Ron Paul supports the elimination of the income tax and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He asserts that Congress had no power to impose a direct income tax and has introduced legislation to repeal of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified on February 3, 1913.
An income tax is the most degrading and totalitarian of all possible taxes. Its implementation wrongly suggests that the government owns the lives and labor of the citizens it is supposed to represent. Tellingly, “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax” is Plank #2 of the Communist Manifesto, which was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and first published in 1848.
To provide funding for the federal government, Ron Paul supports excise taxes, non-protectionist tariffs, massive cuts in spending.
Ron Paul discusses the income tax and the “FAIR Tax” in May 2007:
On November 20, 2008 Ron Paul said in a New York Times / Freakonomics interview:
“I want to abolish the income tax, but I don’t want to replace it with anything. About 45 percent of all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent — over half of all revenue — comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees, and corporate taxes.
We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990s. We don’t need to “replace” the income tax at all. I see a consumption tax as being a little better than the personal income tax, and I would vote for the Fair-Tax if it came up in the House of Representatives, but it is not my goal. We can do better.”
On May 7, 2001, Ron Paul wrote the following column:
The Case Against the Income Tax
Could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of its history. Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker’s paycheck. In the late 1800s, when Congress first attempted to impose an income tax, the notion of taxing a citizen’s hard work was considered radical! Public outcry ensued; more importantly, the Supreme Court ruled the income tax unconstitutional. Only with passage of the 16th Amendment did Congress gain the ability to tax the productive endeavors of its citizens.
Yet don’t we need an income tax to fund the important functions of the federal government? You may be surprised to know that the income tax accounts for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Only 10 years ago, the federal budget was roughly one-third less than it is today. Surely we could find ways to cut spending back to 1990 levels, especially when the Treasury has single year tax surpluses for the past several years. So perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.
The harmful effects of the income tax are obvious. First and foremost, it has enabled government to expand far beyond its proper constitutional limits, regulating virtually every aspect of our lives. It has given government a claim on our lives and work, destroying our privacy in the process. It takes billions of dollars out of the legitimate private economy, with most Americans giving more than a third of everything they make to the federal government. This economic drain destroys jobs and penalizes productive behavior. The ridiculous complexity of the tax laws makes compliance a nightmare for both individuals and businesses. All things considered, our Founders would be dismayed by the income tax mess and the tragic loss of liberty which results.
America without an income tax would be far more prosperous and far more free, but we must be prepared to fight to regain the liberty we have lost incrementally over the past century. I recently introduced “The Liberty Amendment,” legislation which would repeal the 16th Amendment and effectively abolish the income tax. I truly believe that real tax reform, reform that so many frustrated Americans desperately want, requires bold legislation that challenges the Washington mind set. Congress talks about reform, but the current tax debate really involves nothing of substance. Both parties are content to continue tinkering with the edges of the tax code to please various special interests. The Liberty Amendment is an attempt to eliminate the system altogether, forcing Congress to find a simple and fair way to collect limited federal revenues. Most of all, the Liberty Amendment is an initiative aimed at reducing the size and scope of the federal government.
Is it impossible to end the income tax? I don’t believe so. In fact, I believe a serious groundswell movement of disaffected taxpayers is growing in this country. Millions of Americans are fed up with the current tax system, and they will bring pressure on Congress. Some sidestep Congress completely, bringing legal challenges questioning the validity of the tax code and the 16th Amendment itself. Ultimately, the Liberty Amendment could serve as a flashpoint for these millions of voices.
Ron Paul introduced the Liberty Amendment in 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009. It is currently know as H. J. RES. 48 and has 2 cosponsors, Roscoe G. Bartlett (MD-6) and Don Young (AK). Here is the text of the proposed amendment:
Liberty Amendment
Section 1. The Government of the United States shall not engage in any business, professional, commercial, financial, or industrial enterprise except as specified in the Constitution.
Section 2. The constitution or laws of any State, or the laws of the United States, shall not be subject to the terms of any foreign or domestic agreement which would abrogate this amendment.
Section 3. The activities of the United States Government which violate the intent and purposes of this amendment shall, within a period of three years from the date of the ratification of this amendment, be liquidated and the properties and facilities affected shall be sold.
Section 4. Three years after the ratification of this amendment the sixteenth article of amendments to the Constitution of the United States shall stand repealed and thereafter Congress shall not levy taxes on personal incomes, estates, and gifts.’.
