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WE MUST END TAX SLAVERY NOW
by Jarret B. Wollstein
Out-of-control taxes and regulations are crippling America. According to current federal budget
projections, within 15 years the government will take 70% of your income directly in taxes. America
will look like East Germany under the Soviets.
IRS agents raided the Engleworld Learning Center near Detroit. Parents were told their children would not be allowed to leave until parents immediately paid any balance due to the Learning Center for the coming months. However, the money would not go to the Center, but to the IRS. A creative IRS official thought he had a great
way to force parents to pay the Center's taxes.
"It was like something out of a police state," Sue Stoia says. "They
were using the children as collateral."
Marilyn Derby, director of Engleworld, said, "Parents were not
allowed to see their children until they had signed an agreement with the IRS. It was a very scary
situation, like the Gestapo was here. Children were crying, parents were trembling. I told one woman
whose hands were shaking that she shouldn't sign anything she didn't want to. She signed anyway."
18 Elderly Nursing Home Residents Die
When The IRS Seizes Their Home and Kicks Them Out In The Dead Of Winter
During a freezing winter cold snap, the IRS seized all of the assets
of a nursing home in Toledo, Ohio. Unable to even buy food or pay an electric or gas bill, the owners
were forced to close the home. Eighteen of the residents died during the hasty relocation. When
Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) demanded an explanation from the IRS, he was told it was an
"extremely routine" seizure.
IRS collection agent Art Harris described the mentality of many of
his fellow agents:
"Some [agents] were vicious – they'd brag back at the office,
'Boy did I make that guy jump,' or 'I had that woman crying when I told her I'd put her on the street
with her kids.' One agent who bragged about padlocking some guy's business said the man was so upset
he asked, 'How do you expect me to pay now?' The agent said, 'I told him, Go get your wife to peddle
[herself].'" [Source: Art Harris, "The Tax Man and the Big Sting," Washington Post 4-16-89, p. F4]
Down The Government Sewer:
What Happens To Your Tax Monies?
These incidents show how far our government has strayed from its
original purpose of protecting our lives, liberty, and property. Providing basic government services
such as police, courts, and military defense would cost a fraction of what we now pay in taxes. Fifty
years ago, the US had an excellent court system and the most powerful military in the world, yet taxes
then consumed less than 5% of the average person's income.
Today, taxes are over ten times as high, and ninety percent of the
money we pay in taxes is wasted. Would you send $20 billion of our tax dollars to Mexico to prop up
the peso? Would you pay for inner-city schools that graduate students who are unable to read or write?
Would you pay farmers not to grow food? Would you authorize the Pentagon to spend $7,622 for a coffee
maker designed to survive a plane crash? Would you have spent billions to build up the militaries of
the Shah of Iran and Gen. Noriega of Panama? Would you spend $352,000 to study the mating habits of
the California kangaroo rat? Would you spend $17,000 so an artist could display a picture of Christ
in a jar of human urine?
Any business that spent money as irresponsibly as the government does
would quickly go bankrupt – if their directors weren't lynched first. But, as the Supreme Court
has ruled, government is not legally obligated to provide you with any specific service in return for
the taxes you pay.
Unlike legitimate businesses, only the government can legally force
you to pay for its programs, no matter how wasteful or outrageous. And there's no limit to how much of
your income the government can seize.
How Much Do You Really Pay?
According to the Tax Foundation, in 1994 the average American paid
22.4% of his or her income in federal taxes, plus 11.8% in state and local taxes – 34.2% total.
But that's just the beginning! Dr. James Payne of the University of
California found that in addition to direct taxes we also pay huge, hidden taxes including:
- Compliance costs - record keeping, monies spent on tax planning, computers and software
purchased to fulfill IRS requirements, etc.
- Enforcement costs - IRS audits, field investigations, service center corrections,
criminal investigations, litigation, and forced collections.
- Emotional, moral and cultural costs – families forced onto welfare, time and
creative energy lost figuring out how to avoid taxes, etc.
For every $1 we pay in direct taxes, we spend an additional $0.65 in
compliance costs. And even that figure doesn't include the cost of import duties, license fees and
other government regulations. For a typical U.S. family, the real cost of taxes and regulations is
at least:
Federal taxes 22.4% of income
State & local taxes 11.8%
Compliance costs 22.2%
Regulatory costs
12.7%
70.1% of your income is now consumed by government
Taxes Are Crippling America
Why are more businesses failing, why is unemployment soaring, and why
are more and more families becoming homeless? Two major reasons are skyrocketing taxes and destructive
regulations.
Taxes and regulations are destroying businesses. By the time
businesses pay income tax, payroll tax, capital gains tax, inventory tax, corporate tax, license fees,
IRS penalties, EPA fines, etc., etc., little or nothing is left to operate the business.
