Income Tax

Assertion: The United States Tax Code should be simplified; taxes should be paid in proportion to income level; and every American citizen should pay taxes. A flat Income Tax should be implemented, or a national sales tax should replace the Income Tax.

Why This Is Important: The current tax code is complex, convoluted, and mind-numbingly long, running to over 1,000 pages. The “progressive” tax scheme currently employed is, in fact, oppressive and unfair. Furthermore, the more progressive it gets, the less effective it is: When you raise taxes on upper-income earners, and lower taxes on the low- and middle-income earners, you will see huge revenue losses from both accounts. The top earners will simply restructure their income to report less of it – think of 401(k)s, IRAs, Keough plans, itemized deductions, lifetime gifts, charitable gifts, trusts, tax free bonds, and all sorts of deferred income compensation plans – while the bottom 75% will pay less in taxes as a result of the reduced rate.

Taxes are a fact of life, and no rational person will complain about paying them as long as they are fair and everyone else is helping to pull the load. However, based on the latest available tax data, from 2005, the richest 1% of Americans pay about 39% of all income taxes collected. If we look at the top 5% of earners, we see that they paid about 60% of all taxes. Overall, the top 10% of taxpayers are responsible for 70% of all tax revenue. On the other hand, the bottom half of all American households account for just 3% of tax revenue, with roughly 122 million Americans -- 44 percent of our population -- having no tax liability whatsoever. This particular demographic group, therefore, “has no skin in the game,” and therefore have no sense of being a contributing member of their society. Instead, their worth as a citizen is devalued and in its place is rooted a sense of entitlement.

Using the U.S. tax code to redistribute wealth among citizens - taking money from one particular group of people for the expressed purpose of redirecting it to another group of people - is wrong; it is immoral, it is unjust, and it is un-American. Saying “We are going to tax cigarettes, and use that money to pay for children’s healthcare,” is but one example of our Congress trying to use the U.S. Tax Code as a means toward socialistic ends. The United States of America was not founded as, nor ever intended be modeled on, a socialist society. Article IV, Section IV of our Constitution avows that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” Those who seek to break that promise should be reminded of that fact at the ballot box.

Constitutional Basis: Amendment XVI gave the Congress broad powers to “lay and collect taxes on income.”

Quote: "How can there possibly be liberty and justice for all, when, in the name of justice, people claim rights to income, food, housing, education, health care, transportation, ad infinitum? We can't. Positive rights to receive such things, absent an obligation to earn them, must violate others' liberty, by taking some of their income without their consent. They are really just wishes, convertible into benefits for some only by employing the government to violate others' rights not to have what is theirs taken." – Gary Galles