Can we also repeal the 17th while we’re getting rid of the 16th? Or would an Article 5 convention be easier? I mean, YES, such a convention would bring up a whole wish list of proposed Amendments – balanced budget, protect the flag, Congressional term limits, etc. – but the ratification requirement doesn’t change (38 of the 50 States, either through Legislative action/majority vote or a State Convention called by that legislature).
I’d also like to submit for repeal the 26th Amendment, because the #TrustTheScience says that human brains don’t mature completely until the mid-20s, and we already prevent 18 year olds from doing many other things that require “adult” status (read: 21 years of age), such as buying alcohol/tobacco, etc. The argument at the time was that the kids were being drafted into a war they had no political say in, but with the elimination of the military draft, that conflict no longer applies. I would also argue for rules similar to Twain’s Curious Republic of Gondour, where everyone gets a vote, but educated and financially successful men get more votes.