Subject: tax Comment: Tax Reform for the Ages 02/28/2005 Once again we hear talk of tax reform. What are the reasons this time? The same as the last time: the code has become unfair, too complicated, inflexible to inflation, full of loopholes. Why do tax laws get so old so quickly? because they are based on a lie. The truth endures forever. That is what truth is. But a lie must keep moving to survive. It will work only if everyone recites the same lie and believes it; but even then, in time, the worm will work its way until the rot cannot go unnoticed. The truth is that the government cannot tax what it does not own. Here is an example: My family income is $100,000 a year and I live in a $750,000 home. The town assesses the value of land and property and charges me say $10,000 a year. I built the house with my own funds and raised a $50,000 plot of land to a $750,000 ‘property’. The Commonwealth in the mean time feels it has a stake in my income bearing labor and comes looking for its $5,000 annually. The Federal government also senses a stake in my labor to the tune of $20,000 a year and, perforce, collects it. One day my house burns down, and having replacement cost insurance, I negotiate to a $700,000 settlement. My wife and I decide to ‘go native’. We quit our jobs and build a ramshackle roof from the remaining timber and shingles; we build a makeshift fireplace and chimney, buy a few chickens and plant some vegetables. We sell our cars and invest in two healthy bicycles and few goats for milk. Our money we put into 7 different free checking accounts with no interest. We have about 30-50 yrs of life left and our nest egg will hold us quite nicely in this primitive mode. We buy a tent so that when the town keeps evicting us from our uninhabitable property we can vacate until they look the other way. And of course we apply to have the property reassessed. Next year the town can only claim $800 of the $10,000 they used to collect. I have just proven the town did not own my ‘property’, only my land. It had no right to tax the fruits of my labor and, in MY choosing not rebuild, that truth became evident. The Commonwealth and Fed, both with plenty of fat projects to fund, are disappointed that they cannot collect a dime from my new work status: unemployed. I have proven that the fruit of my labor again, belongs to me, and in choosing not to return to work, my wife and I have made that truth evident. Can the town force me to rebuild so it can regain its lost revenue? probably unconstitutional, not that they wouldn’t try. Can the State and Federal governments force me back to work? Very unconstitutional; even though the hankering for slavery is alive and almost well in America, you probably couldn’t pull it off. Government is force; but when it chooses to tax what it does not own, the force weakens. Tax what you don’t own and you tax what you do not control. Having no control, everyone hides, manipulates, redirects money away from your tax code until you are chasing shadows. In my effort to disappear as a tax paying entity there was one thing I couldn’t escape. You have to live somewhere. The town continued to tax the land. That is all it really owns. Our nations are defined by their borders; their air-space and territorial waters are all hung on the land that we see on the globe. If I own a 10 Million dollar home and the government needs that land to extend a highway, they will have it by eminent domain. What if all taxes, all that we need to run a nation, were derived solely from the land. Use of the land, or rent, was the only recourse for town, state and federal taxation. A factor could be derived to get what was needed. Land would be assessed the way it is now with the burden going to the better acreage. The right to ride the subway two stops to the heart of the finance district would have same premium it does today over a similar plot in an Iowa cornfield. Why? Because you can’t hide land and it’s worth is self-evident. If I choose to convert a tenement to a palace, I am not punished. Although, more slowly, if enough tenements convert, the land will be taxed as more valuable. Conversely, if I put a pig farm in a suburb and a diminishing of the value of surrounding land can be proved, I pay the difference, or farm elsewhere. How? Who best knows the land but the local community. Who more wants to tax as much as they can, but not so much that people leave. The town collects and the Fed and State take their share from the town. Fed and State fund a land court system that adjudicates contentions so that towns do not persecute individuals without recourse. Your income is yours. The property you build is yours. The land is the nation. |