Profit Question

[AtlasShrieked]

AtlasShrieked posted:

And that wasn't what was written in Brushaber at all. Mr. Brushaber was a stockholder in the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and he filed the lawsuit to try to stop the company from paying the new "income tax" because if they did his dividends would be reduced.

The Solicitor General for the government, in an amicus curiae brief, had made the argument: "The Sixteenth Amendment removed the restriction of apportionment as to such income taxes as before were subject thereto." The Court, in their opinion, in which there was no dissent, and noting this "confusion", declared this to be an "erroneous assumption" on the part of the government, and "wholly without foundation". The Court declared that "it was settled that the provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation"; and that the amendment simply prohibited the income tax from being taken from the category of indirect taxation, and being placed into the category of a direct tax.

It was also explained that the Congress of the United States had no intention of destroying the two great classes of taxation by the wording of the Sixteenth Amendment, but placed an income tax into the category of taxation in which it inherently belonged; the indirect class, or excise, and because the tax is not apportioned, nor subject to the census or enumeration, it is an excise tax, a tax upon the exercise of privileges, such taxes not being subject to the condition of apportionment to the States.

Will the subterfuge and deceit never end...

so you have an argument with the wikipedia account of things? I'd love to hear it backed up with evidence. then I'd post it at wikipedia.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

For almost 150 years this country got by on what is essentially tariffs. It should do so again. There is nor more fair tax than a consumption based tax. But at the same time, there nothing easier to corrupt via black markets.

we had an income tax during the civil war. that is NOT nearly 150 years time from the beginning of the founding of the nation.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

And you have the audacity to make your username a play on words of an Ayn Rand work.

'Fuck outta here, dude.

Ayn Rand was a nutbagh's nutbagh. A weird woman who never got over her upbringing in a backwards society. In some ways she was a misanthropic troglodyte.


what say you?

 

[Gungnir]

What made her upbringing so wierd?

 

[indago]

AtlasShrieked:

so you have an argument with the wikipedia account of things? I'd love to hear it backed up with evidence. then I'd post it at wikipedia.

The "evidence" would be the Brushaber case...

 

[editec]

Ayn Rand was a nutbagh's nutbagh. A weird woman who never got over her upbringing in a backwards society. In some ways she was a misanthropic troglodyte.

Ayn is a third-rate author and first-rate I got mine get yours libertopian fruitcake.

I loved Atlas Shrugged when I was 13, and a complete ideological fool, (like most 13 intelligent year olds generally are).

 

[Paulie]

we had an income tax during the civil war. that is NOT nearly 150 years time from the beginning of the founding of the nation.

What don't you get about the fact that THAT particular income tax was ruled unconstitutional, as well as the next one in the 1890's?

As far as I'm concerned, that makes those taxes a moot point, and therefore, for all intents and purposes, there was no REAL income tax until 1913.

And I never once argued the legality of the income tax in this thread, only the morality for various reasons.

 

[Zoomie1980]

we had an income tax during the civil war. that is NOT nearly 150 years time from the beginning of the founding of the nation.

It was quickly REJECTED and ruled unconstitutional. It took a constitutional amendment to make it so.

What is "reasonable" to tax is largely based on what the government spends. What it spends is dictated by it's assumed role in society. The country began going down a rat-hole when gov't began to assume roles the founding fathers never intended it to.

The founding fathers with sole exception of perhaps Alexander Hamilton envisioned almost ALL power residing in the states. The only real roles they gave the central government was the authority to raise an armed force and to create a central bank and print money. For most of the first 150 or so years, that's about all it ever did. Then came the depression and the New Deal and run of infatuation with socialism, with some complete idiots today still holding to that utter failure of an economic system....

 

[indago]

Zoomie1980 wrote:

The founding fathers with sole exception of perhaps Alexander Hamilton envisioned almost ALL power residing in the states. The only real roles they gave the central government was the authority to raise an armed force and to create a central bank and print money.

The power to create corporations by the federal government was discussed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and the power was denied. The power was, therefore, not granted in the Constitution.

Shortly after the government was established, Alexander Hamilton, who was selected by the President George Washington, to be in his cabinet as the Secretary of the Treasury, sent a diatribe to the Congress to consider the creation of a National Bank. While this proposal was in deliberations, Hamilton was encouraging the passage of a bill for its creation by promoting shares in such a bank for the Congressional members, and that the shares would increase in value. A bill for the creation of the Bank passed the Congress, and went to President Washington for signature. Washington knew that this was a political hot potato, and asked for some guidance from his cabinet members: the three: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph. Hamilton, in an assemblage of papers, extolled the virtues of a Bank, while Jefferson and Randolph wrote against it. Hamilton was a trusted aid to General Washington during the Revolutionary War, and Washington trusted his judgement. Although Jefferson and Randolph made very convincing arguments against the incorporation of a Bank, Hamilton won the day. Washington signed the bill. A bank was incorporated, and was known as Bank of US. The bank began the issuance of paper money into the marketplace, a power never granted the government.

 

[Paulie]

Zoomie1980 wrote:

The power to create corporations by the federal government was discussed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and the power was denied. The power was, therefore, not granted in the Constitution.

