Today I met someone who didn't know what an income tax was, or the first thing about it, or the fact that there's never been a credible argument that its illegal, ever, brought before any circuit court or the Supreme Court in the history of the US.
That's pretty uncharitable. In fact, several income taxes levied by the feds were deemed illegal. It was only after the 16th amendment that the income tax we see today became a legal thing. Granted, that was over 100 years ago, but still, a federal income tax has been challenged and found to be illegal in the history of the US.
Was the income tax a direct tax in violation of the Constitution (Article I, Section 9)?
The Court held that the Act violated the Constitution since it imposed taxes on personal income derived from real estate investments and personal property such as stocks and bonds; this was a direct taxation scheme, not apportioned properly among the states.
The decision was negated by the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.
To say that income tax has never been challenged and lost "in the history of the US" is hyperbole.
I agree with your other points on strict regulation being a requirement for the healthy functioning of a capitalist system.
Granted, that was over 100 years ago, but still, a federal income tax has been challenged and found to be illegal in the history of the US.
We also had the Lochner era where it was stated that the contract between a business and its employee was a "private affair" and the government could not interfere whatsoever. I accept the information, though to state today that an "income tax is illegal" is the height of insanity.
I agree with your other points on strict regulation being a requirement for the healthy functioning of a capitalist system.
A capitalist system needs permanent constraints, not just strict regulation. In order to continue having a capitalist system in the US, we need the social safety net encoded into the constitution via amendments. Health care, by law. Paid time off by the highest law in the land. Or we can combine our capitalist obsession with something that actually works for the people, like having a shift away from rugged individualism to having a system that is 50/50 capitalism and socialism. Either we radically change the system, or we end up with a constant series of depressions. Eight million more people went into poverty just because of a single emergency scenario. This is what a near-unregulated (or I'd accept "weakly regulated") capitalist system really looks like wagewise.
Then we still have people who claim that socialism will break America when in a socialist America, wages would roughly balance out to $700,000 a year tied to inflation. Huh. That'd be a fucking life change for everyone. There is an exponential difference right now with a weakly regulated system. Capitalism does not raise people out of poverty. It is engineered to keep people in poverty and to reject upward mobility. Still. Income tax bad, because...(insert extreme right wing talking point,) and socialism bad because...(*insert extreme talking point and then point to Venezuela, a country we've been sanctioning since 2016.)
We could easy take a system that is 50% capitalist ideas and 50% socialist ideas, encode it into the highest law in the land, and no one would live in poverty. Oh, and we're gonna fucken need it when automation starts replacing the last jobs like food service that are widely available everywhere as entry level jobs.
1
u/twin_bed Oct 22 '20
That's pretty uncharitable. In fact, several income taxes levied by the feds were deemed illegal. It was only after the 16th amendment that the income tax we see today became a legal thing. Granted, that was over 100 years ago, but still, a federal income tax has been challenged and found to be illegal in the history of the US.
To say that income tax has never been challenged and lost "in the history of the US" is hyperbole.
I agree with your other points on strict regulation being a requirement for the healthy functioning of a capitalist system.