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File Under 'Forget It'
“We
never pay any one Dane-geld, The
more things change, the more they stay the same. The Danegeld was an
extortion demand (euphemistically called a “tax”) levied on English
land owners in medieval times in order to pay tribute to Danish pirates
who threatened to descend upon a prostrate Albion and take what they
wanted if it wasn’t paid. As Kipling noted, one who pays the Danegeld never gets rid of the Dane. First levied in 868 A.D. and again in 871, the Danegeld came to be regularly demanded under Aethelred and persisted until, under William the Conqueror in the 11th Century, it was . . . . Eliminated? No.
Regularized, institutionalized and renamed. The Danegeld no doubt
persists to this day, albeit under other names and having undergone any
number of “reforms.” Somewhere off the coast of England, perhaps
occasionally visible from the cliffs of Dover, there may yet lurk a
raiding party fresh out of Roskilde, awaiting an easy paycheck in lieu
of their imminent ascent up the Thames to ravage the cosmetics counter
at Harrods’s. Taxes,
you see, never go away. Old threats which they are raised to combat
either persist or take new, equally urgent forms, and entirely new
threats arise which require ever deeper dipping into the peasantry’s
pocket. If you think the Danegeld is a curious historical anomaly,
you’re wrong. Take a look at your next phone bill. The federal tax
portion of it was levied in 1898 -- to finance the Spanish-American War.
Neat scam, eh? Taxes,
of course, rely on a couple of very mutable factors: the willingness of
the payers to pay, and the ability of the collectors to collect. In
the case of the federal income tax, the state has managed to maximize
the latter and minimize the relevance of the former by implementing
schemes like “withholding” projected tax debt from the paychecks of
wage earners. This, however, is not a perfectible system. There will
always be ways to get out of, or around, paying and there will never be
a system that is 100% effective in blocking the exit. Let’s
stop for a moment and consider the rationales of the various “pay no
income tax” movements of the last decade or two. We have a crowd which
insists that the 16th Amendment was never ratified. Another
faction claims, 16th Amendment or not, that there is either
no statutory authority for the collection of the income tax or that that
statutory authority does not obligate most Americans to cough up. Not
having researched the former claim thoroughly, I can’t speak to its
veracity. In the latter case, the argument seems to be valid … but
remember, we live in a polity epitomized by its former chief
executive’s ability to temporize over the meaning of “is,” its
Supreme Court’s ability to see “interstate commerce” in
transactions that occur wholly within one state, and its Congress’s
penchant for declaring wars by passing resolutions that are not
declaratory and don’t allude
to war. Kipling
may have known his stuff on taxes, but it takes Lewis Carroll to explain
the logic underlying the
government of the United States of America. Let’s cut, instead, to the chase. A couple of years ago, I stopped filing tax returns. Not too long after that fateful April 15th, I started getting letters from the Internal Revenue Service. They were willing, even eager, to discuss my “debt” and work out “payment plans” so that I could meet my “obligations” to them. The
roving Dane, you see, wants very much to be regarded not as a roving
Dane but as a charity worker on whom one voluntarily showers alms (in
the normal course of things) or as a respectable businessman collecting
a legitimate debt (when the alms stop coming). I
don’t want you to proceed under the misimpression that I stopped
filing tax returns out of high-minded convictions. Granted,
I can find no authority under U.S. law that obligates me to pay income
taxes, even if I retained any shred of respect for what law has become
under the tender ministrations of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
Granted,
I have very specific objections to paying them, even though the burden
the IRS attempts to place on me is comparatively light (being a
self-employed, professional writer is overrated if making money is your
priority -- I make less at it than I did working graveyard shift in a
factory). And,
finally, I am a libertarian. I do not sanction the initiation of force
(including, per the Libertarian Party’s membership pledge requirement,
initiation of force to achieve political or social goals). That would
include hiring others to do that initiating for me.
If I voluntarily pay a government to break down people’s doors
and kidnap them for possession or ingestion of the “wrong
chemicals,” or to drop bombs on villages full of innocents who have
offered no harm to myself or to that government, then as far as I can
tell, I am initiating
force. Of
course, if I am coerced into paying for these things -- if I am
“taxed” against my will -- I suppose I have an excuse. But
it’s actually much simpler than that from my perspective. The
straw that broke the camel’s back for me was the paperwork. I don’t
like being stolen from, but I’m smart enough to know that sometimes
thieves can’t be avoided. If you can’t overpower them, you take your
losses and go about your business -- and try to avoid them in the
future. What
I will no longer do, however, is spend
hours poring over stacks of paperwork so that I can account for every
dime that my muggers might want to rifle my pockets for. Not no way, not
no how. Naturally,
the thieves are going busily about finding other ways to get my money.
And they probably will. What they won’t get, however, is my
cooperation in portraying their theft as anything other than what it is. High-minded?
After a fashion, I suppose. I am willing to go to jail rather than fill
out another 1040. But the root at which I am striking is far more
fundamental than the sour fruit hanging from the branches of the aged
rotten tree above it: I’m
tired of the Dane. It’s just that simple. Like any boring or boorish
houseguest, he’s worn out his welcome, and I am no longer willing to
massage his ego by pretending that he’s a charity worker asking nicely
for help or a respectable businessman collecting a debt that I owe. He’s
no longer a houseguest. He’s a burglar. He always has been, but I’ve
always been too polite to mention it. No
more Mr. Nice Guy. |