Taxes and regulations are destroying the middle class. Thirty years
ago, middle-class Americans could afford to buy a house. Today, increased taxes consume a sum
equivalent to mortgage payments. Both parents now have to work just to make ends meet. 15% Social
Security taxes make it nearly impossible to save for retirement. And state and local taxes make it
difficult for many families even to pay utility bills. Taxes keep poor people poor. Cash-starved
businesses can't afford to hire and train the poor. The working poor often can't even afford to feed
their families on what's left of their paycheck after taxes. Taxes make it extremely difficult for the
poor to start businesses. To operate a push cart you must pay a $7,000 license fee in Washington, DC.
A city "Medallion" to legally operate a taxicab in New York costs $142,000. Atlanta charges the poor
$50 for a license to beg for money.
How Can We End Taxes?
The first step is to reduce taxes to the levels of 50 years ago
when people could still afford to buy houses and start businesses. That
means cutting government spending with a meat axe. Here are four initial
cuts that would save over $600 billion a year - enough to immediately
eliminate every cent you pay in personal income tax.
Cut military spending by 60%. We're
now spending $279 billion a year on defense – almost as much as we did at
the height of the Cold War. We can cut military spending at least 60%
without jeopardizing our security by scrapping 90% of our 25,000 nuclear
weapons, eliminating four of the navy's seven fleets, and requiring
honest, competitive bidding for all military procurement.
– Savings: $167 Billion A Year –
Get rid of the welfare bureaucracy.
Former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon reports that 80% of the budgets
of welfare programs go for salaries of government social workers and other
overhead expenses. By phasing out the tax-funded welfare bureaucracy and
providing private, voluntary aid through churches and community charities
– we can cut welfare costs 80%.
– Savings: $160 Billion A Year –
Privatize the schools. Public schools are failing on every
level – moral, academic, and social. SAT scores continue to drop, violence is widespread, and
many inner-city schools look more and more like prisons. The solution is to privatize education by
allowing parents to spend their money on the schools of their choice that reflect their values. Since
government schools spend over $6,000 per pupil vs. less than $2,500 for independent, private schools,
this means we would get better education at half the cost.
– Savings: Up To $100 Billion A Year –
End Corporate welfare. According to the Cato Institute, some
129 federal programs now spend $87 billion of our money each year subsidizing big business. Here are a
few examples:
- In fiscal 1995, taxpayers spent $1.4 billion subsidizing sugar farming. 40% of this money went
to the largest 1% of sugar farms.
- Taxpayers spent $465,000 to help advertise McDonalds' McNuggets and $2.5 million to promote
Dole products overseas.
- Texas Instruments received $13 million to create civilian applications for military hardware.
Hewlett Packard received $10 million and Chrysler $6 million. We paid these companies to develop
military technology, and now we're paying again to help them figure out a way to sell it to K-Mart.
Corporate welfare should be eliminated now.
– Savings: $87 Billion A Year –
TOTAL SAVINGS: $514 BILLION A YEAR
End Tax Slavery Now!
As government consumes more and more of our income, the IRS and
state tax authorities act increasingly like criminal gangs. Violent confrontations with tax agents,
seizures of bank accounts and homes without trial, and lengthy prison sentences for people who can't
both pay their taxes and feed their families, are rapidly increasing. In 1992 alone, the IRS seized
3,253,000 paychecks, bank accounts, cars and homes without trial.
As historian W. H. Chamberlin states:
"One of the most insidious consequences of the present burden of personal income tax is that it
strips many middle-class families of financial reserves. [It] has made the individual vastly more
dependent on the State."
At the current rate of growth, within 20 years taxes will consume
every penny we earn. Long before then, we will all be living in public housing projects and eating
government cheese.
Taxation is impractical, unnecessary, and immoral. It is impractical
because tax-supported public services – from public schools to police protection – work
poorly, if at all, and are very wasteful.
Taxation is unnecessary because any service or product that people
truly want or need – from education to roads to charity – they can and will purchase
without being forced to pay. And taxation is immoral because it is based on brute force – the
threat of fines and imprisonment of peaceful citizens.
For 150 years, America got along fine without the personal income tax,
sales tax, profits tax, and most other taxes. We need to end taxes now, before tax slavery ends America.
Jarret B. Wollstein is a member of ISIL's Board of Directors and a founder of the
original Society for Individual Liberty
This pamphlet was revised in November 1997. It is part of ISIL's educational pamphlet series. Click here for the full index of pamphlets online.
All ISIL educational pamphlets are available in hard copy for 5¢ each. Click here for the ISIL Store.
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