Issue: Economic: Dissolving the IRS

[RonPaul4President]

What is Ron Paul's stance on the taxation of personal income from employment earnings, or the abolishment of the IRS entirely?

If you do a search for this on youtube you will find quite a few clips of American citizens claiming that it is illegal for the IRS to tax earnings income. Apparently, there was never any law created by Congress which permitted the IRS to do so.

[mdh]

Most of the IRS' mandates comes from documents written by... errrr... the IRS! Check out the Larken Rose case for some real case law on the matter. Interesting points to be had there.
I don't know that abolishing the IRS entirely is something that's doable any time even remotely soon. Dubya's invasion policies have left us with sky-high debts that have to be paid off somehow. We can start talking income tax reform once the mess we've been left with has been cleaned up. :-(

[jon_perez]

Ron Paul is against the IRS in principle and does want to dismantle it, believing it to be devoid of constitutional basis. How quickly he willor can do it is an open question, but it certainly is something he sounds *very* strongly in favor of.

I have done my homework on Paul and despite some of the seemingly shocking and radical issues he champions, he does seem to be a very realistic, sane and smart person. Ron Paul needs more supporters who believe in his principles but who possess a more moderate outlook, lest his constituency be unfairly tagged as consisting mainly of kooks who spend too much time on the internet reading conspiracy stories. :D

[mdh]

Ron Paul is against the IRS in principle and does want to dismantle it, believing it to be devoid of constitutional basis. How quickly he willor can do it is an open question, but it certainly is something he sounds *very* strongly in favor of.

I have done my homework on Paul and despite some of the seemingly shocking and radical issues he champions, he does seem to be a very realistic, sane and smart person. Ron Paul needs more supporters who believe in his principles but who possess a more moderate outlook, lest his constituency be unfairly tagged as consisting mainly of kooks who spend too much time on the internet reading conspiracy stories. :D

I dunno, I beat up on the "9/11 was an inside job - BY ALIENS WITH FLOURIDE" kids all the time.
I haven't seen Ron Paul champion any ideals or issues that I would consider shocking or radical at all - some of them will lead to "radical" changes to the current system, but the vast majority of those necessitate being done over time in an orderly fashion. Things can be fixed. It's taken us hundreds of years to break them, and no one can expect them to be fixed overnight.

[qednick]

Watch this documentary when you get a spare hour or so:

http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.tv/f2f.php

Ron Paul is interviewed about half way through. The first half of it shows how federal taxes on your pay check are illegal.

Pass it on!!

[RonPaul4President]

Watch this documentary when you get a spare hour or so:

http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.tv/f2f.php

Ron Paul is interviewed about half way through. The first half of it shows how federal taxes on your pay check are illegal.

Pass it on!!

Amazing stuff. Yes, pass it on.

If this information ever hit mainstream media... oh boy! :eek:

[Craig_R]

What is Ron Paul's stance on the taxation of personal income from employment earnings, or the abolishment of the IRS entirely?

If you do a search for this on youtube you will find quite a few clips of American citizens claiming that it is illegal for the IRS to tax earnings income. Apparently, there was never any law created by Congress which permitted the IRS to do so.

taxation on private earnings of individuals is unconstitutional.

for more on that: www.losthorizons.com

as far as taxation goes , there are plenty powers of taxation written into the constitution and they come with accountability (our founders were very smart men) There is no need for an "income" tax, "fair" tax, or any other form of ROBBERY.

The IRS and "income" tax, should be, and could be abolished Immediately. It is only through twsited interpretations of the constitution and false interpretations of the law (that were deliberately written to be misleading) that we have gotten to the current state of affairs in this country.

the country went through 27 presidents prior to the "income" tax. With government constrained within the boundries we set forth for it within the constitution. We can quickly and effectively heal this countries monetary woes.

[angelatc]

One thing I like about Ron Paul's stance is that he talks about repealing the 16th Amendment *and* dissolving the IRS.

If we don't do that, we'll end up with both an income tax *and* a flat tax, something no other candidate seems to acknowledge.

[Brandybuck]

Apparently, there was never any law created by Congress which permitted the IRS to do so.
It doesn't matter. The government has the guns and tells us to pay, so we pay. I'm not quite ready yet to be a financial martyr to the cause.

[Anne]

Ron Paul needs more supporters who believe in his principles but who possess a more moderate outlook, lest his constituency be unfairly tagged as consisting mainly of kooks who spend too much time on the internet reading conspiracy stories. :D

You just can't help yourself, can you? You keep calling a large part of Ron Paul's supporters "kooks" and you expect this to be a positive, productive forum? What exactly about Ron Paul's stances do you find "shocking"?