On April 30, 2009 Ron Paul introduced the Liberty Amendment with the following speech:
Ron Paul: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Liberty Amendment, which repeals the 16th Amendment, thus paving the way for real change in the way government collects and spends the people’s hard-earned money. The Liberty Amendment also explicitly forbids the Federal government from performing any action not explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution.
The 16th Amendment gives the Federal government a direct claim on the lives of American citizens by enabling Congress to levy a direct income tax on individuals. Until the passage of the 16th amendment, the Supreme Court had consistently held that Congress had no power to impose an income tax.
Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the Federal government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life. Thanks to the income tax, today the Federal government routinely invades our privacy, and penalizes our every endeavor.
The Founding Fathers realized that “the power to tax is the power to destroy,” which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government.
Income taxes not only diminish liberty, they retard economic growth by discouraging work and production. Our current tax system also forces Americans to waste valuable time and money on compliance with an ever-more complex tax code. The increased interest in flat-tax and national sales tax proposals, as well as the increasing number of small businesses that question the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) “withholding” system provides further proof that America is tired of the labyrinthine tax code. Americans are also increasingly fed up with an IRS that continues to ride roughshod over their civil liberties, despite recent “pro-taxpayer” reforms.
Madam Speaker, America survived and prospered for 140 years without an income tax, and with a Federal government that generally adhered to strictly constitutional functions, operating with modest excise revenues. The income tax opened the door to the era (and errors) of Big Government. I hope my colleagues will help close that door by cosponsoring the Liberty Amendment.
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The problem cannot be solved mathematically, because it’s not a formula that needs solving.
You can propose 10% or 17% in steps, and have a rebate or not, and decide which group of payers will pay what proportion and so on and so forth, but no matter what you propose it will never be enough. The solution will last less than 10 microseconds.
As a normal person’s reaction to having to pay for something is to avoid that something, people’s behavior will change – that the x part of the equation. But worse y, the thing you’re trying to solve for, will change (always increasing).
So, let’s say you think y = 20% x + 10%(x – poor) – rebate
x will become 70% of x as people reclassify whatever you’re taxing to something untaxable, and “poor” will increase as politicians buy votes just as they increase “rebate” part of equation. But,
worse y will become 120%y as new benefits are bestowed and new re-building ‘must’ be funded and so on.
You can never solve this problem with arithmetic.
You want proof? Study the sales tax rates levied by states all over the country. In fifty years they have more than tripled – the rates have tripled.
Why? Because governments become more inefficient over time, because they take on more projects to command more power, because unchecked, government always grows and becomes inefficient.
They will defend themselves by saying that prices have risen over the last 5 decades, necessitating the rise in sales tax rates. But if prices have risen, then so have sales tax revenues (since they’re tied to prices). It is a shell game.
Businesses either become more efficient or die to the competition. Government does the exact opposite. Bigger compensation packages for its “workers” more bonuses for its leaders and when you object the answer is always [remember the picture of Obama standing in front of policemen?] if we don’t raise taxes, we have to fire policemen and firemen. That’s Chicago politics.
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So, what is the answer if we can’t propose a mathematically balanced equation?
The underlying axioms are wrong.
Taxes are the negative feedback that the government sends towards activities that it should be trying to eliminate or reduce.
The size of taxes should be enough to offset the deleterious effects of the activities so taxed. No deleterious effects = no tax.
That doesn’t mean we need zero government, but baseline government should be cheap enough for every man, woman and child to pay for it. If that’s $25 a person a year, so be it.
And who will build the roads?
The same people who do now.
And who will pay for all the section 8 housing?
Nobody, except private charities.
And who will pay for free medical care for the indigent?
Nobody, except those who want to pay for somebody else.
The fundamental axiom that has gotten us all into trouble is emotion. We allow anger to permeate our laws. We allow guilt and compassion to run so many government programs.
Anger is exemplified by the 1965 Voting Rights act which is a Bill of Attainder against certain states and jurisdictions, finding them guilty of acts without proof and having those guilty parties prove their innocence not in court but to a political machine. Either the same standards apply to all states, all jurisdictions or the law is an attainder for previous crimes.
The fact that many television shows advertise “men finding themselves the wives of other prisoners” is a testament to the cruel and unusual punishment that script writers wish on convicts. Imprisonment is not a method to detain criminals, help them see the error of their ways, teach them to become good citizens and release them with assistance into the population when they can contribute and make up for their past transgressions. Instead it is a place of horror where they suffer in silence everyday and are assaulted by other prisoners, sometimes dying, and are considered incapable of rehabilitation to be shunned once released. Drug users, drug dealers, conscience-less murderers, rapists, tax dodgers and any other criminal are expected to endure the same madness and later rejection from society. Such anger!
