excluding kids and dividing partners making joint tax reports.. there are maybe 150mill people making reports.
if you are spending 40 hours filling out a form, your doing it wrong.
..
back in the days of the wild west. there were no government public services making roads. it was farmers that marked their own paths. treading down the dirt as they all followed the same level ground towards and between towns
there were no public funded fire department. it was just a community spirit to have a bucket near their water source to fill up and run towards their neighbours burning houses.
what happens is when a community decide they want their local or national government to maintain something as a service to the citizens. the costs increase, and instead of making excise tax go from 4% to 80%, they decided that different things should be taxed instead. which started with inheritance tax, and land tax. and eventually income tax. so that people would pay a fair share to the services offered by government. without any one product or property having extortionately high tax.
WAR did really cause alot of costs and thus debt. and that was the main trigger of income tax.
income tax. if left as a simple pay X% of income. is fair and just.
the issue is not in income tax, but in the loop hole laws and the exclusion clauses that let the rich get away with not paying their fair X%.
EG a poor person getting $10 an hour cannot claim their work break sandwich as a business cost. yet a rich guy having a "business meeting" every day at noon with his wife he employed as his personal assistant can claim their lunch as a business cost and get tax deductions on many things attached to the lunch.
EG in the UK government leader during covid was not having breakfasts or parties with friends and family. he was having "business meetings" with employees/assistants (who just happen to be friends and family socialising). thus he used some tax loopholes to pay for food and drink and also lockdown rule loophole to not break the isolation rules. something the por, common person would not get away with.
Topic: The 16th Amendment: How the U.S. Federal Income Tax Became D.C.'s Weapon (Read 74 times)
December 29, 2021, 06:47:03 PM
December 27, 2021, 03:24:12 PM
The American Revolution was sparked in part by unjust taxation. After all, the colonists in Boston rebelled against Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” and summarily tossed English tea into the harbor in protest in 1773.
Nowadays Americans collectively spend more than 6 billion hours each year filling out tax forms, keeping records, and learning new tax rules according to the Office of Management and Budget. Complying with the byzantine U.S. tax code is estimated to cost the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually – time and money that could otherwise be used for more productive activities like entrepreneurship and investment, or just more family and leisure time.
The majority of these six billion hours sacrificed by Americans to Washington each year goes to complying with a tax that didn’t even exist until 100 years ago – the federal income tax.
Worse still, this tax has become a political weapon for Washington to incentivize certain activities (home ownership, charitable giving, etc.) and to punish others. It’s a tax that follows Americans wherever they go in the world, and it’s one that was originally sold to the American people by President Woodrow Wilson as a means of “soaking the rich” during the so-called Gilded Age.
How did a country that was founded on the concept of limited government come to embrace such a draconian policy? And what does it say about Washington that tax reform has become synonymous with class warfare and corporate lobbyists?
Read on to learn the history of the 16th Amendment – which authorized the federal collection of an income tax – and how that power has ultimately meant the growth of Washington at the expense of just about everyone else.
Early Attempts to Implement an Income Tax
Could you imagine a time in the U.S. when roads were being paved, there was zero national debt, and the federal government was completely operational – all without income taxes? This may sound like a Libertarian fantasy, but it’s actually an image of the America of yesteryear. Before the advent of the income tax, the U.S. government relied exclusively on tariffs and user fees to finance operations.
Unsurprisingly, operations were much smaller compared with today’s extravagant government programs like welfare, social security, and subsidies. But even though spending was more conservative during the Republic’s early years, certain political events motivated the government to consider more direct ways of reaching into the pockets of its citizens.
One of these political events was the War of 1812. This war may have inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner" as he famously watched the rockets red glare over Fort McHenry, but it was also straining our fiscal resources and the war effort needed to be financed.
Enter the idea of a progressive income tax – based on the British Tax Act of 1798 (which should have been our first warning). Fortunately for the time, the War of 1812 came to a close in 1815, and the discussion of enacting an income tax was tabled for the next few decades.
Ever so stubborn, progressive individuals were hell-bent on enacting income taxes, and they eventually found a way to do this at a local and state level. In time, they would reignite a new movement for the adoption of the federal income tax.
State Versions of the Income Tax
With state governments increasingly embarking on public infrastructure projects and introducing compulsory public education, the money for these programs had to come from somewhere. For the income tax advocates whose hopes were dashed during the War of 1812, state income taxes served as a consolation prize. In turn, income tax supporters immediately got to work and started to chip away at state legislatures.
Continue reading The 16th Amendment: How the U.S. Federal Income Tax Became D.C.'s Favorite Political Weapon at Ammo.com.
Nowadays Americans collectively spend more than 6 billion hours each year filling out tax forms, keeping records, and learning new tax rules according to the Office of Management and Budget. Complying with the byzantine U.S. tax code is estimated to cost the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually – time and money that could otherwise be used for more productive activities like entrepreneurship and investment, or just more family and leisure time.
The majority of these six billion hours sacrificed by Americans to Washington each year goes to complying with a tax that didn’t even exist until 100 years ago – the federal income tax.
Worse still, this tax has become a political weapon for Washington to incentivize certain activities (home ownership, charitable giving, etc.) and to punish others. It’s a tax that follows Americans wherever they go in the world, and it’s one that was originally sold to the American people by President Woodrow Wilson as a means of “soaking the rich” during the so-called Gilded Age.
How did a country that was founded on the concept of limited government come to embrace such a draconian policy? And what does it say about Washington that tax reform has become synonymous with class warfare and corporate lobbyists?
Read on to learn the history of the 16th Amendment – which authorized the federal collection of an income tax – and how that power has ultimately meant the growth of Washington at the expense of just about everyone else.
Early Attempts to Implement an Income Tax
Could you imagine a time in the U.S. when roads were being paved, there was zero national debt, and the federal government was completely operational – all without income taxes? This may sound like a Libertarian fantasy, but it’s actually an image of the America of yesteryear. Before the advent of the income tax, the U.S. government relied exclusively on tariffs and user fees to finance operations.
Unsurprisingly, operations were much smaller compared with today’s extravagant government programs like welfare, social security, and subsidies. But even though spending was more conservative during the Republic’s early years, certain political events motivated the government to consider more direct ways of reaching into the pockets of its citizens.
One of these political events was the War of 1812. This war may have inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner" as he famously watched the rockets red glare over Fort McHenry, but it was also straining our fiscal resources and the war effort needed to be financed.
Enter the idea of a progressive income tax – based on the British Tax Act of 1798 (which should have been our first warning). Fortunately for the time, the War of 1812 came to a close in 1815, and the discussion of enacting an income tax was tabled for the next few decades.
Ever so stubborn, progressive individuals were hell-bent on enacting income taxes, and they eventually found a way to do this at a local and state level. In time, they would reignite a new movement for the adoption of the federal income tax.
State Versions of the Income Tax
With state governments increasingly embarking on public infrastructure projects and introducing compulsory public education, the money for these programs had to come from somewhere. For the income tax advocates whose hopes were dashed during the War of 1812, state income taxes served as a consolation prize. In turn, income tax supporters immediately got to work and started to chip away at state legislatures.
Continue reading The 16th Amendment: How the U.S. Federal Income Tax Became D.C.'s Favorite Political Weapon at Ammo.com.
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