# Income Tax: Root of All Evil

The Income Tax: Root of All Evil is a book written by American libertarian and member of the Old Right, Frank Chodorov, in 1954.
The book argues that the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Federal Income Tax which it enabled, are together the worst of economic disincentives to human flourishing and productivity. Additionally, the book makes the moral case for why the Federal Income tax is the greatest infringement on human happiness and wellbeing.

## Content

The book opens with a foreword from United States governor from Utah J. Bracken Lee who says, "...the principal argument for the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment is that only in that way can freedom from an interventionist government be restored to the American people."
Chodorov continues with an opening argument section written from Washington, D.C. in February 1954 stating:
   When you examine any species of government intervention you find that it is made possible by revenues. A government is as strong as its income. Contrariwise, the independence of the people is in direct proportion to the amount of their wealth they can enjoy. We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government's power to tax. No tinkering with this, that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment.
The book is organized into the following chapters:
* Solomon's Yoke - This chapter explores the ancient origins of "income tax" and its evils
* Politically speaking, what is evil? - This chapter explores how if income tax is "evil", there must be an opposite "good", Chodorov explains in this chapter how that "good" is natural rights, and income tax is the greatest violation of natural rights.
* Yours is not your own - Chodorov explains the difference between direct and indirect taxes in this chapter and further outlines how direct taxes are unavoidable, unlike indirect taxes. As a result, they are compulsory and therefore have intrinsic violence embedded in their origin. The "evil root.
* How it came upon us - This chapter opens with the line, "The Constitution of 1789 barred the income tax. The [Founding] Fathers could not have put it in, even if they had a mind to, and there is no evidence that they had. A century later, when Americans were flirting with this invasion of property rights, legal minds tried to twist the language of the Constitution to their support. Whatever crumbs of comfort they got out of word juggling, the fact is that the Americans of 1789 would have none of this income tax. They were not that kind of people."
* The revolution of 1913 - Chodorov explains how it was clearly unconstitutional to impose an income tax during the Civil War, but that due to war conditions people ignored this fact. However, it became increasingly difficult to torture the meaning of words after the war, and so the tax died, until 1913 with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment and the end of the income tax free era which allowed for America to become the wealthiest and freest country in the world.
* Soak the poor - This chapter has Chodorov explaining that the left-wing, socialist, and populist elements that called for an income tax only ever felt that it would "soak the rich", and that it would not ever really apply to the "poor", Chodorov states in this chapter, "To be sure, the original Populists, and the aping Democrats and Republicans, to say nothing of the conscious Socialists, little thought that their income-tax gadget would ever be used to 'soak the poor.' It was an instrument, they thought, that could lend itself to no other purpose than to expropriate the rich in favor of the poor. How the poor would benefit from the expropriation, they did not explain; their intense hatred of the rich conveniently filled this vacuum in their argument. Their passion blinded them to the fact that this 'soak the rich' law would enable the government to filch the pay envelope [of the working class]."
* Corruption and corruption - This chapter opens with a quote from January 26, 1894, spoken by Representative Robert Adams, " The imposition of the [income] tax will corrupt the people. It will bring in its train the spy and the informer. It will necessitate a swarm of officials with inquisitorial powers. It will be a step toward centralization.... It breaks another canon of taxation in that it is expensive in its collection and cannot be fairly imposed; ... and, finally, it is contrary to the traditions and principles of republican government."
* A possible way out - This chapter opens with the line, "The American brand of socialism known as the New Deal was made possible by the income tax. But with the advent of income taxation, socialism was unavoidable." And then continues to emphasize this point later in the chapter, "If it had not been Mr. Roosevelt and his horde of self-seeking visionaries, it would have been somebody else. The New Deal, or something like it, was planted when the Sixteenth Amendment was put into the Constitution." The chapter continues to have a bleak outlook for America with the rise of socialism in its many institutions post-New Deal, except then in the end of the chapter Chodorov states, "It so happens that when this country was organized, the Founding Fathers, either by design or as a matter of necessity, effected an arrangement that is a road block to complete socialization. That is the division of authority between the several states and the federal government. This separation gave rise to the doctrine of States' Rights... Of course, the doctrine will have to be implemented with a will to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment; but that will can be generated, simply because it is to the interests of the forty-eight political establishments that this Amendment be repealed."
* Competition in government - This chapter argues that the dual loyalties inherent in the American system is key to independence and the strength of individualism in combatting collectivist encroachment. Chodorov writes, "No political authority ever achieved absolutism until the people were deprived of a choice of loyalties. It was because the early Christians put God above Caesar that they were persecuted, even though they paid homage and taxes to the established political establishment. Stalin's liquidation of the religious and fraternal orders followed from his basic premise that the Soviet was the only deity. Mussolini was always bothered by the hold the Catholic Church had on the people, and Stalin would never have been Stalin if he had not brought the orthodox church to foot. And so, if the Californian thinks of himself as a Californian as well as an American, and has two flags to support his contention, the central authority rests on shifting ground. In no country where centralism got going did the regime have to contend with divided authority such as our Constitution provides."
* Union forever - With a mention of secession and nullification being effectively eliminated by force during the American Civil War, Chodorov then mentions how the major changes resulting from the Sixteenth Amendment post-1913. Chodorov also writes, "Repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment would amount to secession of the forty-eight states from Washington—and restoration of the Union." Chodorov also demonstrates in this chapter that as of 1951 each and every state paid more in federal income tax receipts than it received back from the federal government in benefits, subsidies, or other payments or goods or services in kind.
   After 1913, however, and without either a war or a change in the law of the land, the states were gradually and almost imperceptibly rid of their sovereign position and reduced in importance to dependent subdivisions of the nation. It was done by the subtle arts of bribery and blackmail, made possible by the Sixteenth Amendment.
Frank Chodorov, Chapter 10, p. 92, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil
* For freedom's sake - The final chapter of the book opens with the following, "Repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment would not be a reform; it would be a revolution. A reform is a procedural change, an alteration in the legal ritual that does not affect the center of political power. A revolution, on the other hand, whether it is effected by violence or in an orderly fashion, is a transference of power from one group to another. An election is in effect a revolution... The American Revolution was unique in history, not because it kicked out a foreign rulership, which had been done before, but because it made possible the establishment of a government based on a new and untried principle, namely, that the government has no power except what the governed have granted it. That was a shift in power that had never occurred before." But then Chodorov changes tone from optimistic to dour, "A new American revolution was initiated in 1913, when the government was invested with the power to confiscate private property. The Amendment was not heralded as a revolution, and very few recognized it as such, but the fact is, as events have shown, that this power over the economy of the country put into the hands of the American government a means of liquidating the sovereignty of the citizenry." Chodorov closes the book out by saying that a lack of leadership is what is keeping the Sixteenth Amendment in place, and that only with a courageous and heroic capitalist leader, could such a task [of repealing the Sixteenth Amendment and ending the Federal Income tax in the United States] come about, "There is no accounting for the emergence of these superior men, these 'sports of nature,' who sporadically shape the course of mankind. They come, as it were, from nowhere, and nobody has yet conclusively explained their advent. But, they come. When in her own time and her own pleasure Nature deems America ready for and worthy of them, she will give us the men who will make the good fight."

