The IRS Has An Opinion On My Stance, Too

So, what do you do if you check your mail one day (as I did today) and find that the IRS is going to levy your bank account to collect $1,600 they say is due from 2004, and $14.5K from 2006?  Well, most of you would about have a heart attack and panic, thinking that the sky is about to fall on your head.  You’d call the 800 number and set up a payment plan lickity-split and fall in line.  You would make sure to preserve your place as a dutiful cog in the wheels of the Man.

Me?  I’ve already come to terms with our ill-conceived income tax system and, though the sky may be falling on my head where this levy is concerned, it is not of my doing – it’s our dumb system at work.  So I say, let it fall.  Let the system do what it was made to do.  Why short-circuit the thing?  The system was designed to take away my ability to pay my rent come October; to take away my ability to support myself and my children; to take away my ability to put anymore gas in my car so I can drive to my tunings and earn my living.  The system was made to back me into a corner, grab me by the balls, and shake me down come hell or high water.  The only way out is to earn money at or below the poverty line, or to make so much that my high-priced lawyers can navigate me through the tax code to legally avoid the obligation.

I’ve written letters to the IRS, to State and Federal representatives, even to Mr. Obama, the man I voted into office.  I’ve voiced my concerns over the government essentially charging me money to exercise my fundamental human right to work for a living – but to no avail.  So, I’m giving myself the only logical option left to me: just say no.  I will not purposely live in poverty, I cannot afford the fancy lawyers, and I refuse to go “underground” and live a life of evasion – that’s what sewer rats do.  I will live out in the open, in the light.  I will stand up straight and say to the government: I owe you nothing for doing what a man must do.

It is precisely because this tax system has such formidable power built into it, such control over a supposedly free person’s life, that I oppose it.  Don’t talk to me of government budgets and “fairness” until you can look me in the eye and tell me I wasn’t born with the right to labor to sustain myself and my kids – and have me believe you.  You might say, “Of course you have that right, but rights come with responsibilities,” and from there you would launch into my responsibility to pay taxes and help pay for roads and schools.

But you’d be skipping a very important and overlooked fact.  My right to work for my sustenance is at the same time its own responsibility, and is, in fact, the chief responsibility of every man and woman.  It will never be right to impose a tax on the exercise of a person’s chief right and responsibility as a human being.  You might as well charge me for breathing.  I work to support myself and the children I bring into this world so society doesn’t have to support us.  That is fulfilling my responsibility to society.  Roads and schools are important, but they are secondary to that chief responsibility and can be paid for without threatening it, without holding it over a barrel.

You know, slavery wouldn’t have been a bad thing if it didn’t enslave people.  Look at the income tax system and realize that you are only as free as your willingness to comply with it.  Without your compliance, your freedom is immediately endangered.  We are literally forced to purchase our freedom every April 15^th.  Comply, and you are free for another year.  I can no longer comply, so, if it comes to it, I will no longer be free.  That’s our dumb system.  It wasn’t my idea.

So, Society, you be the judge.  Where do I belong?  Out there working an honest living and supporting myself and my children (and in the process paying taxes as I provide clothes, food, and shelter), or on the streets spending visitation with my kids at McDonald’s because dad was evicted from his apartment for failure to pay rent?  Should I be imprisoned for not filing income tax returns and live off of tax money while in jail, or should I be free, working for my living and contributing to the kitty myself every time I buy a gallon of gas or buy my kids some food?  It’s a dumb system.

Our dilemma (it isn’t just mine – you’re over the same barrel, too) is just like that of anyone being extorted.  Pay your protection money every week or month and live “free” just like everyone else, or maybe wake up one morning to find your business mysteriously burnt to the ground.  It’s so easy to just comply.