Paul Harvey on Income Taxes with Rebuttal
We love Paul Harvey. There is a lot of wisdom in his words. 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.
The above two 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.
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.
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
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