A tax lawyer, Charles Adams, wrote a book back in 1982 called Fight Flight Fraud, The Story of Taxation.
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He covers the history of taxation, from at least 3000 BC, to his time, 1982. His thesis is taxation is the price we pay for for a civilized society, following Holmes, but the state almost always gets it wrong. Taxing is tricky, and he shows, through historical example, where taxes go right and where they go wrong. Taxes done wrong invite fight, flight or fraud, or some combination thereof. And his history of the world revolves around tax policy, and its effects. It is a fascinating trip.
The book is fundamental to any business library. His study is comprehensive and entertaining. My first criticism would be general... please, if you have serious content, do not lay out your book like a coffee table book. Those of us who have the gift of ADD/ADHD get lost in such books. The book was a gift for my birthday. It is big, 9x`12. . It has lots of pictures I spent a month jumping from picture to picture, reading bits here and there, and not making much sense of it. I finally forced myself to read through from the beginning, and found the book is a treasure.
There are nuts who say the income tax is unconstitutional, and this lawyer agrees. Not only was an income tax introduced twice, twice it was ruled unconstitutional and overturned. Three times is the charm, and there it is. It is still UNconstitutional for 2 reason he lays out, as a lawyer, but by 1982, USA was no longer nation of laws. He outlines the relentless effort on the part of American counterrevolutionaries to undo the constitution, successfully.
It was also fun to read a book contemporaneous to 1982, where many of his allusions come from that era. A trip down memory lane, to boot.
He does not like our tax system, and his criticism of the system 1982 would be all the stronger for today. If you love the state and want to preserve it, then this is a game plan for avoiding revolution while funding the state.
Under Reagan there were some changes to the tax laws, but they only served to make collection wider and more efficient, not better.
A couple of interesting points. In many cases Jews fled to Moslem safety in the face of Christian ferocity. In one instance, welcoming Jewish perspicacity, a Moslem potentate declared Jews tax exempt. The Jewish elders appealed to the fellow to make no such rule, for in time it would invite envy and repercussions. The Jews have not forgotten the disaster of Joseph and their experience in Egypt.
Liberals love to point to high-tax Sweden as the workable ideal for USA. What I did not know is Swedes are an aggressive, world class tax avoidance people. Important detail that. Their aggressiveness would make an Italian blush. And on the other hand, their tax collectors would make an SS officer blush. We can all name famous Swedes, none of them live in Sweden. As soon a Bjorn Borg started making money in tennis, he got out of Sweden. Swedes work hard to get way from Sweden. When speaking admiringly of Swedish polity, that should be noted as a downside to their system.
It is his critique of the USA tax system, in light of all others, that is the harshest. And he was writing in 1982, imagine what he would say today.
For my part, I do not buy his thesis that “taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society .. and we can get it right. “ Taxation is one price we pay for a state, but we do not need a state. Yes, the state can make taxes more tolerable, but since crisis feeds state power, why would the powers that be ever make life easier? Abusive taxation may invite fight, flight or fraud, but as this history shows, the state has endless ways of countering all three. And none more prolific than the United States.
Further, his history shows, but he does not note, that when taxes are low, the burden fairly distributed, and the government careful in spending it, we have peace and prosperity. Well, we see that today in places like Andorra and Hong Kong, where most people have no tax burden whatsoever, becasue people tend to be self-governing when there is no state to cause malinvestment and polity distortions. The conclusion would be eliminate the state and taxation, but he will not go that far.
But as a lawyer, his livelihood depends on the state, so as a lawyer, he will always prefer the state to his clients.
When the US was being formed, watchers around the world were observing and commenting. One such observer, Immanuel Kant noted an internal contradiction, a fatal flaw in our system. You know that we have a system of checks and balances, the legislative, the judiciary and the executive branch. Lawyers are officers of the court, that is to say, they are officers in one of the three branches of government. For an officer of the court to serve in any other brach of government is both a conflict of interest and an abuse of power. Kant warned such a flaw would bring down our system. It did.
A supreme court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, at the top of the judiciary, is the one who said taxation is the price we pay for for a civilized society. And take a wild guess where the quote is written in stone? Over the entrance of the Internal Revenue Headquarters, a division of the executive branch! Do we need any more evidence of perfidy than that?
One step in recovering freedom will make the implicit conflict of interest, explicit: no lawyer may serve in the legislative nor executive branch. I think we would have avoided much grief if we listened to Kant.
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