Sixteenth Amendment-Income Taxes

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."


In my opinion, the sixteenth amendment was the first sign of a national debt in the United States. After the civil war there was the question of, "Who is going to pay for the damages done?". The government was not yet into the business of making, or in our case today borrowing, money. Therefor it was left to the people to pay for the debt. By using an income tax the government had the ability to tax the people who actually had money rather than making a futile attempt at collecting from the poor. I think this amendment is very broad for a reason. The government had not decided exactly how this would work so they needed the freedom to implement a plan and then change it as issues came up. Today however there is a vast amount of tax code that directly describes how much and when taxes are collected. One small idea turned into one of the most complicated ordeals that Americans have to face every April.





My Opinion: I chose this video because it shows just how little our own government knows about the Constitution. The Commissioner of the IRS is asked a direct question of, "What law requires citizens to pay taxes?", and couldn't even answer. They dodged around the question citing their website and court cases when all they had to do it say, the sixteenth amendment. The sixteenth amendment is not hard to understand. It is very straight forward in its language stating that the federal government has the right to levy taxes on incomes. This means exactly what it says. I could understand if they asked about specific IRS codes or legislation that has to do with the percent you have to pay but this was not the case. To answer the question of the New York Times reporter, who should have known as well, the sixteenth amendment is the law that requires all citizens to pay taxes on their income.



Where Is Freedom in the Income-Tax Debate?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, September 2000

The debate over income-tax cuts between George W. Bush and Al Gore reflects how far Americans have plunged in their understanding of what it means to be free. If elected president, Bush proposes to cut income taxes by $1.3 trillion. Gore is calling the plan "a tax cut for the rich" and has proposed his own $500 million tax cut that purports to target the American middle class. The squabble over the details obscures the real issue that the American people should be reflecting upon-the meaning of human freedom.

When the Constitution called the federal government into existence in 1787, it failed to provide it with the power to levy taxes on income. This was not an oversight. It was commonly understood that freedom entailed the absolute right to keep everything you earned. If government had the power to take the fruits of your earnings, Americans once believed, then your position was no different than that of a slave.

That notion had been implicitly expressed 11 years before in the Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson wrote that people were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Each individual is born with certain talents, qualities, characteristics, and handicaps. In order to sustain his life, he uses his own personal abilities to either produce the necessities of life himself or acquire them by entering into mutually beneficial exchanges with others. The product of these exchanges constitutes income to the people engaging in them. Thus, income rightfully belongs to the person who has earned it because it is a direct result of the value that others place on the abilities that he brings to market.

For example, consider an opera singer who doesn't know anything about growing food. She offers her particular talents in the marketplace-singing in operas-and people pay to listen to her. That money rightfully belongs to her because her voice belongs to her. She takes that money-her income-and enters into exchanges with those whose talents lie in producing and selling food, clothing, and the like.

What's important to note is the revolutionary nature of American society that lived and prospered without income taxation for more than 125 years. Throughout history, governments had claimed the authority to tax or confiscate any and all of a person's income. Historically, people didn't question this power because the common belief among the citizenry was that government was supreme and the citizen was subordinate.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution inverted that historical relationship between government and citizen. For the first time in history, people restrained the power of government to seize any or all of their income. Thus, for more than 125 years, the American people, unlike all other people in history, were free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and there was nothing their government could do about it.

Therefore, it is impossible to overstate the revolutionary significance of the Sixteenth Amendment, which was enacted in 1913 and which granted the federal government the power to levy taxes on income. From that point on, the relationship between government and citizen was inverted back to the age-old model of government as sovereign and citizen as servant. Because what mattered was not whether the particular percentage of the tax was high or low but rather that government had the power to set the percentage.

For example, let's assume that I have the power to force you to work for me and that I exercise that power by requiring you to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for me. You would acknowledge that our relationship would be one of master and slave.

But suppose I decide to be nice and force you to work only two hours a day for me, four months a year. Has our relationship been changed? Not in the least. You are still my slave because I have the authority to determine the amount of time you are required to serve me.

And this is the situation in which the American people are now mired. By having the power to set the percentage of tax to be levied on income, the federal government is now in the position of master and the American people are in the position of servant. Everyone's income is now effectively owned by the government and, because the government has the power to adjust the percentage of tax to be paid, what people are permitted to retain is actually just an allowance that the master provides the servants.

The tragedy is compounded by misconceptions about the nature of freedom. As the great German thinker Johann Goethe once pointed out, no person is more enslaved than one who falsely believes he is free.


My Opinion: I chose this article because it brings up the debate on whether income taxes inhibit the freedom of the American people. I agree with the author on his stance that they do but I also acknowledge the fact that it takes money to run a nation. In the beginning income taxes were used to pay off the debt of the Civil War and then for decades after to provide services to the citizens. With the growth of the national debt it now seems as though they go towards nothing. I don't think the debate is whether we should have income taxes I think the debate is on how they are spent and how the finances of the nation are managed. If the United States was not under a pile of debt and the people were taken care of, I don't think people would complain about giving part of their income to the government. It's when things are in turmoil and the people do not see the fruits of their labor that conflict ensues.