One of America’s worst mistakes was enacting the 16th Amendment, allowing the federal government to levy an income tax. That has fueled the relentless expansion of our leviathan state ever since.
It also leads to all manner of economic distortions and blatantly unjust actions by government officials. In this piece, Sheldon Richman shows some hideous examples of the latter. Under civil asset forfeiture laws, officials have seized large amounts of money from people who have done nothing wrong, but merely on suspicion that they might have because they deposited amounts of cash just below the government’s (unjustifiable) regulation that amounts over $10K must be reported. So people assume they can stay out of trouble by depositing a little less than that. Wrong!
Are any of our “representatives” trying to put an end to these forfeitures, or better yet the income tax?
