Taxation Without Representation

As you probably know, companies like General Electric pay less in taxes than you and I do.

What was the original intent of The Founders? You can find it in our Constitution:

US Constitution, Article I, Section 2
3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

You can get hung up on the "3/5s person" stuff if you want, but the underlying issue is that representation and the rates of direct taxation were intended to be established by actual census numbers. In addition, this clause also is important:

US Constitution, Article I, Section 9
4: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

In other words, direct taxes on persons were intended to be equal and to be determined by a head count. One person = one vote = one dollar (or some multiple of dollars).

Obviously such a scheme would not raise very much money in today's terms. What was the intended source of the rest of the federal revenue?

US Constitution, Article I, Section 8
1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

In other words, taxes on commerce and imports was going to be the chief source of federal income, NOT direct taxes on persons.

But what did Congress enact in 1913 to change this formula (just in time to help fund World War One)?

US Constitution, 16th Amendment
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.

This so-called "income tax amendment" had nothing to do with the taxation of incomes, which Congress already had the power to tax. The true purpose of this amendment was to make the affected persons (i.e., real people and the States) unequal, and to give Congress the ability to tax whomever they wanted at whatever rate they wanted ... without a compensatory adjustment in the political representation of the persons being so taxed.

It therefore reestablished "taxation without representation" in the United States, an issue which supposedly was one of the chief causes of the American Revolution. It also strongly established the principle of "representation without taxation", since corporations which pay no taxes clearly have greater political power than real persons who do pay taxes.

And interestingly, this amendment also laid the groundwork for the recent Supreme Court ruling that the ObamaDon'tCare Program is not unconstitutional because it is just another direct tax, and direct taxes do not have to be equal or evenly apportioned.

There is only one way this situation could possibly be "fixed", and that is to repeal the 16th Amendment and start re-taxing all commerce inside the US and any commerce which crosses our borders (including the flow of information). However ... that ain't gonna happen, since the bankgangsters and corporations have so polluted our heads with trash ideas and propaganda that few people can understand what is at stake and why globalization is such a horrible idea.

Shit on The Founders if you want, but those guys really knew what they were doing. We will never see their like again.

By the way, if the flow of information is commerce (and it most certainly is now the world's chief form of commerce) ... then Congress has the power to regulate it. That makes the so-called NSA "spying" both legal and constitutional. How's that for a fine kettle of fish?