{"id":6840,"date":"2014-04-15T12:11:34","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T16:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=6840"},"modified":"2014-04-15T12:15:44","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T16:15:44","slug":"anti-taxation-epigrams-lost-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/15\/anti-taxation-epigrams-lost-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Taxation Epigrams from Lost Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Income Tax Day spurred me to dip back into Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty<\/strong><\/a> (St. Martin’s, 1994) and pluck out a few lines from the “Taxing and Tyrannizing” chapter \u00a0that sought to capture the essence of the IRS and contemporary taxation:<\/p>\n

*The federal tax system turns individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.<\/p>\n

*Current tax law effectively gives the IRS the legal pretexts to send millions of Americans to prison.<\/p>\n

*Federal tax policy is now little more than oppression in the name of revenue maximization.<\/p>\n

*Tax rates measure the nation’s most costly entitlement – how much of people’s income politicians are entitled to seize.<\/p>\n

*Income taxes have created a moral inversion in the relationship between the citizen and the State.<\/p>\n

*The Internal Revenue Service is the authoritarian means to pseudo-paternalist ends.<\/p>\n

\"lost<\/a><\/p>\n

*With payroll tax withholding, the citizen exists to provide financial grist for the State’s mill.<\/p>\n

*The more of a person’s paycheck govt. seizes, the more of his life politicians control.<\/p>\n

*Taxes are a debt to the State that politicians can increase at any time on any pretext.<\/p>\n

*At what point does taxation become a form of political slavery?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Income Tax Day spurred me to dip back into Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin’s, 1994) and pluck out a few lines from the “Taxing and Tyrannizing” chapter \u00a0that sought to capture the essence of the IRS and contemporary taxation: *The federal tax system turns individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAnti-Taxation Epigrams from Lost Rights - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/15\/anti-taxation-epigrams-lost-rights\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anti-Taxation Epigrams from Lost Rights - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Income Tax Day spurred me to dip back into Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin’s, 1994) and pluck out a few lines from the “Taxing and Tyrannizing” chapter \u00a0that sought to capture the essence of the IRS and contemporary taxation: *The federal tax system turns individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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