10. Learning from the Past: What History Teaches

Adams suggests nine reform items to tame the tax monster: 1) tear down the spy system, 2) establish a crime for tax extortion as well as a civil action for damages, 3) establish a civil action for damages for tortious tax administration including: malicious tax investigations, extortions, leaked information and grand jury abuse, 4) have all federal tax districts coincide with congressional districts and provide for the recall of district directors, 5) adjudicate tax disputes like any other debt, 6) decriminalize the tax law, 7) make congressional representatives and federal judges immune from the IRS, 8) make our federal tax system indirect as much as possible, and 9) another reform measure that may take the forefront in tax reform is a national consumption tax, like a sales tax.

In learning from the past, many nations taxed themselves to death. The Greeks discovered that tyranny resulted from direct taxation, so the kind of tax matters.

Lecture 10 of 10 from Charles Adams’ The Rosetta Stone to the US Code: A New History of Taxation.