Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: Kill the Federal Income Tax
By Matthew Thompson
University Chronicle, St. Cloud State U.
August 11, 2008

I could have gone with the intellectual term "abolish" in referring to the Federal Income Tax but that term does so little justice.

The Income Tax is an obtrusive and counter productive monster than needs to be slain. It needs to be torn down and spit on in the same manner as our revolutionary ancestors and founders scoffed at the prospect of the stamp act or paying a tax on tea imported from England.

Economic freedom is at the very core of what it means to be an American. A thorough reading of the Constitution, current Supreme Court precedent, and a literal interpretation of the IRS's own codes suggest no legal basis for this type of tax on the American people.

However, despite its illegality, which should be sufficient reason to kill it, as a practical matter, it makes sense. The dirty little secret is that there is no law requiring the average American to pay taxes on income received for labor. Conventional wisdom is nothing of the sort.

This tax rests on a principle that has been repudiated countless times. This premise is that the government owns you and everything you produce.

Let me tell you fellow patriots, this is not the cause of freedom or liberty. Today the government claims rights to between 10 percent and 35 percent of American citizens' income.

We are fast approaching difficult times and an economic institutional analysis discerning the values of different types of systems of revenue collection is becoming more and more necessary as we allow our leaders to drag the richest country in the world into enormous debt. Everyone knows what happens on a personal level, if debt becomes unmanageable, and the same is true of government.

Currently the Income Tax collects 1.1 trillion dollars in revenue for the federal government. Without this revenue how would they pay for the necessary services we have come to expect from our government?

Proponents of the crumbling status quo that is the Income Tax claims eliminating the tax is absurd and suggest that our entire system can not exist without this tax. How would we pay the costs of a 3 trillion dollar war in Iraq? Or how could we afford to send hundreds of billions of taxpayer money and weapons systems to foreign nations in the form of federal aid?

Interestingly, they always fail to mention the fact that if we could eliminate the 1.1 trillion dollars plundered from us, governmental revenue would equal the levels of revenue in 1995. Does anyone remember the relative peace, economic stability, and surplus of 1995? Oh how terrible it was!

President Bush recently borrowed money from China in order to give the American people a rebate stimulus check which was supposed to give the economy a "shot in the arm" and fix our deep seeded problems. This boost was short lived and short sighted.

Imagine the recovery this economy could make if Americans were allowed to keep their entire income and spend it as they see fit in their own neighborhoods instead of sending it through the most wasteful bureaucracy on the planet to pay for things in foreign economies. Imagine the prospect of having a chance to keep up with the terrible rise in food and energy prices which are being caused by our excessive borrowing, inflationary monetary policies, and corrupt and immoral tax system if only we could kill the Federal Income Tax.

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