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.