I just listened to a YouTube video about whether or not the tax system in the USA is voluntary or not. It seems like it got down to semantics. One party, a democratic Congressman, was saying it is a voluntary system and it is mandatory that we pay our taxes.
The interviewer was saying that if it is voluntary then we could choose to NOT pay our taxes. The congressman kept saying we had to pay our taxes because it is a voluntary system that mandates we pay our fair share.
It was at this point that my head was beginning to spin. To me “voluntary” means we can choose to pay or not pay. Yet if we do not pay then we are “forced” to pay.
They went back and forth like this for the entire 4 minutes. So we must have a voluntary tax system that is mandated that we pay or we will be forced to pay through civil and criminal penalties.
To top it off I made the mistake of reading some comments. This person stated “…too stupid to see the difference between “mandatory” and “forced.”
So I looked up the words “mandatory” and “forced” to see if I was missing the subtlety of the two.
Mandatory: 1 : containing or constituting a command : obligatory 1 : binding in law or conscience.
Forced: 1 : compelled by force or necessity : involuntary 1 : done contrary to or without choice.
My conclusion: both men are lacking significant brain cells to think in a rational manner.
Many years ago a friend did a lot of research and found that indeed our tax system is voluntary and if we choose not to pay our taxes, the government has no legal right to take action against us. Of course in this day and age one would need millions of dollars to back up his/her right to not pay taxes. Of course if you have that much money you have also discovered the many tax laws that enable businesses to not pay taxes or very little taxes and those same businesses can be used to offset an individual’s taxes, effectively not paying any or very little taxes.
It comes down to three things:
- You have enough money to hire people to eliminate your tax obligations
- You run your own small business and use its losses to reduce your personal taxes
- You stay a w-2 wage earner, i.e. work for someone else exclusively, and pay the maximum taxes or actually overpay.
So my conclusion is that our tax system is voluntary if we have the resources to get out of over paying and it is mandatory if we aren’t wise enough to take advantage of all the business deductions we have access to when we operate a home or small business. And the government will force us to pay if we elect not to even though they have no legal, Constitutional right to force us.