Compassion is the most costly aspect of emotion in law. If you don’t want to increase the nutrition of a child in school or pre-school, you are a bad, heartless person: therefore, a new Federal program will send money to local schools but in exchange the Feds will be able to fine the school if they turn on the soda machine during lunch hour. We got suckered. We were guilted or shamed into acquiescence on the largesse bestowed upon local political machines with national strings attached.
The Feds have successfully warped our Reefer Madness just as they did with the Volstead Act into a Federal money-making enterprise for those willing to break the law, and those willing to enforce the law, while those willing to acquiesce will pay for it.
Free birth control pills, free abortions, free cellphones … lots of free stuff from the Feds – just vote for the man who brought you these things. Never mind who really pays for them.
Lastly, jealousy in the law. We can call it envy, if you like. But it is the resentment of success that powers the “99%” to pay back the “1%” by making them pay for anything they can force them to. The Senate was supposed to have protected the least populated and presumably less rich states from the more populated ones. But the Senate has become an emotion-ridden bunch of social justice advocates bent on destroying success and making us all equally impoverished.
To the extent possible we need to make it an “axiom” that the law be constructed without emotion.
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Mr. Paul’s assessment that Income Tax is the most degrading and totalitarian of all possible taxes is erroneous.
While the current income tax and the Federal Reserve are both illegal scams that need to be eliminated, the most totalitarian tax by all measurable means is property taxes.
I say this because property ownership is the primary right by which all of our other rights are derived.
Property taxes change the basic title of property from allodial or absolute ownership to feudal or property owned by the King.
In our case the State and Federal governments are now our Kings and the true owners of all our personal property, thus changing our legal status from sovereign citizen to subjects.
In so doing, all of our rights are now granted by government who owns the land upon which we live. The entire concept of inalienable rights which are God given no longer apply.
While we may have fought a revolution to win independence from the King of England, we soon just replaced one King with another.
»crosslinked«
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The second plank of the communist manifesto is A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. The 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913 (which some scholars maintain was never properly ratified), and various State income taxes, established this major Marxist coup in the United States many decades ago. These taxes continue to drain the lifeblood out of the American economy and greatly reduce the accumulation of desperately needed capital for future growth, business starts, job creation, and salary increases: http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/tenplanks.html
This amazing interview was done back in 1985 with a former KGB agent who was trained in subversion techniques. He explains the 4 basic steps Marxists use to socially engineer entire generations into thinking and behaving the way those in power want them to. To date, we’re currently at step #3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk&feature=player_embedded#at=29
Yuri Bezmenov: Deception Was My Job (Complete) full interview: This is G. Edward Griffin’s shocking video interview, Soviet Subversion of the Free-World Press (1984), where he interviews ex-KGB officer and Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov who decided to openly reveal KGB’s subversive tactics against western society as a whole. Bezmenov explains how Marxist ideology is destabilizing the economy and purposefully pushing the U.S. into numerous crises so that a “Big Brother” tyranny can be put into place in Washington, how most Americans don’t even realize that they are under attack, and that normal parliamentary procedures will not alter the federal government’s direction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4
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https://www.facebook.com/ronpaul ron pauls latest podcast, where he talk s about political tax enforcement and the justice department’s sneaky methods: http://www.podcastone.com/program?action=viewProgram&programID=401
Considering the type of power the IRS excises over the American people, and the propensity of those who hold power to violate liberty, it is surprising we do not hear about more cases of politically-motivated IRS harassment. As the first US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy” — and who better to destroy than one’s political enemies?
The US flourished for over 120 years without an income tax, and our liberty and prosperity will only benefit from getting rid of the current tax system. The federal government will get along just fine without its immoral claim on the fruits of our labor, particularly if the elimination of federal income taxes are accompanied by serious reduction in all areas of spending, starting with the military spending beloved by so many who claim to be opponents of high taxes and big government.
While it is important for Congress to investigate the most recent scandal and ensure all involved are held accountable, we cannot pretend that the problem is a few bad actors. The very purpose of the IRS is to transfer wealth from one group to another while violating our liberties in the process, thus the only way Congress can protect our freedoms is to repeal the income tax and shutter the doors of the IRS once and for all.: http://www.the-free-foundation.org/tst5-20-2013.html
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Where is Ron Paul now that the IRS has stepped in their own poop? This should be the time to jump and push to get rid of the tyrannical organization!!! Where are you Mr. Paul???
