Tax Honesty Part 1. The beginning

These are my own thoughts and some information here may not be entirely accurate, so check this stuff out for yourself.

Somewhere, sometime, someone got tired of dealing with IRS people, or asked them selves a question. Why am I paying the government a fee to do that which is necessary for me to live as a human being? Or they wondered about why they were paying so many taxes. The fact is the percentage of ones resources that went to taxation has constantly increased since 1900. The tax burden on the American people currently is somewhere between 40 and 70 percent, depending on where you live, and what your circumstances are.  When government takes more than half, its socialism. And we are NOT that kind of country.

One of the reasons our founding fathers came to this land was to escape the drowning amount of taxation and debt being placed on the common people in Europe. Being a tax protester was a good thing there, and it was welcomed here.

So the founding fathers tried to give us a system of LIMITED government. But it had to be funded, and that meant TAXES. Now they thought they had good ideas as to how to limit that power.  Article 1 section 8 clause 1 of the nations Charter is the tax power, and there are 3 other limitation clauses as well.

But the big controversy is the Income tax. And I think the founders missed this. And this is what Tax Honesty is all about. The miss application of our nations tax laws when it comes to income taxes.

Congress didn't even use income tax until the civil war. President Lincoln was the first to implement it to pay for the war, and that started the avalanche of litigation that is still going on today.

Many famous cases resulted from this era. Cases challenged the law. Some claimed income tax was a direct tax others an indirect tax, and all kinds of things. Slowly the courts worked it all out.

An Income tax is an excise tax, which is a tax that does not require apportionment, is not a direct tax, and must be applied uniformly through out the several states.

Then they argued what is and what is not an excise tax. And what was the excise tax power limitations?  Some of this is still being argued in court rooms today.

Then we have the controversy of the 16th Amendment. The "do nothing amendment". In legal circles it is clearly understood that the 16th Amendment to the nations charter, really is an unnecessary amendment as it does nothing. What it did was settle a legal argument without a court judgement. It settled the fact that income taxes are excise taxes. Period.

Since then the courts have ruled that the 16th did not create any new power of taxation. Nor did it change any of the existing powers or limitations of taxation, which existed at the time of its adoption (which itself is in question).

And yet today there are still people who will argue that the 16th gave congress a new power it did not have before.

The ratification of the 16th is in question because of the states changing the proposed wording of the proposed amendment. Furthermore since the building were records were kept burned down in a fire, we have no proof that the state of Virginia actually passed the Amendment.  But the historical fact is that Secretary of State at the time, Philander Knox declared the 16th to have been ratified and so it became law of the land.

In the mean time, our country survived on trade taxes. Duty taxes, imposts and stuff like that.  We had roads, trains, post offices, An army and an Navy. We even had schools.

It was this period of time, the 1900's to 1941 that major changes were happening all over the USA. Technology was moving forward in leaps and bounds. We had the new Automobile that was replacing horse drawn buggies and wagons. Candle lighting and gas lighting was being replaced with electric lighting. Improvements in building construction and ship building, and  manufacturing were all taking place, changing the face of American life.

Then World War 1 hit us and that changed us forever. Still we had a limited income tax on corporations, most people did not pay income tax. Then they started the Victory tax which was an income tax on individuals. It was voluntary. Now it seems that it is mandatory. In a way it is, but its application for being mandatory is limited, and the Treasury department is not held to any standard. This is why we have the mess we have now.