Archive: Opinions

Tax Day was Monday.  Now that you are past the stress of filing your income tax returns -- unless you applied for an extension -- I feel it is a safe to remark that the income tax was supposed to be a temporary thing, and at one point the Supreme Court ruled the federal income tax was unconstitutional.

That's right.  The IRS was created by President Abraham Lincoln when he signed into law a measure that created the tax and a created a Commissioner of Internal Revenue.  It was meant to pay for expenses related to the Civil War, and it was essentially a tax on the wealthy, as only those with an income above $800 had to pay the 3% tax (it doesn't seem like a lot, but most workers didn't earn that much in 1862).

Here is a news flash for our congressmen and senators in Washington, DC: the Civil War ended 151 years ago.  So why do we still have an income tax, and one that is so convoluted and politicized, and a taxing agency that is feared more than Sauron in Mordor and Harry Potter's He Who Must Not Be Named put together?

To be fair, the government repealed the income tax 10 years later.  But not before raising the tax a number of times.  In its first year the rate was raised to 3% on annual incomes between $600 and $10,000 and those with even higher incomes were taxed 5%.  Two years later the rate was raised to 5% on incomes between $600 and $5,000, 7.5% on incomes between $5,000 and $10,000 and 10% on incomes above that.  And, of course, Congress revived the income tax just over 20 years after it had been repealed, thus proving that there was a brief time in history when Congress showed restraint.

The fact is, nothing in bureaucracy is temporary.  Ronald Reagan famously said, "No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!"

It does seem that the conventional wisdom is correct -- once a bureaucracy is formed its primary purpose is to prolong and grow itself.  Wait a minute.  That sounds familiar... oh, right, that's what viruses do.  But no amount of fluids, rest or vaporizers will get rid of a bureaucracy, and they certainly won't get rid of the income tax.

While I am thinking of it, when you pay your taxes late you have to pay a fine.  Why do they call it 'fine'?  It's not fine with me.  And why is it called a 'tax return'?  You are not returning your money, you are paying it.  Unless they mean that it was printed by the government and now it is being returned to the government.  Of course if that is the reason, why print the money in the first place?  Why doesn't the government skip the fiction and just keep the money?

We hear much about government reform, especially in the months leading up to elections.  But we rarely see any.  And when we do the reforms are not long lasting or actually helpful.  Sometimes they make things worse.

Political activist and author Barbara Ehrenreich said, "It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses."

Civilization has collapsed.

Happy Friday After Tax Day!

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