On the Other Hand...
by Jim Davies
The Left Pocket
It may sound crazy, after most of us have just suffered the appalling loss of about a quarter of everything we earned last year to the black money holes of D.C., but I'm offering you the prediction that within five years, the F.I.T., the Federal Income Tax, will be history.
Not many are saying that, even within the freedom movement. And I must admit, I could be out by a year or so. It could be as little as two years, or as many as ten. I doubt even the puppetmeisters in that City know themselves, for sure.
But "the fix is in"; the demise of this insufferable tax is inevitable. Nothing can save its life, it's terminally ill. Here's why.
1. It's Wildly Unpopular - even Congress is getting that message, or at least pretending to! Remember the "hearings" last year, when they called in some very brave IRS agents to testify behind screens to the outrageous way their colleagues bully sovereign citizens of this free country? The whole thing was of course a charade, a pretense that the Pols were doing something when they were doing absolutely nothing - but it does show they're worried.
Obviously, they cannot and will not just relax the enforcement powers of the Infernal Robbery Sydicate; if they did, their revenues would drop like a rock and then they'd be less able to buy votes and so less likely to get re-elected and so less able to steal our money and so less able to...
But the happy news is there; that there's a large number of Americans who are angry at being harassed and bullied by those thugs even while they are trying to carry out what they foolishly see as their "duty" to pay taxes. And when these Congressional attack dogs thus lose the respect of Middle America, their masters know they are heading for deep trouble, as the Titanic did for a 'berg.
2. It's Already Voluntary . I showed here a few weeks back that they have failed even to define the entity ("Income") they purport to tax, and that the nearest anyone has got (the Supreme Court) says it consists only of corporate profit, which none of us individuals have. There is much, much more where that came from, it's just the tip of the same iceberg on which the Income Tax will shortly founder; and more and more people are finding out.
Another well-kept secret is that there is not a single line in the Internal Revenue Code to say that anyone is "liable" for a tax on income, which means that all the hundreds of entries that specify in detail what shall and shall not be done by those who are liable have no application whatever to any real person; it's all a gigantic deception, built layer upon baseless layer over the last 80 years so as to con an entire nation into supposing it has to surrender a quarter of its income to a mob of thugs in Sin City.
Of course, if you file a 1040 and swear you owe some tax, that then gives the IRS attack dogs an excuse legally to collect it from you. But if you don't (or, better, if you file one with a zero in every space) they have no legal prayer.
In other words, the Income Tax is voluntary, and always has been; they just didn't like us knowing that - so perhaps the true meaning of "F.I.T." is "Federal Ignorance Tax." Now that the cat is fast leaping out of the bag, more and more people will stop volunteering. Hence, its predicted demise.
3. We Outnumber Them 1000:1. All that gross deception can be (has been!) sustained when only a tiny number stop volunteering; they can bring all their savagery to bear upon a helpless few. But that day is rapidly passing. The IRS has only 100,000 employees, of whom perhaps 20% or 20,000 are professionals able to support prosecutions. If it takes 6 man-months to prosecute a non-volunteer, their maximum capacity would be 40,000. I'm not sure, but I think far more than that number is already with-holding consent. There's one reason why not many prosecutions are now taking place. Another is that they sometimes lose the case, having encountered, despite their best efforts, an impartial, informed jury! So their days are very tightly numbered.
Beware: Sudden Switch
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, nobody whom we were paying to watch had seen it coming; yet in retrospect, it was inevitable, for the Soviet Empire had no price mechanism and so was utterly broke. Here too, the collapse of the Income Tax will, I believe, come very suddenly. Just when the number of non-volunteers grows exponentially, the ability of the IRS to handle the crisis will suffer meltdown, and the next week some pompous ass in the White House will solemnly announce that it's time "we" replaced it for the National Good.
With what? - a Sales Tax, of course! Didn't you listen, when Dick Armey flew that kite a few years ago?! - well, if we let them, they will switch in a heartbeat to grab our money going instead of coming, and take it from our left pocket instead of our right pocket. And that's why we have to have our ducks in a row and frustrate that move when they try to make it.
If they did it right, it could be made Constitutional, alas. The reason they never actually wrote into law their tax on earnings was that if they had, it would have violated a whole raft of Constitutional provisions - starting with Amendment 5, which says we can't be compelled to bear witness (like, on a 1040!) against ourselves. But I know of no such impediments to a sales tax. They could grab just as much money, and do it much more cheaply, and even do it legally for a change! So we really have to start some serious preparation.
In fact, there's so much serious preparation needed in what will probably be a very short time, that I'm strongly tempted to hope that the "Income Tax" will last a little longer than it probably can. Gee, talk about volte-face.
How might the resistance take shape? Ideas welcome (e-mail yours to me on jimdav@kear.tds.net) but my best guess is that people will buy and sell on the Internet, in unbreakable code, so leaving no trace for the taxers to tax.