Republican Tax Scams
There are two things we can say about Republican plans: 1. There are a lot of them, 2. Thank God they are rarely implemented.
This is especially true of Republican tax plans.
Now, it is certainly true that the U.S. tax code is a vague, complex monstrosity that punishes success and transfers money from “the rich” to “the poor” via refundable tax credits. But the tax code doesn’t need to be reformed, fixed, simplified, made flatter, made fairer, or replaced with something else—it needs to be repealed. And this is the root of the problem with all Republican tax plans.
Republicans in Congress have introduced a number of comprehensive tax reform plans over the past few years. The five major ones are:
- The Tax Reform Act of 2014 of Rep. Dave Camp.
- The Progressive Consumption Tax Act of Sen. Ben Cardin.
- The American Business Competitiveness Act of Rep. Devin Nunes. than the tax owed after the regular tax credits are applied, then the taxpayer receives a refund of the money he never actually paid in. The money is simply taken from actual taxpayers and transferred to him. Refundable tax credits are simply another form of welfare.
- Republican tax plans view with disdain certain tax credits and deductions. They decry that the tax code contains too many exemptions, credits, loopholes, shelters, exclusions, and deductions. In the name of simplifying the tax code, they propose to close loopholes, reduce credits, or eliminate deductions to ensure that everyone pays their “fair share.” But of course, the elimination of, or reduction in, tax credits and deductions is the same as an increase in taxes.
- Republican tax plans presuppose that the government has a right to a certain percentage of every American’s income. They may disagree on what that percentage that should be, whether “the rich” should pay more than “the poor,” and how the government should collect the money, but they all agree that the state says to its subjects, as Old Right stalwart Frank Chodorov wrote in The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), “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.”
Republican tax plans are Republican tax scams. As Chodorov concludes: “There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.”
The post Republican Tax Scams appeared first on LewRockwell.
Leave a Reply