by Rick Fontes

Created on: June 18, 2008

The US tax code is the single greatest evil ever perpetrated upon the citizens of the United States. This convoluted, all but incomprehensible jumble of law and regulation stands as a monument to the forces of incrementalism and unintended consequence.

If a tax code was being written from scratch today, it is hard to believe that anything similar to what we now have would stand a chance of being voted into law.

Since government does not manufacture or market consumer products it must rely on taxation to raise the revenue needed to provide services to the people. No one living in a civil society can dispute the need for taxation.

In a perfect society tax codes would be designed to raise revenue, pure and simple. This is far from being true in these United States of America. Here the goal of raising revenue to operate the government is not the primary purpose of the tax code. Nor is it secondary or even tertiary.

The primary purpose of our tax code is to serve as a power base for those individuals who are charged with the operation of government whether elected, appointed or hired. Among other uses for the tax code are social engineering in general, limiting or expanding the production of various consumer products, determining land usage, and rewarding cronies while punishing adversaries.

Without the tax code at their disposal our elected officials would have to rely on statesmanship in order to accomplish their programs. Statesmanship compares to a taxing authority as does a rapier to a broadax.

It should not even be necessary to ask whether this current income tax system should be replaced. Anyone who looks at it objectively for more than a passing moment and who has no vested interest in the status quo would readily agree that an impossible to understand, 66000 page document, governing their financial well being has to go. Almost any other system would be better or, at the very least, not worse.

The present tax code has driven corporations from our shores and with them countless jobs. It has driven up costs and prices, brought people to financial ruin, separated families, caused otherwise decent citizens to become cheats and liars, enriched a few at great cost to the many and has even driven some to suicide.

No where in the constitution does it say that Congress shall create an institution for the purpose of striking fear into the hearts of the citizens. No where is it written that laws or regulations to collect taxes shall be placed on the people in such

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