When the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, Americans were sold a lie wrapped in noble intentions. The federal income tax, we were told, would be a temporary measure — a tool to catch the rich, fund the government modestly, and maintain fairness in the age of industrial monopolies. The tax rate? A mere 1% on incomes over $3,000 (about $90,000 today), with a maximum rate of 7% on incomes over $500,000. “Don’t worry,” they said. “This only affects the wealthy.”
Fast forward to today. The IRS is the most feared agency in America. The income tax is not just permanent — it is metastatic. It punishes success, disincentivizes productivity, and turns every working American into a suspect.
This was never about fairness. It was about control.
A Machinery Built to Crush the American Spirit
The genius of the American economy lies in voluntary exchange — where risk-taking, hard work, and ingenuity are rewarded. But the income tax flips that system on its head. It punishes the very behaviors that built this nation.
- Work harder? Pay more.
- Invest wisely? Pay more.
- Build something enduring? Pay more.
In every other realm of life, success is celebrated. In the IRS tax code, it’s penalized. That’s not taxation — that’s a form of economic reeducation.
Worse still, the IRS doesn’t just collect taxes. It enforces obedience through audits, penalties, asset seizures, and even armed raids. A 2009 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that IRS agents had over 4,600 guns and 5 million rounds of ammunition. For a tax agency.
This isn’t governance. It’s intimidation.
“Temporary” Tyranny: The Lie of 1913
When President Woodrow Wilson signed the income tax into law, Americans weren’t told it would become the government’s primary feeding trough. As early as 1916, total federal tax revenue from the income tax had ballooned to $77 million (from $28 million in 1914) — just as America was gearing up for World War I.
By 1918, top tax rates had exploded to 77%, justified by war spending — and yet, those rates never returned to their pre-war levels. The “temporary” tax became a permanent pillar of the administrative state.
(Source: U.S. Tax Foundation, “Federal Income Tax History,” https://taxfoundation.org)
The Cost of 100 Years of Confiscation
Let’s do the math.
Since 1916, the federal government has collected over $125 trillion in inflation-adjusted income taxes (as of 2023), according to historical IRS data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office and adjusted using CPI inflation metrics.
Had even half of that remained in private hands — say, $62.5 trillion — and been conservatively invested in the S&P 500, the outcome would have been astronomical.
Let’s assume an average annual return of 7%, adjusted for inflation (the S&P’s historical real return). Compounded over a century, that capital could have grown to over $1.8 quadrillion. That’s not a typo.
Even taking into account that not all taxes would be invested (some would be spent), the free market multiplier effect — through investment, entrepreneurship, job creation, and innovation — would have dwarfed any government program ever created.
What have we received instead?
- A $34 trillion federal debt.
- Failing public schools.
- Unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security.
- A federal workforce of bureaucrats writing rules no citizen voted for.
This is not a system designed to serve the people. It is a system designed to extract wealth from the people and centralize power in Washington.
Who Benefits? Not You.
The income tax serves the ruling class. It feeds the bureaucracy. It empowers the political machine. And it keeps the people just uncomfortable enough, just afraid enough, to obey.
Meanwhile, the politically connected skate by with armies of accountants. The billion-dollar corporations — the same ones that bankroll left-wing cultural engineering — manipulate the tax code to pay nothing while the middle class gets bled dry.
Elon Musk paid $11 billion in taxes in 2021 — but only because he chose to sell stock. Meanwhile, GE, Netflix, and Amazon have all paid $0 in past years due to loopholes, carry-forwards, and “green” credits.
(Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 2021 report)
Time to Choose: Liberty or Leverage
The American people have tolerated this system for too long.
It is not un-American to question the income tax. It is profoundly American.
The Founders would have rejected it outright. In fact, they did. The original Constitution explicitly prohibited direct taxes unless apportioned by population. It wasn’t until a constitutional amendment — the Sixteenth — that the federal government grabbed the power to tax your paycheck.
James Madison warned, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”
He was right.
The IRS and the income tax are not tools of justice. They are tools of dependence and destruction — designed to punish the very qualities that make a man free: his productivity, his discipline, his will to build something of his own.
Until we abolish this system, or radically limit it to its original scope, we will never be a truly free people.
Not in law.
Not in spirit.
And not in our own homes.
Sources:
- Tax Foundation: Historical Federal Income Tax Rates and Revenues – https://taxfoundation.org
- IRS Data Book Archives (1916–2023): https://www.irs.gov/statistics
- CBO Long-Term Revenue Tables – https://www.cbo.gov
- Treasury Inspector General Report on IRS Weapons (2009) – https://www.treasury.gov/tigta
- Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), “Corporate Tax Avoidance in 2021” – https://itep.org
John Fisher is a citizen-patriot and defender of American liberty. He writes from within the house, not from a think tank.
