They Don’t Want You To Feel What I Feel

The title of this post assumes that you are not self-employed and never have been.  The self-employed have felt what I’m feeling, but even some of them – most of them – have not.

For five years (’07 – ’11), I stopped filing my federal income taxes as an act of civil disobedience.  During that time, I wrote letters to the IRS and my state and federal representatives, including the President.  I wanted to know how a tax on my earned income does not reduce my fundamental right to work to a privilege.  No one could tell me it does not.

I have recently filed returns for all of those missed years and am now considered as being “in compliance” with the IRS.  The alternative, of course, is to be torn away from my children and thrown into prison.  Another way to look at that is my children having a parent taken from them.  The point being that my compliance is not based on a change of heart or perspective – it is based on being coerced; it is compulsory compliance.  You are in compliance for the same reason, though you don’t feel the coercion as I do because you’ve never tried to buck the system.

Now that I’m in “compliance,” I have a right pretty tax bill that has accumulated over those five years, and the IRS is wasting no time in using their draconian measures to squeeze the blood from this turnip.  But, as my previous post noted, I’m using some free legal aid to try to get into a non-collectible status (based on my current low income) to stop collection activities.  This process has required the attorney working on my case to ask a lot of questions pertaining to my personal and business affairs, and through this I have been made more keenly aware of how it felt having nothing to do with the income tax for those five years.  You need to know how it felt.

First, during those five years, I was conscious of feeling free, independent, and most interestingly, responsible.  You might think I'd have been feeling irresponsible, knowing that I was not obeying the law.  No, I never felt irresponsible in any way.  I felt a new and deep sense of being responsible for myself, my kids, my life – a sense of ownership.  Of course, I was also conscious of the fact that I was paying taxes every day as a consumer, renter, and user of utilities.  I felt like my own man, but not in the sense that those on the political left might assume: self-centered, isolated, aloof.  I felt like a man living and moving and freely participating in society; like a man who has something to offer society – my talents, my services, my abilities.  I felt proud and I walked tall, and I earned every penny I made.  I also received every penny I earned, and it felt right.

My pride and sense of freedom did not come from a feeling that I was “stickin’ it to the Man.”  Those feelings came from a noble and pure place, not from a place where I rise at the expense of someone or something else.  I never felt ugly, or wrong, or sneaky, or conniving, or low, or worthy of contempt.  I certainly never felt that I deserved to have my property seized or to be thrown into prison, not by a long shot.

Now that I’m back in the system, I’m being asked what the name of my bank is, asked to add up my income over the last three months and give the average.  What’s the make/model/year of your car, and is it paid off?  When was it paid off?  What's the mileage?  We need documentation of your court-ordered child support.  Do you have any other bank accounts?  Savings?  What percentage of your phone usage is personal and business?  Any other sources of income?  And on and on...

Now I feel like I’ve moved back in with my parents.  I don’t feel independent; I don’t feel trusted.  I find myself wondering (literally) if I’ll have to justify eating lunch at a restaurant instead of going home and fixing a PB& J because it’s cheaper.  As the attorney gathers information, I find myself hoping I am struggling “enough” for the IRS to leave me alone.  And if that isn’t the definition of the American Dream, I don’t know what is.

I don’t feel like a man; I feel small, like a kid.  I feel watched; I feel like someone who must justify his existence to a bureaucratic machine, like when I had to beg for the use of my own money when they seized everything in my bank account in October, money I earned and that I was using to live on.  I feel this sick need to point out to them that I don’t have cable and I’m not a member of my local public radio station because they want me to give my money to them, right?  Aren’t you proud of me?  Am I pleasing to the Great and Powerful Internal Revenue Service?

I feel used, like a much-squeezed teat being milked by cold bureaucratic hands.  The paying of income tax does not conjure up in my mind anything like Patriotic Duty or Good Citizen any more than looking at the obedience and cooperative behavior of concentration camp prisoners makes me suspect that they must have been good Nazis.  No “good” behavior that is coerced is anything to brag about.  Let’s drop the pretensions about “dutifully” paying our taxes this April.  You do it so they can’t flush your life down the toilet.  What’s noble about that?  How does that earn you the title of Good Citizen?  Connecting the payment of income taxes to patriotism or good citizenship is laughable.  You’re just obedient – that’s all you are.  That's all we are.

I have done what relatively few Americans have done.  I have lived in mindless, unquestioning obedience to income taxation.  I have been burned by it as only the self-employed can be.  I have stepped back and questioned its existence.  I have researched its beginnings and its transformation into what it has become.  I have disagreed with its premise and reason for being.  I deliberately stopped filing and paying for a number of years in protest, and sought to have an open discussion with relevant government officials regarding it.  Faced with its ultimate punishments, I have felt compelled to capitulate and come back into compliance, but only technically, not in my heart.  I know what it feels like to live outside of the income tax, and it feels right.  That’s probably the best word I can use: right.

But you don’t know how it feels, because you’ve never been there.  And, unless we change the laws, you probably never will.  And that makes me feel sorry for you as I’d feel sorry for anyone who’s never walked on a quiet mountain trail.  You can’t know what you’re missing if you’ve never been there.

This is how the income tax system is set up, to prevent as many as possible from feeling what I’ve felt.  Gross income, net income, take a little out with every paycheck.  It’s all you know.  It’s normal.  It’s necessary.  It’s fair.

It’s no big deal.  Yes, just stay right there.  It’s no big deal.