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The property tax discriminates against a class of people, property owners, and fails to tax many of those who use our roads, bridges, water, hospitals, schools, parks, and services. This includes people from outside of Cobb County who work and shop here, and illegal aliens,” . The property tax is also subjective, complex and costly to administer, with, for example, two identical houses next to each other potentially being assessed at different values due to foreclosures, short sales, or auctions. The property tax should be replaced with nothing. A sales tax is bad to. The first of the 10 planks of “The Communist Manifesto” is the abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes. this is done at the federal level through eminent domain and such agencies as the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Defense, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. At the local level, there are school and property taxes as well as eminent domain. http://www.oneofbook.com “Who owns your land if government can control what you can and cannot do on your land? And who owns your land if it can be taxed away from you?” “Who would want to buy your land once the government has decreed that it cannot be used for commercial or recreational purposes?” The federal government owns 30 percent of the land in the 50 states, or about 650 million acres. “I would personally like to eliminate the entire property tax for both individuals and businesses, because it would better protect our private property rights, broaden our tax base, lower our total taxes, and bring more businesses and jobs to Cobb County,”
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The property tax discriminates against a class of people, property owners, and fails to tax many of those who use our roads, bridges, water, hospitals, schools, parks, and services. This includes people from outside of Cobb County who work and shop here, and illegal aliens,” . The property tax is also subjective, complex and costly to administer, with, for example, two identical houses next to each other potentially being assessed at different values due to foreclosures, short sales, or auctions. The property tax should be replaced with nothing. A sales tax is bad to. The first of the 10 planks of “The Communist Manifesto” is the abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes. this is done at the federal level through eminent domain and such agencies as the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Defense, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. At the local level, there are school and property taxes as well as eminent domain. “Who owns your land if government can control what you can and cannot do on your land? And who owns your land if it can be taxed away from you?” “Who would want to buy your land once the government has decreed that it cannot be used for commercial or recreational purposes?” The federal government owns 30 percent of the land in the 50 states, or about 650 million acres. “I would personally like to eliminate the entire property tax for both individuals and businesses, because it would better protect our private property rights, broaden our tax base, lower our total taxes, and bring more businesses and jobs to Cobb County,”
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Dr Paul I also thinks that the income tax should be removed not only from America but from entire world. There are so many disadvantages of income tax. First of all as you said our privacy is destroyed, as the tax increases people decreases investing their money ultimately economy gets affected. There are many countries in this world which are free from income tax then why can’t the remaining countries can be?
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Dr. Paul what do you think about abolishing the property tax and replacing it with a consumption tax here in the state of Texas?
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taxes are systematic of the spending and how much the role of government ought to be. So we have to deal with do you want a welfare state do you want to police the world, do you want to place us as individuals then you need a lot of money so thats the problem. But if you get rid of all those conditions no matter which way you collect the taxes it would be so minimal. You could do it probably with a import tax or a minor sales tax but if you put a sales tax on and dont replace the income tax they would give us both. Ron Paul opposes the fair tax and a national sales tax. The big thing is that you got to cut spending. That is the issue. Spending by itself is a tax. First you tax you do not collect enough income on the income tax to pay the bills. Then we borrow a lot, and we are dependent on china. Isint it amazing that we depend on china to fight our wars. We couldnt even fight them without approval from China. But then we still dont have enough and then we print the money. And that is a tax becuase falls back down on the inflation factor. The higher prices affect the average people a lot more than it affects the wall streeters. A matter of fact where the money goes first into wall street or the goverment there only the money has more value when it goes down it has less value. So wall street does quite well and they have so much cash out there on wall street it is going crazy of course there well be a correction on that but goldman sacks paid out 16 billion dollars last year in bonuses and that is why that is a tax it is a transfer of wealth from the poor. We lived a great many years without an income tax.
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Q: [to Paul]: you’re from Texas. Does Gov. Perry deserve credit for Texas’ job creation?
PAUL: Not quite. I’m a taxpayer there. My taxes have gone up. Our taxes have doubled since he’s been in office. Our spending has gone up double. Our debt has gone up nearly triple. So, no. And 170,000 of the jobs were government jobs. [Perry claimed job growth due to tax cuts] but how do you pay for a tax cut? I think that’s the wrong principle, because when you give people their money back, it’s their money. You don’t have to pay for it. That means that the government owns all of our money if you look that way. So we have to cut the spending, and a good way to start, there’s a little embassy we built over in Baghdad that cost us a billion dollars. It’s bigger than the Vatican. That’s what’s bankrupting this country, and that’s the easy place to cut. That’s where we should be cutting. PAUL: Well, we should have the lowest tax that we’ve ever had, and up until 1913 it was 0%. What’s so bad about that? I think the question is generally misleading, because anytime you spend money, it’s a tax. You might tax, you might borrow, you might inflate. The vicious tax, that’s attacking the American people, the retired people today, is the inflation tax, the devaluation of the currency, the standard of living is going down, and you need to address that. And that’s why I want to make the inflation tax zero, as well: http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Ron_Paul_Tax_Reform.htm
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“I lean toward a flat tax. But I want to make it real flat, like zero.”
