The longer I live and the more I study, the more convinced I become that the sixteenth amendment is the greatest assault on liberty in our Constitution.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
The amendment was passed as a benign revision to the Constitution, amending Article I Section 9 which had specifically prohibited Congress from laying any direct tax. Without this amendment the government could never have sufficient funds to substantially exceed their constitutional authority.
This amendment was passed in order to make it possible to levy income taxes – the most sinister aspect of income taxes being that government now holds first claim on the income of its citizens. If I don’t wish to support what the government is doing my only legal way to not support it is to have no income (or at least, less income than they are interested in taxing). While it will never happen in my lifetime (and probably will never happen period) the fact that the government has first claim on my income means that Congress could claim everything I produce and take it as income tax. So much for the right to property because my property (and yours) is now a gift or loan from the government.
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