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American
Workers Not Required to Pay Federal Income Tax?
August 03, 2007 by
Ryan M Dixon
Love it or hate it, you have to pay
your taxes, or at least that's what we're told. Today however, it may come as a
bit of a shock for many American workers to know that of all the taxes they pay,
at least one of them might be completely voluntary. That tax is the Federal
Income Tax.
Prior to 1913 there had been short lived appearances of a Federal Income Tax.
According to the website
Infoplease.com, "In 1862, in order to support the
Civil War effort, Congress enacted the nation's first income tax law. It was a
forerunner of our modern income tax in that it was based on the principles of
graduated, or progressive, taxation and of withholding income at the source." In
1872, the Federal Income Tax was done away with only to make a short come back
from 1894 to 1895.
It was in
1895 that the US Supreme Court ruled the Federal
Income Tax could not be law however, as it was not an apportioned tax, as is
required by the United States Constitution. Between that time and 1913, attempts
were made unsuccessfully by a small handful of private bankers to insure that a
Federal Income Tax became law despite the ruling. Then on February 3rd, 1913
they succeeded in one of their attempts.
The private bankers, comprised of John D. Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, and J.P.
Morgan (whos' likeness was borrowed for the popular Parker Brothers game
Monopoly) managed to convince then Secretary of State Philander Knox under
President Woodrow Wilson to issue a proclamation to the American people that 38
of the 48 states at the time (more than the three quarters required) had ratified
the 16th Amendment, making it law.
The 16th Amendment states, "The Congress shall have
power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without
apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or
enumeration."
It seems as though that would make the Federal Income Tax perfectly legal and it
would, had it actually been true that the 38 states had indeed ratified the 16th
Amendment. However... In 1984 a man by the name of William J. Benson began to
investigate the process by which the 38 states had ratified the 16th Amendment,
passing it into effect. After a year of going from one state capital to the
next, digging through their old documents what Mr. Benson found was that of all
forty-eight states, even if one were to ignore changes to the Amendment made by
various states (a power the states do not have), only two ratified the 16th
Amendment. Benson later went on to write a book called,
"The Law That Never Was". Some may find it ironic that
he was later found guilty for failing to pay his Federal Income Tax.
Still many might argue that, law or no law the tax brings in vast sums of money
which effectively contribute to the overall well being of things like our roads,
schools, military and so on. This would be a considerable point if indeed any of
that money were used to assist in the creation or maintenance of the government
infrastructure. Apparently however, when the
Grace Commission Report (page 14) came back to Ronald
Reagan at his request, it said of the Federal Income Tax that, "With two-thirds
of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what
is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal
Government contributions to transfer payments. (...) In other words, all
individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the
services which taxpayers expect from their Government."
Put simply, it appears we are being taxed on our wages and labor (though there
seems to be no law that was actually passed granting government the authority to
do so), then a good portion of that money goes missing, and what's left goes
towards interest.
"But isn't interest something I pay to a privately owned bank on loans received
from them?" Yes, and it's the exact same type of interest that is mentioned in
the Grace Commission Report. That is because the money in your pocket was
originally loaned to the US Government by the Federal Reserve at an interest
rate, the exact same way the bank loans you and I money at a particular rate of
interest. It may come as a surprise to many to learn that the Federal Reserve
collects interest on these loans the same way a private bank would, because the
Federal Reserve is itself, a privately owned bank. The fact that they
incorporate the word "Federal" into their banking institution title implies no
more authority than it does for the good folks at the "Federal" Express. This
would go to explain why you can't find the Federal Reserve or the Federal
Express in the blue pages (government listings) of the phonebook. Instead they
are both found
here in the yellow pages, or business listings.
The fact that the Federal Reserve is
a privately owned bank and not an actual federal institution may go to explain
the motivation behind the earlier mentioned attempts of private bankers to
convince people that the 16th Amendment had been ratified. Once they could
manage to do this, they could begin to print money, and then lend it to the US
Government, thereby collecting vast sums of interest from the American workers
by way of the Federal Income Tax.
Still, some may say that despite the
controversy surrounding the 16th Amendment, the IRS has a code and that it has
to be followed. If those assigned to this argument are correct, then perhaps
some clarification is needed when the IRS states that compliance with the
Federal Income Tax is "voluntary". According to Miriam-Websters Dictionary, the
word
voluntary is described as "Of your own free will or
design; not forced or compelled". If that is a fair translation of the word
"voluntary", then one is left to wonder why the IRS feels it is necessary to be
"Encouraging Voluntary Compliance". Millions of
Americans today have exercised their apparent legal rights by voluntarily
electing not to pay this tax. So if the IRS does in fact have the power that
they lay claim to, then why have they never been able to produce the documents
to support their assertion?
To see the actual article go to:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/331123/american_workers_not_required_to_pay.html?cat=3
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