–Ron Paul, Jay Leno show, Oct. 31, 2007. Paul told Leno that the abolition of the income tax would leave the federal government with roughly the revenues it was able to gather in 2000, before the overseas adventures of the Bush years.
This seemed too good to be true, and it was. Without the revenues from individual income tax, the federal budget would shrink to the size it was in the early 1990s, not the year 2000. The discretionary share of the federal budget would dwindle to zero. All remaining federal revenues would be earmarked for mandatory entitlement spending such as social security–which Paul has said he would not touch–and interest on debt. The Paul campaign responds, “Policy wonks can go back and forth arguing over budget specifics. Dr. Paul’s point is that we can eliminate the income tax & fund a level of government from the recent past. Whether that year is 1995, 1997 or 2000 is irrelevant.” A: Well, a government program is too vague. What kind of a government program? If it’s appropriating money and trying to stimulate that way and spend more money, no, that would be the wrong thing to do. But a government program of a reduced tax burden, yes, that would be. I believe we’re in a recession. Over-stimulation in an economy by artificially low interest rates by the Federal Reserve is the source of the recession. It shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out what we should be doing, because we have a lot of problems: we have fiscal and monetary policy problems, foreign policy problems, and deficit problems. Where do they come from? It’s because we don’t follow the rule of law; we don’t follow the Constitution. If we knew and understood and read Article 1, Section 8, believe me this government would be much smaller, we would have a lot less taxes, and we could repeal the 16th amendment and get rid of the income tax. A: We have to cut spending. You can’t get rid of the income tax if you don’t get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you’d have about as much revenue as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn’t all that bad 10 years ago. There’re sources of revenues other than the income tax. You have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there’s still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn’t have it. Q: But if you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be? A: A lot. Q: Over a trillion dollars. A: That’s good. If you think that government has to take care of us, from cradle to grave, & if you think our government should police the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a foreign policy that we cannot manage, you can’t get rid of the IRS. But if you want to lower taxes and stop causing all the inflation, you have to change policy. I would get rid of the inflation tax. It’s a tax that nobody talks about. We live way beyond our means. We print money for it. The value of the money goes down, and poor people pay higher prices. That is a tax. That’s a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to Wall Street. Wall Street’s doing quite well, but the inflation tax is eating away at the middle class of this country. We need to get rid of the inflation tax with sound money. Not only is inflation the result of the political demands of special interest groups, the career desires of politicians, and the ill-conceived motives of economists, it was also clearly unconstitutional. Money of real value, gold or silver, was clearly intended by the Founding Fathers. If for no other reason, inflation should be rejected on the basis of morality. Inflation is taxation by deceit. Government deceives the people as to the tax burden, and who is bearing it. The working and middle classes are gradually impoverished, while the poor are ground further down. Wealth is transferred to the rich, from the hardworking and thrifty to the conniving & foxy. Monetary and economic decisions are increasingly taken from individuals and transferred to politicians, bureaucrats, and central bankers. To enforce the transfer, government officials accumulate power through legislation and regulation. A: Eventually they go into the private sector. Then don’t all leave immediately when the plan goes into effect. But what my plan does is it addresses taxes in a little different way. We are talking about the tax code. But that’s the consequence, that’s the symptom. The disease is spending. Every time you spend, spending is a tax. We tax the people, we borrow, and then we print the money and the prices go up, and that is a tax. So you have to address the subject of spending. That is the tax. That is the reason I go after the spending. I propose in the first year cut $1 trillion out of the budget in 5 departments. Now the other thing is that you must do if you want to get the economy going and going again is you have to get rid of price-fixing. And the most significant price-fixing that goes on, that gave us the bubble and destroyed the economy, is the price-fixing of the Federal Reserve. The most sinister of all taxes is the inflation tax and it is the most regressive. It hits the poor and the middle class. When you destroy a currency by creating money out of thin air to pay the bills, the value of the dollar goes down, and people get hit with a higher cost of living. It’s the middle class that’s being wiped out. It is most evil of all taxes.
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