This isn't a complicated conversation. It's tax time and I’ll bet you just got screwed or rewarded depending on which group politicians wanted to manipulate this year. Here’s the problem: Our country was founded on a tax revolution and there is no way our Founding Fathers would have ever implemented the tax system we have today. Read the Federalist Papers, they were dead set against an income tax (taxing the fruits of your labor), laying any direct taxes against the People, and all taxes that were legal were apportioned equally among the several states. Taxing the fruits of a man’s productivity was considered not only bad economics but morally abhorrent. That’s why they created our original system of taxation: Apportionment.

In the original Constitution, up front and center was Article 1, Section 2: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” What does this mean? That the federal government should decide how much it costs to operate each year and bill the states accordingly. Taxes should be divided equally among the number of taxable citizens (that's what the census was for, a head count, NOT a survey of ethnic demographics) and the only taxes that were legal were as follows:

Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; " Nothing in here about an income tax, is there? All equally apportioned. Spelled right out there in Article I, which outlines the powers of the Legislative branch and, more importantly, the limitations on that branch. Simple enough, right? The unintended consequence and sheer genius of this system was that every taxpayer would know what every other taxpayer was paying and if their taxes got too high, everyone could revolt. Another Boston Tea Party. No if, ands or buts and no complicated tax codes or formulas. Shangri-La for citizens and a simple, built-in spigot on government spending.

This simple sentence, in one stroke, completely obliterated our system of taxation and created the mess that we all live with today. A tax system that is punitive, tyrannical, accountable to no one and, completely and absolutely out of control. Congress and tax activists have long been hacking at the branches of evil instead of the root. It doesn’t mean a thing to re-design or tamper with a system that is so sick that it's terminal. It has to be dismantled. The IRS should have only one function: to collect the taxes that are all applied equally to all citizens. That way all of us can be outraged (or elated) at once.

Liberals call this system “regressive”. Of course, to them it's regressive because it doesn’t reward poverty and punish wealth. In reality, it is progressive. An apportioned tax is a tax that inherently limits government since no person can be taxed more than the person least able to afford to pay. Those dastardly “rich people” can pay more in taxes because they can consume more, and that’s good for everyone.

It’s time to repeal the 16th amendment because this is America. If you really believe in equality, we need to dismantle the tax code and return to our roots. Not only that but, as importantly, we need to change Tax Day to coincide precisely with our elections. Imagine if you had to vote next week. How quickly would Congress be to increase our taxes or refuse to do something about our criminally complex tax code? The branches of evil are strangling everyone. By rewarding those who contribute least to society and punishing those who have the Constitutional and God given right to keep the fruits of our labor and pass it on to our loved ones as we see fit, our legislatures are playing God. And since we know how desperate liberals are to keep their separation of church and state, it's probably time we obliged them.