Far less than what they’ve done TO you:

Income taxation inaugurates a permanent war between the people, who want to keep what they earn, and the government, which wants as much of it as it can get.

The government tries to make the war less obvious by deadening the pain when possible.

The withholding tax makes it unnecessary for most Americans to write checks to the IRS; indeed, they eagerly await their refunds.

But the war is part of the American psyche nonetheless.

All Americans sense that an awesome power lurks, ready to grab an increasing portion of anything they earn.

That adversary relationship has far-reaching consequences for a society founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, according to which government was the rights-guarding servant and the people the master.

But the income tax turns that relationship on its head.

Americans lived without the fears and burdens imposed by the income tax for over 100 years (except in the Civil War era). They built a decent and prosperous society.

The income tax has been a key factor in the growth of government. When enacted, only the few richest people in America paid the tax.

It became a tax for the masses during World War II, under that reputed champion of the masses, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Today, it accounts for over 43 percent of the revenue raised.

Payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare account for about 35 percent.

Americans’ incomes have provided a rich vein for the government to mine.

Thus we can see that the income tax has:

Given the government unprecedented access to the American people’s wealth;

Provided the rationale for the government to intrude into our personal affairs;

Reversed the traditional rule-of-law relationship between government and those suspected of lawbreaking;

Confused “cheating” the government in order to keep one’s own property with cheating one’s fellow citizens;

Bewildered the American people with constantly changing technical rules that no one can possibly comply with perfectly; and

Permitted lawmakers to influence our conduct through selective tax deductions and exemptions.

All this has come from the principle that government may tax incomes. That is why repealing the tax, along with the Sixteenth Amendment, is an essential blow in the struggle against power and for liberty.

— Sheldon Richman, “The Permanent War”, The Freeman Online, June 1999

While we’re in a repealing mood, let’s also deep six the Seventeenth Amendment.