Shortly after the government was established, Alexander Hamilton, who was selected by the President George Washington, to be in his cabinet as the Secretary of the Treasury, sent a diatribe to the Congress to consider the creation of a National Bank. While this proposal was in deliberations, Hamilton was encouraging the passage of a bill for its creation by promoting shares in such a bank for the Congressional members, and that the shares would increase in value. A bill for the creation of the Bank passed the Congress, and went to President Washington for signature. Washington knew that this was a political hot potato, and asked for some guidance from his cabinet members: the three: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph. Hamilton, in an assemblage of papers, extolled the virtues of a Bank, while Jefferson and Randolph wrote against it. Hamilton was a trusted aid to General Washington during the Revolutionary War, and Washington trusted his judgement. Although Jefferson and Randolph made very convincing arguments against the incorporation of a Bank, Hamilton won the day. Washington signed the bill. A bank was incorporated, and was known as Bank of US. The bank began the issuance of paper money into the marketplace, a power never granted the government.

It's sketchy, to say the least. "Congress shall have the power to coin money, and regulate the value thereof", along with the states not being granted the power to issue money in anything but gold or silver.

Can the federal government constitutionally issue paper money not 100% backed by gold or silver? I say they can not.

They were supposed to use gold and silver, and denominate the coinage values based on specific weights of the metals. The purpose of this was two-fold. One, gold and silver always have steady value. ALWAYS. And two, currency in metals restrained the government from issuing any currency that did not already exist in metal, thereby restraining spending.

The argument that the economy could only have "grown" the way it has by removing the gold standard is quite debatable, because the term "grown" is relative. Sure, in GDP terms it has grown. But as consumers, we've lost almost the entire amount of purchasing power our currency once had, due to runaway money creation.

I'd much rather have been left with gold backed currency, and enjoy life with whatever money came through my hands from my hard work.

God forbid we don't have billions of pieces of paper floating around so that we can consume our lives away, buried in unneccessary trinkets that have only ultimately served to make us a lazy and complacent society.

 

[indago]

Our founding fathers fucked up right from the beginning, calling our coin "dollar". It should have been a weight value, like the Jews and their shekel. Our whole monetary system should have been based upon a weight value.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

Ayn is a third-rate author and first-rate I got mine get yours libertopian fruitcake.

I loved Atlas Shrugged when I was 13, and a complete ideological fool, (like most 13 intelligent year olds generally are).

too friggin' funny

 

[AtlasShrieked]

What made her upbringing so wierd?

where and when was she raised? then she comes to America...and are her first years here a weird and lonely experience? is she frustrated or puzzled or angry at her new home where she is a stranger in a strange land?

read up on her life

 

[AtlasShrieked]

AtlasShrieked:

The "evidence" would be the Brushaber case...

that was clear to me what you were talking about. so, what about it? where is teh wiki wrong on that case---in what they say?

 

[AtlasShrieked]

What don't you get about the fact that THAT particular income tax was ruled unconstitutional, as well as the next one in the 1890's?

As far as I'm concerned, that makes those taxes a moot point, and therefore, for all intents and purposes, there was no REAL income tax until 1913.

And I never once argued the legality of the income tax in this thread, only the morality for various reasons.

so everyone that paid those income taxes didn't really pay that money? it was all like a game of a monopoly...played with fake money?


what was ruled unconstitutional...income taxes?

Early Federal income taxes

In order to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872).

Other income taxes followed, although an 1895 United States Supreme Court ruling, Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., held that taxes on rents from real estate, on interest income from personal property and other income from personal property (which includes dividend income) were direct taxes on property, and therefore had to be apportioned.

Since apportionment of income taxes is impractical, this had the effect of prohibiting a federal tax on income from property.

Due to the political difficulties of taxing individual wages without taxing income from property, a federal income tax was impractical from the time of the Pollock decision until the time of ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment (below).


Ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment

In response, Congress proposed the Sixteenth Amendment (ratified by the requisite number of states in 1913[3]), which 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.


The Supreme Court in Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, 240 U.S. 1 (1916), indicated that the amendment did not expand the federal government's existing power to tax income (meaning profit or gain from any source) but rather removed the possibility of classifying an income tax as a direct tax on the basis of the source of the income.

The Amendment removed the need for the income tax to be apportioned among the states on the basis of population. Income taxes are required, however, to abide by the law of geographical uniformity.


Some tax protesters and others opposed to income taxes cite what they contend is evidence that the Sixteenth Amendment was never "properly ratified," based in large part on materials sold by William J. Benson.

In December of 2007, Benson's "Defense Reliance Package" containing his non-ratification argument which he offered for sale on the internet, was ruled by a federal court to be a "fraud perpetrated by Benson" that had "caused needless confusion and a waste of the customers' and the IRS' time and resources."[4]

The court stated: "Benson has failed to point to evidence that would create a genuinely disputed fact regarding whether the Sixteenth Amendment was properly ratified or whether United States Citizens are legally obligated to pay federal taxes."[5] See also Tax protester constitutional arguments.

 

[AtlasShrieked]

It was quickly REJECTED and ruled unconstitutional. It took a constitutional amendment to make it so.
.

the income tax was NOT ruled unconstitutional.

In order to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872).

Other income taxes followed, although an 1895 United States Supreme Court ruling, Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., held that taxes on rents from real estate, on interest income from personal property and other income from personal property (which includes dividend income) were direct taxes on property, and therefore had to be apportioned.

Since apportionment of income taxes is impractical, this had the effect of prohibiting a federal tax on income from property.

 

[indago]

AtlasShrieked:

that was clear to me what you were talking about. so, what about it? where is teh wiki wrong on that case---in what they say?

REREAD

You can find the case through Google, or whatever other search engine you use...

Solicitor General had argued that the new "income tax" was a new kind of tax that fell somewhere in between the two distinct categories of taxation: that the new tax did not have to conform to geographical uniformity, nor be apportioned to the States. The Supreme Court set in stone the fact that the "income tax" was in the category of excise taxes, which is a tax upon privileges. Government was never granted the power to lay a direct tax upon the inhabitants of the States.



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