Paul Harvey on Income Taxes with Rebuttal
“The power to tax is, therefore, the strongest, the most pervading of all powers of government, reaching directly or indirectly to all classes of the people. It was said by Chief Justice Marshall, in the case of McCulloch v. Md., 4 Wheat. 431, that the power to tax is the power to destroy. A striking instance of the truth of the proposition is seen in the fact that the existing tax of ten per cent, imposed by the United States on the circulation of all other banks than the National Banks, drove out of existence every *state bank of circulation within a year or two after its passage. This power can be readily employed against one class of individuals and in favor of another, so as to ruin the one class and give unlimited wealth and prosperity to the other, if there is no implied limitation of the uses for which the power may be exercised.
To lay, with one hand, the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms.
Nor is it taxation. ‘A tax,’ says Webster’s Dictionary, ‘is a rate or sum of money assessed on the person or property of a citizen by government for the use of the nation or State.’ ‘Taxes are burdens or charges imposed by the Legislature upon persons or property to raise money for public purposes.’ Cooley, Const. Lim., 479.
Coulter, J., in Northern Liberties v. St. John’s Church, 13 Pa. St., 104 says, very forcibly, ‘I think the common mind has everywhere taken in the understanding that taxes are a public imposition, levied by authority of the government for the purposes of carrying on the government in all its machinery and operations—that they are imposed for a public purpose.’ See, also Pray v. Northern Liberties, 31 Pa.St., 69; Matter of Mayor of N.Y., 11 Johns., 77; Camden v. Allen, 2 Dutch., 398; Sharpless v. Mayor, supra; Hanson v. Vernon, 27 Ia., 47; Whiting v. Fond du Lac, supra.”
[Loan Association v. Topeka, 87 U.S. 655, 20 Wall. 655 (1874);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11723983271266386879]
1. INTRODUCTION
We love Paul Harvey. There is a lot of wisdom in his words. When he talks about how you shouldn’t accept anything from the government, he’s referring to the quote above. When he talks in this video about how incentive disappears and society begins to decay when taxes go beyond 25%, for instance, he is referring to something called “The Laffer Curve”:
The Laffer Curve, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Even so, he makes several passionate but FALSE statements in this video that we wish to rebut:
- 1:26 The American People, by enacting the Sixteenth Amendment, voluntarily surrendered our right of private property.
- 1:40 When we ratified the Sixteenth Amendment, we authorized UNLIMITED taxes on individuals.
- 1:20 He says income taxes were part of the Ten Commandments and set at 10% in Exodus 20.They WEREN’T.
All the above statements are ABSOLUTELY and PROVABLY false. Back then there was no internet so he couldn’t fact check his own statements in this video. Today, there is NO EXCUSE for not knowing these two statements are simply FALSE.
2. REBUTTALS
In FACT:
- The income tax is ENTIRELY voluntary for American Nationals.
How American Nationals Volunteer to Pay Income Tax, Form #08.024
https://sedm.org/Forms/08-PolicyDocs/HowYouVolForIncomeTax.pdf - Congress calls those who DON’T volunteer “nonresident aliens”.
Nonresident Alien Position Course, Form #12.045
https://sedm.org/LibertyU/NRA.pdf - Congress even provides forms and procedures for UNVOLUNTEERING.
- HOWEVER, Congress has also OBUSCATED the exit door so it will be invisible or unavailable to all but the most legally informed and persistent people. See section 12 of the following for proof:
https://ftsig.org
If you would like to learn more about how to UNVOLUNTEER, see:
Foreign Tax Status Information Group (FTSIG)
https://ftsig.org
The decay and decadence of civilization brought on mainly by the tax system that Harvey describes in the above video was also PREDICTED by the U.S. Supreme Court in the following famous landmark tax case which ironically was about the taxation of PRIVATE PROPERTY that is the subject of his video:
“Here I close my opinion. I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundation of the government. If the provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an act of Congress, where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.
“If the court sanctions the power of discriminating taxation, and nullifies the uniformity mandate of the Constitution,” as said by one who has been all his life a student of our institutions, “it will mark the hour when the sure decadence of our present government will commence.” If the purely arbitrary limitation of $4000 in the present law can be sustained, none having less than that amount of income being assessed or taxed for the support of the government, the limitation of future Congresses may be fixed at a much larger sum, at five or ten or twenty thousand dollars, parties possessing an income of that amount alone being bound to bear the burdens of government; or the limitation may be designated at such an amount as a board of “walking delegates” may deem necessary. There is no safety in allowing the limitation to be adjusted except in strict compliance with the mandates of the Constitution which require its taxation, if imposed by direct taxes, to be apportioned among the States according to their representation, and if imposed by indirect taxes, to be uniform in operation and, so far as practicable, in proportion to their property, equal upon all citizens. Unless the rule of the Constitution governs, a majority may fix the limitation at such rate as will not include any of their own number.
[Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust, 157 US 429 (1895);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7292056596996651119]
The above case was heard even before the Sixteenth Amendment was proposed and ratified. The term “capital” as used above is synonymous with PRIVATE property. The case challenged the DIRECT taxation of PRIVATE property by the national government as a DIRECT tax. The case declared the tax UNCONSTITUTIONAL. That case, even today, has never been overruled.
We will now rebut each of the above two false statements by Paul Harvey.
2.1. FALSE STATEMENT 1: Sixteenth Amendment surrendered the right of private property
In order to surrender the right of private property, the Fifth Amendment protection of private property would ALSO have to REPEALED. It was NOT. More at:
- Property View of Income Taxation Course, Form #14.021
https://sedm.org/LibertyU/PropertyViewOfIncomeTax.pdf - Laws of Property, Form #14.018
https://sedm.org/Forms/14-PropProtection/LawsOfProperty.pdf
The way one surrenders SOME but not ALL rights of private property originates INSTEAD from the VOLUNTARY exercise of your First Amendment right to associate and your constitutional right to contract, both of which are described below:
When one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations [consensual PRIVITIES] to others, he might retain. “A body politic,” as aptly defined in the preamble of the Constitution of Massachusetts, “is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.” This does not confer power upon the whole people to control rights which are purely and exclusively private, Thorpe v. R. & B. Railroad Co., 27 Vt. 143; but it does authorize the establishment of laws requiring each citizen [voluntary “social compact” club member but not NON-member/non-resident] to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another. This is the very essence of government, and 125*125 has found expression in the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non lædas. From this source come the police powers, which, as was said by Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the License Cases, 5 How. 583, “are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty, . . . that is to say, . . . the power to govern men and things.”
[Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (1877); SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6419197193322400931]
A person ASSOCIATES and becomes a voluntary MEMBER by pursuing and invoking the benefits, privileges, and perquisites of a civil statutory STATUS, TAX STATUS, or OFFICE called a “taxpayer”, “person”, “individual”, etc. The STATUS is merely a LABEL for those who have consented to become voluntary members. This is documented in:
Your Exclusive Right to Declare or Establish Your Civil Status, Form #13.008
https://sedm.org/Forms/13-SelfFamilyChurchGovnce/RightToDeclStatus.pdf
2.2. FALSE STATEMENT 2: Sixteenth Amendment authorized UNLIMITED taxes
The Sixteenth Amendment authorizes a tax on PROFIT, and not ALL EARNINGS as PRIVATE PROPERTY:
Even when the Direct Tax Clause was written it was unclear what else, other than a capitation (also known as a “head tax” or a “poll tax”), might be a direct tax. See Springer v. United States, 102 U.S. 586, 596-598, 26 L.Ed. 253 (1881). Soon after the framing, Congress passed a tax on ownership of carriages, over James Madison’s objection that it was an unapportioned direct tax. Id., at 597. This Court upheld the tax, in part reasoning that apportioning such a tax would make little sense, because it would have required taxing carriage owners at dramatically different rates depending on how many carriages were in their home State. See Hylton v. United States, 3 Dall. 171, 174, 1 L.Ed. 556 (1796) (opinion of Chase, J.). The Court was unanimous, and those Justices who wrote opinions either directly asserted or strongly suggested that only two forms of taxation were direct: capitations and land taxes. See id., at 175; id., at 177 (opinion of Paterson, J.); id., at 183 (opinion of Iredell, J.).
“That narrow view of what a direct tax [on PROPERTY] might be persisted for a century. In 1880, for example, we explained that “direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that instrument, and taxes on real estate.” Springer, supra, at 602. In 1895, we expanded our interpretation [of DIRECT taxes] to include taxes on personal property and income from personal property, in the course of striking down aspects of the federal income tax. Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., 158 U.S. 601, 618, 15 S.Ct. 912, 39 L.Ed. 1108 (1895). That result was overturned by the Sixteenth Amendment, although we continued to consider taxes on personal property to be direct taxes. See Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189, 218–219, 40 S.Ct. 189, 64 L.Ed. 521 (1920).”
[Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519, 571 (2012);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12815172896965834886]
Whatever difficulty there may be about a precise and scientific definition of “income,” it imports, as used here, something entirely distinct from principal or capital either as a subject of taxation or as a measure of the tax.
