It meant taking risks for greater gains. It meant having rewards for self-confidence in one's own ideas. When the incentive to earn is surpassed by the obligation to pay, no risk will be worth taking. After 136 years of expansion and convolution, the behemoth federal tax code and the Internal Revenue Service might come closer to threatening our Republic than General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia did running around the Pennsylvania countryside. The concept of an income tax, once thought of as the only means to save the Union, now stands as the biggest threat to it.
Several states operate successfully without an income tax.
Under the current tax code, federal or state, the largest industries now operating in the nation pay nothing to the tax collector. Add to that the millions of Americans who go to great lengths to not pay some or all of the taxes they owe, and there exists in the culture of lawlessness an untapped reservoir of tax revenue sufficient to negate the national debt. Under a sales-tax system, however, every time that drug dealer goes to buy jewelry, luxury clothing, a Lamborghini, or a beachfront mansion he pays his taxes on time and in full. That's because he is and always has been a consumer of goods and services. He just doesn't volunteer to the IRS that he works for a living.