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The Real April Fools' Day
By Doug Patton
April 15, 2002

April 1st is called "April Fools' Day," but we all know it's really the 15th. That's when millions of us fools trek down to our local post office to mail our federal income tax returns. Like mindless marionettes on government strings, we have ordered our lives according to tax law that required us to act a certain way last year in order to get back a few crumbs of what has been confiscated from us.

Relieved that the tedious calculations are over for another year, we hold our breath and pray that we didn't do anything to trigger an audit from that dreaded government entity my aunt used to call the "Infernal Revenue Service."

Every April, as my wife and I scramble to find the documentation necessary to back up our claim that we should be allowed to keep a certain percentage of our income, my resentment toward this corrupt system grows. Why should our government have the right to know how much money we made last year, along with so many other details of our lives? Why is this personal information any of their business?

Continued tinkering with the incomprehensible federal tax code only makes matters worse, while benefiting few beyond the ranks of accountants and tax attorneys. And because it leaves the IRS in place to harass and demand the details of our livelihood, the so-called flat tax is just a more radical form of tinkering.

Funding government through the direct confiscation of a citizen's hard-earned wages was an odious concept our Founders viewed as reminiscent of the very oppression they had just overthrown. That thinking prevailed for 137 years, until congress passed the 16th Amendment in 1913. And though many have challenged the validity of the amendment's ratification over the years, it is recognized today as the law of the land.

The 16th Amendment authorizing taxation of income should be repealed, thereby ridding us of what Alan Keyes has properly called "the slave tax." The only equitable way for of a truly free people to raise government revenue is through a national sales tax. Not a value added tax, mind you, wherein fees can be hidden in the cost of goods, but a point-of-purchase tax collected and sent to the federal treasury by the merchant, just as is done at the state and local level in most parts of the country.

Imagine no more saving of receipts or keeping a log of mileage.

If you are a small business owner, imagine no more headaches tracking inventory for the purpose of reporting to the government how much you sold last year, how much was carried over, how much you paid for it or the amount for which you sold it.

Imagine no more W-2's, 1099's, 1040's, schedule C's, amended returns, filing extensions, or fear of audits.

Imagine no more tax attorneys whose only purpose is to translate indecipherable tax code.

Imagine no more dread as the filing deadline approaches. In other words, imagine April 15th was just another lovely spring day.

Then take a look at that "gross earnings" figure on your next pay stub, the one representing the amount of work you actually performed. How would you like to keep it all?

Of course, you would pay the national sales tax on everything you buy. But imagine for a moment how much more you could buy if you could keep your entire paycheck. Imagine the capital investment that would be taking place if the marketplace was free of corporate income taxes and taxes on capital gains, which are merely passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices anyway.

And imagine the power you would feel over your own life if the amount of tax you paid to the government was contingent upon how much "stuff" you bought. If you drove a new luxury car, you would pay the extra tax. So would the drug dealer (or other tax cheat) who deals in cash and therefore can hide income under the current system.

If you chose to drive an older car, you would pay much less tax, thereby freeing those dollars for investment, higher education and other things. The same would apply to everything you purchased, thereby putting you in charge of your tax bill.

Simple, clean, anonymous. No government files, no intrusions into the details of your life. You wouldn't even have to tell them you exist. Wouldn't that be nice? Think it will ever happen?

April Fools!