Floyd Reports Opinion


Taxation With Representation Worse Than Taxation Without Representation?


When Great Britain put the tax on tea that caused the Boston Tea Party, it was three pence (3¢) a pound. In colonial America, they bought about 562,000 pounds of tea a year. The amount of the tax paid by all of the colonies that helped start the American Revolution by the colonies was £16,860 a year. (.03 X 562,000 = £16,860)* In 1773, the population of colonial America was about 1,946,601 people. The tax that sparked the American Revolution was .008 per person! Less than a penny a person a year! That is how much taxation without representation was. Who would like to go back to having their taxes that low?

Now that we can tax ourselves, we do so with a vengeance. Can you think of anything you buy that is not taxed? Here are some of the taxes we have imposed on ourselves:

Accounts Receivable Tax, Building Permit Tax, Cigarette Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Dog License Tax, Federal Income Tax, Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA), Fishing License Tax, Food License Tax, Fuel permit tax, Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon), Hunting License Tax, Inheritance Tax, Interest expense, Inventory tax, IRS Interest Charges, IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor Tax, Luxury Taxes, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Service charge taxes, Social Security Tax (FICA), Road usage taxes, (State) Sales Taxes, Recreational Vehicle Tax, School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA), Telephone federal excise tax, Telephone federal universal service fee tax, Telephone federal/state/local surcharge taxes, Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax, Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax, Telephone state and local tax, Telephone usage charge tax, Utility Taxes, Vehicle License Registration Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Workers Compensation Tax.

Many of the taxes mentioned above are paid before you are. The rest are paid whenever you buy something. Add up the rest of all of those taxes to what is automatically deducted from your paycheck to find out how much you really pay in taxes! There is no one who does not pay any taxes. Some people (about 47% of the population) get a 100% refund of their state and federal income taxes. When they do that, they give our state and federal governments an interest-free loan. Does the IRS not charge interest and penalties, taxes on top of taxes, on people who pay their taxes late? Of course they do!

With all of those taxes we pay, can we really say that the money in our pocket is our money, not our state and federal government’s money? How can this be changed? The first step to do that is to repeal the 1943 Current Tax Payment Act (CTPA). Repealing that law is telling our federal government that it is not entitled to get our money before we do.

Would our Founding Fathers have fought our American Revolution to create a government that taxes us as heavily as we now tax ourselves? They did pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to get rid of a tax that was less than a penny a year per person! The government our Founding Fathers created when they wrote our Constitution was thrown away decades ago.

Currently, there is a concerted effort to repeal what is known as “Obamacare.” When your enemy chooses the battles, it is difficult to win. That is why Shrink The Government believes that the 1943 CPTA must be repealed. The battle to repeal that law will be one chosen by the Conservatives, not the Progressives. Doing so will put the Progressives on defense, a role they are not used to.

Another effect of the battle to repeal the 1943 CTPA is that it will separate the real Conservatives from the Progressive pseudo-Conservatives, AKA Republicans In Name Only (RINOs). A RINO will be against anything that will cut off the constant flow of money to our government. As an article by Dr. Robert Higgs in the Independent Institute’s newsletter says, it makes the collection and the raising of taxes easier:

The Treasury itself publicly acknowledges, in a fact sheet on the history of the U.S. tax system posted at its website, that wartime withholding not only ‘greatly eased the collection of the tax,’ but also greatly reduced the taxpayer’s awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e., it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.

RINOs and Progressives want the collection of taxes to be as easy as possible! They want the collection of taxes to be painless. When the collection of taxes is painless, they can take as much of your money as they need to. That way they can create, will create, and have created un-Constitutional government programs to buy your votes with your hard-earned money.

America is a country born out of a dislike, if not a hatred, of paying taxes. Why have we acquiesced to our government confiscating our taxes instead of us paying taxes? Because our government lied to us about the law it was passing. The 1943 CTPA is what helped created the welfare state we have today.

If you want to shrink the government, then the first step is to repeal the 1943 Current Tax Payment Act!


*Those figures are an estimate of what the actual taxes were. The estimate was made for dramatization purposes and is not historically accurate due to my not knowing how to convert the 1773 £ to current $.



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