The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.

The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.

The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.

As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.

The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.

I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."

T. Coleman Andrews. Andrews was the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service for three years, from 1953 until 1955.

Maybe a use tax like 30% on everything you buy. local, state, and fed would get their cuts from that.

I terminated our Iraq discussion because it was going no where. You make baseless comments like the ones here. Totally untrue. The top 5% of wage earners in this country pay 95% of all the taxes taken in. This is as you would say "a fact and non-debatable." The wealthy get screwed by taxes in this country. So I am not going to have this discussion with you either. It's fruitless.

To make things a little easier for you here are some excerpts.

"Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 90 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000 and 2001, this group paid over 96 percent of the total."

"The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.9 percent of all individual income taxes in 2001. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group’s tax share has grown faster than their income share."

• http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/js1287.htm

By the way, you forgot to discuss the fact that the tax burden on the rich, with Bush's tax cuts actually grows and not falls according to the US treasury.