Our Threatened Freedom

Do You Like Taxation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 122-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 122

Dictation Name: Vol. J - Part 05 - Do You Like Taxation

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Do you like taxation? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

A recent news item states that the current government of Vietnam has a new tax. A fine is levied against the estate of anyone who commits suicide. The technical charge is desertion. The attitude of the Vietnam government is that it is the duty of the people to stay alive and pay taxes. Obviously the Vietnam government is working hard to catch up with the rest of the world. There is hardly a corner of God’s earth where men are not taxed every time they turn around. Here in the United States we give the parents of every newborn baby a tax, deduction. Not much, but still something. After all, that baby, once he or she begins to work, will spend most of a life time paying taxes. Babies may be a joy to their parents, but they are a potential bonanza to the tax man. We are taxed, our property is taxed, our income is taxed, our dog must be licensed, our gasoline is taxed, our food, clothing and entertainment is taxed, and when we die our estate is taxed. No wonder someone remarked that the two surest things in life are death and taxes.

Now let us grant that both death and some taxes may be a necessity. But why add insult to injury? Washington D.C tells us that our income tax payment system is a system of, quote, “voluntary compliance.” Unquote. Do you know anyone who is paying his income tax voluntarily?

This is not all. The 16th Amendment to the Constitution, the income tax amendment, has no restraining clause whatsoever. It gives the Federal Government the right to tax our income as it pleases, up to 100% if it chooses. This is not an impossibility. Some foreign governments have done so. By taxing incomes up to a 120%, they have liquidated wealth and estates.

Because legally all our income belongs to the Federal Government, what we are allowed to keep is called an exemption. Remember, the Internal Revenue Service did not do this, Congress did, and you and I elect Congress. The fault, in other words, lies in us. We are electing men for the wrong reasons, and we are not responsible electors. We are getting more and more taxation because we are demanding more and more benefits from state and federal governments. Any benefits we get we must pay for, individually or collectively. And collective payments are the most deadly when they fall due. As an individual I know that I cannot buy myself more benefits than I can afford. As a citizen I do not see the bills fall due. I can only see the inflation and the growing national debt. As a result, the collective payments due are ignored by most of us until too late. If we do not control both personal and collective spending, we destroy both ourselves and our country. We need therefore to exercise controls on both our spending and our nation’s spending also.

Remember, we are getting the taxes our representatives voted for, and we voted for them.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.