Shame on Me!
Loading ...The other day, I was browsing around the internet, and came across a petition concerning a “National Sales Tax”. Now, of course, I jumped all over that because I DO NOT support a National Sales Tax. So I checked the “NO” box and left a comment something to the effect that the tax amounted to “double taxation” which, I wrote, is “prohibited by the Constitution”. I went away feeling all warm and fuzzy, thinking I had made a valuable contribution to our National Policy. I got thinking about it a little later though, and the question occurred to me; “what is double taxation”? Now, we’ve all heard over and over again (at least I have, and since I hear only a small portion of what everybody else hears, you had to have heard it too!) that “double taxation” is “prohibited by the Constitution”. My wife, just that day, had given me a small book that contained the Constitution of the United States. So I thought, “Maybe it’s time I look that up and prove it to myself.” To my surprise, do you know how many times the phrase “double taxation” is mentioned in the Constitution? A sum total of ZERO!!!! That’s right, el zippo! The Constitution grants the Federal government the right to levy taxes on certain things, and prohibits the States and Municipalities from levying taxes on certain specific things that the Federal government may already be taxing. Most of that has to do with imports and exports. Therein may lie an implied “double taxation”, if a State is charging a tax on an import/export that the Feds are already taxing. But nowhere could I find anything that stated unequivocally that our dollars can’t be taxed over and over again until they cease to exist! This, I might add, is pretty close to where we are and most certainly the direction we’re headed in.
Now first of all, I am ashamed to admit that it has taken me this long to actually read the Constitution. How many of us continue to go through life just regurgitating what someone else has told us without ever looking it up for ourselves, especially in the case of our founding documents, which aren’t even all that long? The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation could probably be read in their entirety in a couple of hours. This, I believe, is one of the reasons our government has managed to run amuck. By not fully understanding what we should be expecting of them, we have let them set their own standards. Second, it appears there may be room here for an amendment limiting the total taxing authority of all levels of government. In closing, I would like to quote the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
May our Creator bless you.
-Randbo
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