North Star Writers Group

I'm not sure Marshall knew just how right he was. The 16th Amendment wasn't passed for nearly a century after he spoke those prescient words, and surely other taxes of his day were destructive, which prompted them in the first place. But the income tax far and away takes the grand prize in the annals of destructive taxes. From invading citizens' personal privacy to injuring their personal liberties, from crippling the American economy to destroying the American family, the income tax has carved its way through freedom and morality like a runaway buzzsaw.

How did we get from an initial 2% tax on the wealthiest Americans to something that would make the Founders want to declare a second American Revolution? A little history:

Withholding -- This began during World War II, ostensibly temporarily, to make paying the higher rates needed for the war effort easier and faster. But as is always the case with government, there is no such thing as "temporary." As Ronald Reagan put it so well: "The closest thing to eternal life we'll see this side of Heaven is a government program." Knowing darn well that people would fork over many more dollars if they could not see it happening, withholding has allowed Congress to raise taxes exponentially above what they could have ever gotten away with if we all had to write a check every April 15. This is nothing short of a con job, and one we've fallen for willingly, what with our blindness to the fact that a tax return is really our own money all along. They're taking our property, returning a tiny portion of it, and we rejoice in the latter rather than being outraged at the former.

Benefits -- This term only exists because employers during and after World War II were trying to find ways to pay employees that wouldn't be subject to the income tax. Thus the beginning of employer-paid health insurance, first for the worker and then for the spouse and children. I'm sure this seemed innocuous enough at the time, but it has morphed into something so monstrous that our economic well-being as a nation, our individual liberty and the makeup of our society is at stake:

• First, the fact that a third party (the employer/insurer/government) and not the actual consumer (you and me) pays the service provider's bills leads inevitably to out-of-control costs. It flies in the face of human nature to pretend otherwise. Since individuals aren't responsible for their own bills, naturally they're going to demand the most expensive stuff. It's then left to the employer/insurer/government to assume the financial consequences and/or ration or deny coverage. Either way, they lose. General Motors is to the point where they are a health insurance provider that happens to make vehicles on the side, so swamped are they with the runaway cost of benefit obligations. Medicare's unfunded (and frankly, unfundable) liabilities are more than six times Social Security's – over $60 trillion dollars. None of this would exist if not for the income tax, as employers could have simply paid their employees a bit more and they could have, in turn, bought insurance for themselves on the open market, the resulting competition and responsibility for one's own bills keeping costs down. And then government wouldn't be involved (much less on the brink of impending insolvency) and GM would still be in the business of manufacturing cars.

• Second, since health care is about the consequences of one's choices and behavior, to allow any third party to pay those costs is to give them control over your entire life. After all, if they are on the hook for your "bad" choices, then they'll just have to make sure you don't make any. And in the process, freedom and liberty get annihilated. From smoking a cigarette to eating a cheeseburger, from riding a bike without a helmet to driving a car seatbelt-less, the authorities will be down on you like a ton of bricks just for exercising your freedom to live as you choose (which, by definition, includes choosing poorly), even if you are hurting no one but yourself. You don't really think Hillary is so determined to force socialist medicine on America because she really cares about your health, do you? Rather, it's the ability to control people she's after. Getting someone else to pay a few of your bills for you is absolutely not worth sacrificing liberty, and its concomitant responsibility leads back to the point above--paying one's own way rather than shoving it onto a third party. (These are really two sides of the same coin.) Without the income tax, none of this would exist; we'd all pay directly for the consequences of our actions, and could freely choose them as we see fit. Hopefully, this would lead to choosing a bit more wisely.

• Finally, benefits have been used to damage the basic unit of American life--the nuclear family itself. Under the auspices of getting equal health care and such, all sorts of other arrangements from unwed heterosexuals to same-sex relationships have been given equal legal standing. Whatever one's position on this issue may be, and wherever it may ultimately go, the fact is that it could never have started without the entry that the existence of benefits provided, courtesy of the income tax. Without the income tax, the free market could settle the whole thing. People would buy their own insurance, providers could offer policies tailored to unconventional familial arrangements, and the overturning of the legal applecart would've been much more difficult. So it is fair to say that the income tax has resulted in an enormous unintended consequence that none of its writers could ever have contemplated--its use as leverage to force radical social change on the American citizenry.

Still, withholding and benefits are but the branches of the poisoned tree. They are the lesser aspects of a greater truth. No one owns the fruits of another man's labor, or by definition that other man is his slave. That he may only take a portion is not the point. If he can take even the tiniest amount, he in principle controls it all. The only thing keeping him from seizing it all is the likelihood of revolt were he to try. The income tax is nothing less than legalized theft and indentured servitude. More than that, it is the de facto abolition of private property as we know it, since our belongings and possessions all come from trading some small piece of the money we work to earn for them. Perhaps the 16th Amendment can make this monstrosity legal and constitutional, but it cannot ever make it moral. In turn, it should not be a surprise that so many immoral ends were subsequently achieved, however unintentionally, by and through it. For, you see, the income tax is immoral in itself. And no immoral act can produce moral consequences. Thus, with its passage, the slide down the moral slope was utterly inevitable.

The income tax must be abolished, and the 16th Amendment repealed. The damage it has done is incalculable, whether the standard used is one of economics, freedom, or morality. In principle, it flies in the face of everything that America is supposed to stand for. And if allowed to continue to its natural conclusion, it will be America's ultimate undoing. Or to use Marshall's word, its destruction.

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