FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2009
Income Tax: The Arrogance of the State
What does income tax represent? Let’s get past the silliness of it being the price of our liberty, the cost of living in a free country, or it being something we owe the less fortunate. Income tax is none of these; it represents something far less noble. Income tax represents the Government’s claim of first-right to your earnings. It is a claim on every dollar earned no matter where or how it is earned. Whether by salary, in interest, in the sale of stocks or personal assets, overseas investments, gambling winnings, or sale of property, the State will be there to take what it desires and leave you the remnants.
Nothing is overlooked and nothing is untouched. It matters not how long or hard you worked, nor the risks you faced, the stresses placed upon you or the pleasures you forwent to earn your success – it is not yours. The State will have its share or you will face the consequences.
Taxes, which should not be confused with fees for service or usage fees, represent the complete violation of the individual’s right to Property. A person cannot be said to have Property rights if someone can take their Property at will without penalty. Just as such a taking by one individual from another is theft, so to is it theft if done by the State.
The ability of the State to directly tax your income or your property is a declaration that you are “Property of the State,” and wholly subject to its control. Your Life, your Liberty, and your Property become fictions – they are no longer “these truths which we hold to be self-evident.”
A free People cannot coexist with a Gover
nment which is free to take everything it desires from them. A free People will freely give to Government what it needs to protect their Freedoms and Liberty. A great nation is not the product of a great State. A great nation is the product of a People free to pursue their lives as they choose and free to use what they earn to improve their lives and improve the world around them.