## Reception

The book has served as an important and influential work among libertarians and Georgists in the United States, influencing key economic thinkers including Murray Rothbard.
Forbes wrote about Chodorov's lasting impact in an article from 2017 which quoted from the book as follows:
   Revenue-neutral tax reform implies that the government has a claim to a certain percentage of every American’s income. That is true even if tax reform actually includes the across-the-board lowering of tax rates. As Frank Chodorov explains in his book The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), the income tax means that the state says to its citizens, “Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide…. The amount of your earnings that you may retain for yourself is determined by the needs of government, and you have nothing to say about it.”
February 25 is the day in 1913 that the Sixteenth Amendment took effect. As a result, some groups such as the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) have written about Chodorov's book on that date.
Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF) quoted heavily from the book in a post from 1990.
Writing for Anchorage Daily News, Tim Shine wrote in 2019, "In his treatise 'The income tax: Root of all evil,' Libertarian intellectual Frank Chodorov laid out the case for why Alaskans should be proud to have shed the yoke of this insidious tax. By substituting resource taxes for the confiscated personal wealth of its citizens in the funding of services, Alaska’s state government chose a better path than the federal government. It is disturbing, therefore, to hear recent clamor for a return to the detestable tax. If it returns, it will never again go away."
The book is presently still printed on demand by the Mises Institute.