Income taxation not a civil-liberties issue? Be serious
By: Ron Collins
Tags: Fascism, Civil Rights, Income Tax

Dear Mr. Collins, Thank you for contacting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU’s mission is to hold the government accountable to uphold guarantees provided for in the Constitution that protect civil liberties. We understand your concerns about paying federal taxes, but there does not appear to be a civil liberties concern raised by taxation. Since federal taxes apply to everyone who earns over a stipulated amount, there does not appear to be a civil liberties violation. Many policies and laws may be unfair, but do not necessarily impinge on civil liberties. Thank you again for getting in touch. Sincerely, Kitt E. Abad Associate Manager, Donor Services American Civil Liberties Union

And my [as yet unanswered] reply:

It may or may not be safe to assume that you have even the most elementary knowledge of law, but this ridiculous assertion that taxation of personal incomes touches on no appreciable civil-liberties questions has me more inclined to assume you are more indoctrinated than schooled, about what civil liberties are at all.

Let’s see here:

First Amendment: says no law may be passed abridging freedom of speech. What is freedom of speech, if not the implicit right not to speak, as well? In the now-infamous Citizens United decision, the high court in its ruling cites the First Amendment dozens of times, one after another, in language which precisely equates fiscal expenditures with speech, and shows how no one may compel another to use or not use their money in whatever otherwise lawful manner they see fit. This ruling alone ought to have been deployed immediately as an adequate precedent to make IRS and everything associated with the collection of income taxes unlawful, since the only way it may calculate what is or is not ‘taxable income’ is to force you under pain of prosecution, to tell them. If that alone is not Congress passing laws abridging the freedom of speech, nothing is.

Fourth Amendment: again, if coercing you into disclosing intimate and intricate details of your economic life and livelihood, so that this information may be used against you to force you into paying off a bureaucracy, seems reasonable, if you in your most liberal interpretation of ‘unreasonable search and seizure’ find that reasonable, then you are not capable of reason at all. What other invasions of your dignity and autonomy as a human being are you willing to allow as reasonable ones?

Fifth Amendment: nobody is supposed to have the power to force you to testify against yourself. The last time, or any time, you filled out a ‘tax form’, answering questions about your private affairs which are no one’s business to even ask you, because and only because you are afraid of the powers to be unleashed on you if you don’t, what is that, if not being forced to testify against yourself?

Sixth Amendment: you are supposed to have the right to due process of law when accused of a crime. Let’s say this IRS racket accuses you of one: how did they get the information to make that accusation, to begin with? Does your continual submission of evidence which may be used against you in a court of law because you have no choice, sound like due process of law, to you?

Fourteenth Amendment: let’s look at what it means for you and everyone else to have the right of equal protection under the laws. Let’s suppose your neighbor or coworker has access to resources such as clever tax accountants, offshore accounts, cryptocurrency or organized crime connections, and you don’t. You and he or she make the exact same income and have the exact same conditions of a household, but your neighbor pays no tax at all because of all these underhanded tricks they can play not to, and you pay the full amount because you never availed yourself of all the cons and scams they do? Does that sound like equal protection of the laws, to you?

You need to hit the books, and maybe skip the ones by the Green New Dealers and the radical feminists about how taxes and bureaucracy are the magic solution to the human condition, and start actually learning what your own individual rights (also known in some circles, I’m told, as ‘civil liberties’) are.

Best I can tell, you don’t seem to believe you have any rights at all, nor that I do either. Poor you.

Ron Collins