Is Working a Right or a Privilege?
One particularly dastardly portion of the income tax is the underlying philosophy: what you earn belongs to the government, and if you’re nice, they’ll let you keep some of it. This is particularly true of the nastiness of withholding. They sneak your money out of your paycheck, because they know that if you had to explicitly pay your taxes, you might get upset. And they manage to, by design, take a little more than you really owe, so they can make you happy when “tax refund time” arrives.
It seems that the state of Tennessee, in an effort to enact an income tax, also believes that freely contracting your time and effort in exchange for money (i.e. working) is a privilege, not a right. Why? Because in Tennessee, state income taxes are unconstitutional, but taxes on “privileges” are not:
You work for a living. Do you have the right to work for a living?
I don’t mean the right to any job you want, regardless of whether the employer agrees to hire you. But do you have a right to accept a job when it is offered, to work at it according to the terms agreed upon?
It’s rhetorical, but go ahead and answer, “Yes, Paul, yes, I have the right to work for a living. What did you think?”
Look, don’t get testy on me. We agree. Indeed, what else could the Declaration of Independence be referring to when it speaks of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” if that doesn’t include the right to pursue a livelihood?
I bring it up because of a book called Tax Revolt by Phil Valentine. He’s a Tennessee radio host who helped lead a citizen revolt against an attempt to impose a state income tax - Tennessee being one of the few states that still has no such tax.
The battle against the tax lasted for several years. The politicians resorted to many ludicrous expedients. Including — you guessed it — the claim that working for a living is a PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT.
A state income tax is actually unconstitutional in Tennessee. But the constitution also says that the legislature “shall have power to tax merchants, peddlers, and privileges.” Thus, the pro-tax side decided that earning a living must be a PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT . . . so, therefore, an income tax must be constitutional after all!
Really, I’m not kidding.
These guys have no shame.
Ask yourself one question. If today, we had no income tax, and the government came around asking for anywhere between 10% and 36% of your income, off the top, would you go for it?
I didn’t think so.
