Repeal and Replace – The Sixteenth Amendment

April 18, 2010

George Will has a column today challenging the wisdom, if such it could be called, of implementing a VAT, aka National Sales Tax, on top of our already burdensome income tax system. He advocates the repeal of the 16th Amendment, which, for the unlearned, made Constitutional the direct tax on incomes, from whatever source.

I share his sentiment. Income tax is nothing more than a seemingly bottomless cookie jar, continually raided by government at all levels until the total of labor’s fruits is commandeered by the state, for the “common good”. Since Wilson’s questionable tactics to force a last-minute ratification, we have become nothing more than serfs, being allowed to keep only such of our efforts as the ruling class has allowed. To show for it, we have an ever-more stratified society, with the bottom rungs paying nothing, and taking most, and the top rungs paying most, and denied everything. Adding insult to injury, what little we manage to accumulate despite ever more “progressive” (read, repressive) taxes on labor is then taxed repeatedly with state sales taxes, property taxes, present-value taxes, and then, if you still have anything left when you die, inheritance taxes on what you leave your heirs.

Legalized theft, nothing more. And, as long as they know they can tax us up to 99%, and still be within the bounds of the definition of involuntary servitude, they will continue to do so, and they will have no incentive to control their own profligacy or to ensure that our economy actually grows.

A couple of days ago, I was toying with some Constitutional Amendments I would like to see enacted. Here is the one on taxation:

1. The Sixteenth Amendment is hereby repealed.

2. Mechanisms of taxation within the United States shall be limited to taxes on transactions and other activities of commerce only, and shall not exceed an aggregate of twenty-five percent for all applicable levels of government and jurisdictions.

3. No tax, penalty, or fine may be imposed for not engaging in any form of commerce.

4. The article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution.

Note that there is no expiration on ratification, which is sometimes useful, as evidenced by the 27th Amendment, (Congressional pay raises) which was first proposed in the Eighteenth Century, and finally, after egregious Congressional abuses, ratified in the 20th (1992). Although, as evidenced by the 26th Amendment (18-year-old vote), which was ratified by 38 states in just 100 days, it is possible to get amendments enacted quickly, if the public is pissed off – er, motivated – enough. I would think that might just describe the mood of the nation today.

And this is just the first. In my next columns, I’ll present others I would like to see addressed.