Day Two

I spent some time with another good friend today.  It really helps to sit down and talk to people face-to-face – whether they support you 100%, 80%, or not at all, just sitting and talking and sharing one another’s company is very gratifying and needed.  Thank you, friend!

So, it’s two days after my stand at the IRS office, and the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that I have children.  They are simultaneously the reason to back down and get in line, and the reason to keep going.  I want so badly to go back to the IRS office and tell them we’ll play it their way so I can avoid upsetting the applecart.  The pull I feel can be so desperate that it brings me to tears, and I think how much I don’t want to fight this fight.  But then I think that backing off would be the same as saying, “Okay, I’ll sit in the back of the bus.  Okay, I’ll sit in that part of the restaurant.  Okay, I’ll drink out of that drinking fountain so you won’t kick my ass.”  When people followed the Jim Crow laws, there was peace.  But it was a false peace based on false freedom, and eventually, the blacks in this country just said no.

I’m sure in the decades of Jim Crow there were plenty of “uppity Negroes" who said no from time to time, and were promptly punished.  For some reason, the day Rosa Parks said it, it began a tidal wave of reform.  I know that people before me have said no to the income tax, and some of them are languishing in prison right now.  I’m not Rosa Parks, but I will admit that if my stance could stir a whole lot of people into action resulting in the end of the taxation of our income, I’d sure be a lot more excited than I feel right now.  I’d be stoked.

The majority of people who stood up with Rosa stood up because they felt what she felt.  Others stood with her out of principle – they had not lived what she was living, but they understood that it was wrong.  Unfortunately in my case, the system is rigged in such a way that most of us feel it only up to the level of an annoying thing we all have to do every April 15^th.  Few of us are self-employed and have ever been handed a bill from Uncle Sam for $14,000 for one calendar year of work.  And we’re not supposed to feel it that way.  The system works much better and is more palatable if we work for some company and sign a W-4.  That’s the way it is for the majority of people.  Taxes are taken out a little at a time and before we can ever touch the money.  It’s like smoking the beehive to anesthetize the workers so they won’t sting you as you collect the honey.  Just a little at a time – only enough to annoy, but not start a revolution.  The government knows that if it hands enough working class people a bill like I got for 2006, they might as well punch the hive before sticking their hands in.

I purposely said “working class” people there because a curious fact struck me today.  The New York Times reported that in 2011, over 100,000 people with incomes above $200,000 paid no income taxes.  A lot of those incomes reached into the millions and a few in the billions.  Given that the wealthy have proven over time to be so averse to the income tax, and given that it is the wealthy in this country who wield the most influence, why have they not banded together to use that influence to abolish the income tax?  If they are so against it and go through all kinds of legal hoops to avoid it, why not just use their influence to kill it?  Why do they tolerate a system that seemingly gives them so much grief?  Why is it only the occasional middle- or lower-income “tax protester” nut that stands up against it?  What would be more influential: 100,000 of the wealthiest Americans, or 100,000 of my friends?  You can’t tell me the wealthy have been waiting for someone like me to stand up and lead the charge!  Anyway, I’ll bring this point up again in another post and examine it more fully.  I just wanted to share that curious fact.

But back to the fight right here – Day Two.  Because so few of you have felt what I’ve felt where the income tax is concerned, if you do support my stance it is most likely because you understand the principle I’m standing on.  But there are so few who even understand the principle, and I’m guessing that even some of you who support me don’t quite get the principle, but are simply happy to see someone stick it to The Man.  So, it is clear that if solid support for my position is to grow, it will be through education.  I need to convey the principle I am standing on in a way that will cause other citizens to “get it.”  Essentially, I need to convince people that the income tax, which most perceive as being annoying, but harmless and necessary, is actually very harmful to our human rights and unnecessary.  This is my mission.  Truth be told, if the IRS really brings the hammer down on me, it will be much easier to prove my case to you.  It’s much easier to point to injustice as it is meted out rather than just pointing to the threat.  But as I said before, I’d rather not have to fight this fight as the IRS turns my life upside down.  Knowing what I know makes it so frustrating, because I realize that this is a fight no American citizen should have to face.  My next post will start with that very point (it’s being unnecessary), and there was something I said tonight that my friend said struck her as we sat and talked, something she said I should bring to the fore in my efforts to educate.  (She also said I should start a petition and start collecting names of supporters.  If anyone would like to talk about that with me as far as what it should say and help set it up, that would be great!)