Tax Day: Time to Pay Your Masters

Christians celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ on Christmas. Jews have Hanukkah when they celebrate liberation from oppression. Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr when the Ramadan fasting ends. Buddhists have Wesak to celebrate Buddha’s birth.

But, for the bureaucrats and politicians salivating at the opportunity to spend our money, tax day is the hap-happiest time of the year.

Yes, tax day has been extended this year after the government shut down our lives last year. In their ever-gracious nature, your “patriotic duty” to submit to your masters has been extended to Monday, May 17 this year.

It’s the day when the government lets us know that we aren’t free in America. We send over our money and our private information every year to the Internal Revenue Service, but I prefer the Johnny Carson character, IRS spokesman G. Walter Schneer, who notes the real meaning of the acronym: It Really Sucks!

The end of the American Republic began over a century ago when, in 1913, the American people signed on to their enslavement as President Woodrow Wilson signed the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

Later that year, another travesty occurred with the 17th Amendment which effectively ended state sovereignty for good, and thus, the domino effect began as one by one American liberties fell down.

This wasn’t the first time an income tax was tried in America. In 1894, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act attempted an income tax and President Abraham Lincoln tried to implement one as well to fund the Civil War, but both attempts were ruled unconstitutional.

So, to get an income tax in place, a Constitutional Amendment was required which would require consent from the people, and wouldn’t you know it, the people submitted. And as Paul Harvey noted in his 1965 broadcast “Freedom to Chains,” the people didn’t even place any restraints on the government and how much it could steal from them each year. They just trusted their political masters who promised it never would exceed 2 percent.

And today, what do we get? We get a pacified public that celebrates when there’s tinkering around the edges of the tax code. Specifically, the Republicans love to sell tax “reform” as big wins, but it’s just another reminder that the government will never release us from our chains.

How about we end the IRS? How about we repeal the 16th (and the 17th while we’re at it) Amendment? How about, if we’re going to have a confiscatory income tax (which we shouldn’t have at all), we have a purely flat tax of that old promise of 2 percent, one that doesn’t require any deductions and everyone would pay?

No, no, no. The politicians can’t afford to do that. After all, they need to have those deductions so they can pander to their favorite special interests. They need the ability to spend, spend, spend like there’s no tomorrow, which is a bipartisan evil. And don’t forget, government spending itself is a tax as every last cent needs to be paid for by the taxpayers via direct taxations, debt or inflation.

As Dr. Ron Paul wrote in 2005: “The reform debate is strictly about politics and not serious economics. Both sides use demagoguery but don’t propose truly significant tax reductions. Both sides use the outrageous expression ‘cost to government’ when talking about the impact of tax legislation on revenues. This implies that government owns everything, and that any tax rate less than 100% costs government some of its rightful bounty.”

Paul added: “Government spending is the problem! When the federal government takes $2.5 trillion dollars out of the legitimate private economy in a single year, whether through taxes or borrowing, spending clearly is out of control. Deficit spending creates a de facto tax hike, because deficits can be repaid only by future tax increases. By this measure, Congress and the president have raised taxes dramatically over the past few years, despite the tax-cutting rhetoric. The real issue is total spending by government, not tax reform.”

Until the American people wake up, remember to pay your ransom if you don’t want to get locked in a cage.

“This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering… And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”—America’s third President Thomas Jefferson.

Content syndicated from TheLibertyLoft.com with permission.