American Workers Not Required to Pay Federal Income Tax?

Love it or hate it, you have to pay your taxes, or at least that's what we're told. Today however, it may come as a bit of a shock for many American workers to know that of all the taxes they pay, at least one of them might be completely voluntary. That tax is the Federal Income Tax.

Prior to 1913 there had been short lived appearances of a Federal Income Tax. According to the website Infoplease.com,"In 1862, in order to support the Civil War effort, Congress enacted the nation's first income tax law. It was a forerunner of our modern income tax in that it was based on the principles of graduated, or progressive, taxation and of withholding income at the source." In 1872, the Federal Income Tax was done away with only to make a short come back from 1894 to 1895.

It was in 1895 that the US Supreme Court ruled the Federal Income Tax could not be law however, as it was not an apportioned tax, as is required by the United States Constitution. Between that time and 1913, attempts were made unsuccessfully by a small handful of private bankers to insure that a Federal Income Tax became law despite the ruling. Then on February 3rd, 1913 they succeeded in one of their attempts.

The private bankers, comprised of John D. Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, and J.P. Morgan (whos' likeness was borrowed for the popular Parker Brothers game Monopoly) managed to convince then Secretary of State Philander Knox under President Woodrow Wilson to issue a proclamation to the American people that 38 of the 48 states at the time(more than the three quarters required) had ratified the 16th Amendment, making it law. The 16th Amendment states, "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

It seems as though that would make the Federal Income Tax perfectly legal and it would, had it actually been true that the 38 states had indeed ratified the 16th Amendment. However...

In 1984 a man by the name of William J. Benson began to investigate the process by which the 38 states had ratified the 16th Amendment, passing it into effect. After a year of going from one state capital to the next, digging through their old documents what Mr. Benson found was that of all forty-eight states, even if one were to ignore changes to the Amendment made by various states (a power the states do not have), only two ratified the 16th Amendment. Benson later went on to write a book called,"The Law That Never Was". Some may find it ironic that he was later found guilty for failing to pay his Federal Income Tax.

Still many might argue that, law or no law the tax brings in vast sums of money which effectively contribute to the overall well being of things like our roads, schools, military and so on. This would be a considerable point if indeed any of that money were used to assist in the creation or maintenance of the government infrastructure. Apparently however, when the Grace Commission Report (page 14) came back to Ronald Reagan at his request, it said of the Federal Income Tax that, "With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. (...) In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government."

Put simply, it appears we are being taxed on our wages and labor (though there seems to be no law that was actually passed granting government the authority to do so), then a good portion of that money goes missing, and what's left goes towards interest.

"But isn't interest something I pay to a privately owned bank on loans received from them?" Yes, and it's the exact same type of interest that is mentioned in the Grace Commission Report. That is because the money in your pocket was originally loaned to the US Government by the Federal Reserve at an interest rate, the exact same way the bank loans you and I money at a particular rate of interest. It may come as a surprise to many to learn that the Federal Reserve collects interest on these loans the same way a private bank would, because the Federal Reserve is itself, a privately owned bank. The fact that they incorporate the word "Federal" into their banking institution title implies no more authority than it does for the good folks at the "Federal" Express. This would go to explain why you can't find the Federal Reserve or the Federal Express in the blue pages (government listings) of the phonebook. Instead they are both found here in the yellow pages, or business listings.

The fact that the Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank and not an actual federal institution may go to explain the motivation behind the earlier mentioned attempts of private bankers to convince people that the 16th Amendment had been ratified. Once they could manage to do this, they could begin to print money, and then lend it to the US Government, thereby collecting vast sums of interest from the American workers by way of the Federal Income Tax.

Still, some may say that despite the controversy surrounding the 16th Amendment, the IRS has a code and that it has to be followed. If those assigned to this argument are correct, then perhaps some clarification is needed when the IRS states that compliance with the Federal Income Tax is "voluntary". According to Miriam-Websters Dictionary, the word voluntary is described as "Of your own free will or design; not forced or compelled". If that is a fair translation of the word "voluntary", then one is left to wonder why the IRS feels it is necessary to be "Encouraging Voluntary Compliance". Millions of Americans today have exercised their apparent legal rights by voluntarily electing not to pay this tax. So if the IRS does in fact have the power that they lay claim to, then why have they never been able to produce the documents to support their assertion?
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Sources:
1. www.infoplease.com
2. www.freedomtofascism.com
3. www.irs.gov
4. www.yellowbook.com
5. www.paynoincometax.com
6. www.anti-irs.com
7. www.givemeliberty.org
8. www.truthintaxation.us
9. www.911omissionreport.com
10. www.thelawthatneverwas.com
11. www.abodia.com
12. www.m-w.com
13. www.archives.gov
14. www.digital.library.unt.edu
15. www.ustreas.gov
16. www.federalreserve.gov