"It's easy to see how someone has been helped by money taken from someone else, especially when we can't see the people whose lives have been hurt by taking that money away. We can't see the family who now can't afford braces for their child's teeth, or who must move into a smaller home, or who can't afford a college education for their children, or the businessman who has been driven bankrupt by government regulations and taxes. As long as you ignore the people who have been hurt, any government program might seem worthy."

"The income tax has destroyed the concept of financial privacy. It has demolished the idea that a man's home is his castle. It has provided unlimited funding for politicians to wreck lives and property. It has forced one-earner families to become two-earner households -- leading to decreased parental supervision of children; loss of family values; and increased crime, promiscuity and drug use. So long as the government has the power to invade our lives, rummage through our records, and take what it wants from our income, we will have only as much freedom and take-home pay as the politicians condescend to let us have."

"We shouldn't be talking about what government should do or what we wish it could do. We should recognize what government can do. And the government has proven that it makes a mess of virtually everything it touches. So whatever it is we may want government to do, we have to look for better ways to achieve it."

Free from the Income Tax

The income tax is the biggest government intrusion into the lives of the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes time and money. The income tax creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy.
But in order to get rid of the income tax we must also get rid of hundreds of unconstitutional federal programs. However, history has proven that we can't remove them one at a time, because each program has beneficiaries and supporters who will fight for it -- while the average American is too busy paying his taxes and running his own life to lobby for the elimination of any government program.

We can rally the American people to our cause only by combining all the spending cuts into a single package that includes the total repeal of the federal income tax. That way most people can see that they'll save far more in taxes than they lose in subsidies.

By combining the reduction of government with the repeal of the income tax, every voter will know that the price for keeping today's federal programs is to continue paying the income tax. Every voter will know exactly how much he can gain by eliminating the complete package of unconstitutional programs.

This is the basis of The Great Libertarian Offer:

Would you give up your favorite federal programs if it meant you'd never have to pay income tax again?

This is in marked contrast to what the leaders of the two old parties want. By promising you "tax cuts" without reducing the size of government, they are only rearranging the cost of big government. One way or another, you'll have to pay for it; the Russians certainly are not going to do it for us.

In the same way, proposals for a flat tax or a sales tax are merely attempts to rearrange the tax burden. And because they don't reduce government itself or force the government to live by the Constitution, they leave the door wide open for government to continue growing and the tax burden to continue to worsen.

I want to end the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing. By reducing the federal government to its constitutional functions we can do away with all direct taxes -- and finance national defense and the federal judiciary with the level of tariffs and excise taxes already being collected.

Are tariffs and excises good taxes? Of course not. The only good tax is a dead tax. But so long as we have a government, it will require taxes to pay for it. The question for now isn't what a perfect system would be, but what we can do to restore the American system of truly limited government, very low taxes, and maximum personal liberty.

If yours is an average family, when the income and Social Security taxes are repealed, your take-home pay will increase by $10,000 or more a year. Think of the additional liberty this will provide -- the liberty to spend more time with your children and assure that they learn the values you cherish, the liberty to pursue your dreams unhindered by a government that prevents you from accumulating capital, the liberty to do good works with your own money.

Republican and Democratic politicians believe that money belongs to them. Yes, they argue about tiny tax cuts and posture as your friends. But the burden of proof is always put on us to justify keeping some of the money we've earned.

So long as we keep voting for Republicans and Democrats, they will continue to take almost half the national income and squander most of it on programs to please their political allies.

Only when we have a Libertarian President will you have a real friend in Washington.