[Doyle v. Mitchell Bros., 247 U.S. 179, 185 (1918);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1447070231071484109]
Congress in exercising the right to tax a legitimate subject of taxation as a franchise or privilege, was not debarred by the Constitution from measuring the taxation by the total income, although derived in part from property which, considered by itself, was not taxable.
[Stratton’s Independence v. Howbert, 231 U.S. 399, 416-417(1913);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11971357151204259952]
The Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation subject to apportionment by a consideration of the sources from which the income was derived.
[Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103, 112-113 (1916);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=726253341774342162]
For additional cites like the above, see:
Court Case Citations on the nature of “income”, Family Guardian Fellowship
https://famguardian.org/Subjects/Taxes/Evidence/WhatIsIncome.htm
2.3. FALSE STATEMENT 3: The Ten Commandments imposes Taxes
The Ten Commandments are found in Exodus 20:1-17:
The Ten Commandments
20 And God spoke all these words, saying:
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of [a]bondage.
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor [b]serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting[c] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
[Exodus 20:1-17, Bible, NKJV]
Note that there is NO MENTION in the list of ten items above of:
- Government at all.
- The requirement to tithe to pay God 10% of anything.
- Any punishment for NOT paying tithes.
The requirement to tithe came elsewhere in the Bible. It also came BEFORE the Ten Commandments were given, in Genesis 14:20. Here are a few key references:
- Genesis 14:20: “And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
- Leviticus 27:30: “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.”
- Numbers 18:26: “Speak to the Levites and say to them: ‘When you receive from the Israelites the tithe I give you as your inheritance, you must present a tenth of that tithe as the Lord’s offering.”
- Deuteronomy 14:22: “Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year.”
These verses establish the tradition, but not LAW, of tithing as giving one-tenth of one’s income or produce to God.
If you would like to know more about the subject of tithing, see:
Tithing, Form #17.072
https://sedm.org/Forms/17-Theology/Tithing.pdf
3. COMMENTARY ON THE REPEATING CYCLES HARVEY DESCRIBES
Our copy of the Open Bible describes the cycles within civilization that he mentions:
The Book of Judges stands in stark contrast to Joshua. In Joshua an obedient people conquered the land through trust in the power of God. In Judges, however, a disobedient and idolatrous people are defeated time and time again because of their rebellion against God.
In seven distinct cycles of sin to salvation, Judges shows how Israel had set aside God’s law and in its place substituted “what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). The recurring result of abandonment from God’s law is corruption from within and oppression from without. During the nearly four centuries spanned by this book, God raises up military champions to throw off the yoke of bondage and to restore the nation to pure worship. But all too soon the “sin cycle” begins again as the nation’s spiritual temperance grows steadily colder.
…
The Book of Judges could also appropriately be titled “The Book of Failure.”
Deterioration (1:1-3:4). Judges begins with short-lived military successes after Joshua’s death, but quickly turns to the repeated failure of all the tribes to drive out their enemies. The people feel the lack of a unified central leader, but the primary reasons for their failure are a lack of faith in God and lack of obedience to Him (2:1-2). Compromise leads to conflict and chaos. Israel does not drive out the inhabitants (1:21, 27, 29, 30); instead of removing the moral cancer [IRS, Federal Reserve?] spread by the inhabitants of Canaan, they contract the disease. The Canaanite gods [money, sex, covetousness] literally become a snare to them (2:3). Judges 2:11-23 is a microcosm of the pattern found in Judges 3-16.
Deliverance (3:5-16:31). In verses 3:5 through 16:31 of the Book of Judges, seven apostasies (fallings away from God) are described, seven servitudes, and seven deliverances. Each of the seven cycles has five steps: sin, servitude, supplication, salvation, and silence. These also can be described by the words rebellion, retribution, repentance, restoration, and rest. The seven cycles connect together as a descending spiral of sin (2:19). Israel vacillates between obedience and apostasy as the people continually fail to learn from their mistakes. Apostasy grows, but the rebellion is not continual. The times of rest and peace are longer than the times of bondage. The monotony of Israel’s sins can be contrasted with the creativity of God’s methods of deliverance.
Depravity (17:1-21:25). Judges 17:1 through 21:25 illustrate (1) religious apostasy (17 and 18) and (2) social and moral depravity (19-21) during the period of the judges. Chapters 19-21 contain one of the worst tales of degradation in the Bible. Judges closes with a key to understanding the period: “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25) [a.k.a. “what FEELS good”]. The people are not doing what is wrong in their own eyes, but what is “evil in the sight of the Lord” (2:11).
[The Open Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Copyright 1997, pp. 340-341]