[jon_perez]

You just can't help yourself, can you? You keep calling a large part of Ron Paul's supporters "kooks" and you expect this to be a positive, productive forum? What exactly about Ron Paul's stances do you find "shocking"?I suggest you chill out and stop being so defensive.

If you believe yourself to practice critical thinking and don't go around believing just anything you read, then you should have nothing to fear about being called a "kook" even if your ideas don't fit the 'mainstream'.

If, on the other hand, other people ridiculing your beliefs affects you so much because you are unable to defend them satisfactorily both to yourself and others, then you probably need to re-examine your motivations for having those beliefs.

In case you haven't noticed, Ron Paul has a lot of controversial stances - controversial mainly because they go against what most americans take for granted - e.g. the presence of the IRS and the Fed, the fact that the Civil War needed to be fought.

The reason Ron Paul gets so much of my respect is because he is able to explain and defend those beliefs very very eloquently. He doesn't rant and he doesn't shout, he just calmly explains his own reasons behind his beliefs, and so far they have always come out sounding right.

[angelatc]

I think he's got a legitimate point. I think the problem, at least as far as the internet goes, is that there's no real debate. It all comes off as blind-sided loyalty to the candidate.

I don't mind when somebody tells me "I think Ron Paul is a looney because ........."

What I find tough is when somebody tells me "Ron Paul is a looney!"

For me, the biggest issue is redefining what we want to government to be for us. Obama even said he thinks that that debate ended in the '60's. There's a whole world of people who think that socialism is the answer to all that ails us. We're never going to see eye-to-eye on anything with those folks.

[dam4freedom]

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Congressional Record article 40 of 74 Printer Friendly Display - 2,793 bytes.[Help]

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INTRODUCTION OF THE LIBERTY AMENDMENT -- (Extensions of Remarks - February 07, 2007)


[Page: E287] GPO's PDF
---SPEECH OF
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2007
Mr. PAUL. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Liberty Amendment, which repeals the 16th Amendment, thus paving the way for real change in the way government collects and spends the people's hard-earned money. The Liberty Amendment also explicitly forbids the federal government from performing any action not explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution.
The 16th Amendment gives the federal government a direct claim on the lives of American citizens by enabling Congress to levy a direct income tax on individuals. Until the passage of the 16th amendment, the Supreme Court had consistently held that Congress had no power to impose an income tax.
Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the federal government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life. Thanks to the income tax, today the federal government routinely invades our privacy, and penalizes our every endeavor.
The Founding Fathers realized that ``the power to tax is the power to destroy,'' which is why they did not give the federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the federal government.
Income taxes not only diminish liberty, they retard economic growth by discouraging work and production. Our current tax system also forces Americans to waste valuable time and money on complacence with an ever-more complex tax code. The increased interest in flat-tax and national sales tax proposals, as well as the increasing number of small businesses that questioning the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) ``withholding'' system provides further proof that America is tired of the labyrinthine tax code. Americans are also increasingly fed up with an IRS that continues to ride roughshod over their civil liberties, despite recent ``pro-taxpayer'' reforms.
Madam Speaker, America survived and prospered for 140 years without an income tax, and with a federal government that generally adhered to strictly constitutional functions, operating with modest excise revenues. The income tax opened the door to the era (and errors) of Big Government. I hope my colleagues will help close that door by cosponsoring the Liberty Amendment.

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[megiddo]

I think RP will have an uphill battle on the IRS and the income tax.

Too much of America depends on government handouts (either social or corporate) to just turn it off overnight.

In my opinion, eliminating the IRS performs two primary tasks:

1. Closely manages our domestic and foreign policy.
2. Moves us way down the Laffer Curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve).

The only problem with the IRS-killing platform is that I think it would shock the economy too suddenly, and we would face a couple *very unpopular* years of contraction (followed by a *lot* of expansion).

The other side of the Laffer Curve is that to a certain extent, people *want* to trade their taxes for government intervention. But are we above, below, or at the equilibrium point? If we're above, we'll get a lot of support for eliminating the IRS, if we're below, or at equilibrium, we'll get no support.

I think that good interim approach is to modify repeal the 16th amendment, and replace it with a Sales Tax amendment. The Supreme Court had a solid track record of canning income taxes without the 16th. With the 16th they (rightly) support it as constitutional. This would be a solid middle ground--it leaves us at empirically the same place on the Laffer Curve, but eliminates the overhead of the IRS. This effectively pulls us down the Laffer Curve (without reducing public perception of Government consumption), and will give the economy a first glimpse of what is possible with less domestic intervention. Eliminating a high federal taxation rate is then an easy and natural process of lowering the sales tax rate over time and the economy produces more receipts for the treasury.