Is taxing a right lawful?

[zukiphile]

There is nothing stopping me from verbally speaking about the second amendment and the rights of gun owners. However...if was told that I needed to buy a permit in order to do that, I would consider such a thing to be a violation of my right to free speech. Because that is directly related to the exercise of the right.

I think we would agree that your free speech right isn't limited to the sounds you make when you open your mouth. It applies to publishing your speech as well, right?

The production of leaflets is a method of publishing our speech.

But a tax such as you are talking about is not applied SPECIFICALLY with my right to speech in mind. In that instance, the tax applied to the buying or printing of the leaflets in merely incidental.

It sounds as if you are working toward a test in which the exercise of a right may be taxed, but not if the purpose or effect of the tax is to abridge the exercise of the right. I would guess that this is about how things should work out.

What level of taxation we will consider incidental and what we will see as enforced for the purpose of abridging a right seems very politically and context dependent. Poll taxes seem strictly forbidden, but the freedom to [profitably] contract seems open to limitless taxation.

 

[44 AMP]

If you and I want to hand out leaflets about the 2d Am. and we have 2000 printed up at Kinkos, and we can't have them without paying a sales tax, has our freedom of speech been abridged?

No.

Because you are not paying the sales tax on your speech, you are paying it on the buying of the leaflets. No matter what the leaflets said, you pay the same tax. Not a free speech issue.

Now, if you were taxed specifically because of the content of the leaflets, that would be a free speech issue. Pay sales tax on the purchase of leaflets for a bake sale, fine. Pay the same sales tax for gun rights leaflets, fine. Pay any tax only because they are gun rights leaflets, that would be infringment of your free speech rights.

Note also, your printer could charge you a special fee for printing gun rights material, since he's not the govt, he's not infringing your rights by doing that. You are free to go elsewhere with your business. It wouldn't be smart business for him to do that, but he's not violating your rights, if he does. He's just being a stupid jerk.....there might be some business laws he could be violating I don't know about that, but it wouldn't be a First Amendment issue.

 

[zukiphile]

No.

Because you are not paying the sales tax on your speech, you are paying it on the buying of the leaflets. No matter what the leaflets said, you pay the same tax. Not a free speech issue.

Now, if you were taxed specifically because of the content of the leaflets, that would be a free speech issue.

While not disagreeing with your conclusion or reasoning, this may show up part of the imperfection of reasoning by analogy. Certainly what you describe would be a free speech issue because it would be a content restriction, but that is something peculiar to that specific right.

What if there were a $100 tax on sheets of paper and all emails without respect to content? Do you think that difference might abridge the right?

 

[mehavey]

What if there were a $100 tax on sheets of paper and all emails without respect to content?

Hmmmmm........
Stamp Act anyone?

 

[tomrkba]

Taxing a right is unconstitutional. Whether the courts will rule that way is a different story.

There are two types of taxes: direct and indirect. Direct taxes apply only to slaves and land. Indirect taxes are privilege taxes and the tax can be avoided by not engaging in the activity. Such taxes cannot be applied to rights, though there seems to be a push to apply such taxes via abuses of the Commerce Clause.

The basis for firearms regulation comes from corruption of the Commerce Clause that started in the 1930's. The Federal government has decided that the Commerce Clause can be used to nullify and/or control rights and expand Congressional power beyond the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution. The first line of the Gun Control Act of 1968 reads:

An Act to amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for better control of the interstate traffic in firearms.*

Here is what cracks me up:

TITLE I - STATE FIREARMS CONTROL ASSISTANCE
PURPOSE
Sec. 101. The Congress hereby declares that the purpose of this title is to provide support to Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials in their fight against crime and violence, and it is not the purpose of this title to place any undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms appropriate to the purpose of hunting, trapshooting, target shooting, personal protection, or any other lawful activity, and that this title is not intended to discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, or provide for the imposition by Federal regulations of any procedures or requirements other than those reasonably necessary to implement and effectuate the provisions of this title.

And, yet, it does place restrictions upon law abiding citizens. Citizens in various Federal territories, including the District of Columbia, find it nearly impossible to acquire firearms because of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Back to taxation: if it's not a right, then it is a privilege. If it is a privilege, then it can be taxed as an indirect tax. People can avoid the tax by not engaging in the activity. Therefore, one cannot be taxed for arms and ammunition if one does not have any arms or ammunition.

I do not doubt this is their goal. The state of Illinois just floated this idea in its legislature. The tax can start out at 0.000000000001%, but the very next day the legislature can raise the tax to 100%, 1000% or any level they so desire. This was the intent of the $200 NFA tax because that amount of money at the time the law was passed was obscene. It effectively destroyed private ownership of fully automatic firearms.

So, yes, taxation of firearms and ammunition is to be avoided at all costs.

* Citation: Gun Control Act of 1968

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...soCQAQ&usg=AFQjCNHwCaFLcX54fMl3hLnbc8zJz7x4AA

 

[BlueTrain]

I'm not a hunter but don't you have to buy stamps sometime for hunting?

In any event, the Stamp Act was in no way intended to restrict any right. It was intended to raise money, as all taxes are. Often taxes are designed in such a way, so to say, that it has little effect on residents in the taxing district but instead tends to tax visitors. Hotel taxes are like that. Other taxes are just the opposite. They are designed to capitalize on what might be called premium or highly desirable, luxary items. Those include excise taxes. Around here in Northern Virginia, property taxes are higher along Route 28, that runs north from Centreville to Route 7, if you know the area. That is hardly designed to prevent people, mostly all businesses, from locating along Rt. 28 but merely to pay for the road and the maintenance of it. It's a sort of special use tax, you might say. It's listed separately on the real estate tax bill.

So basically, the Stamp Act, which was clearly controversial and unpopular (can't think of any popular tax) and also one of the underlying causes of the revolution, is not a good example. In the case of a special tax on firearm and ammunition purchases, it becomes a question of does the tax really amount to a real restriction on the right or not, depending entirely on how much the tax actually is.

The poll tax was not exactly all that unpopular where it existed, except among those who couldn't pay it. I suppose that's a better example but I don't know how much the tax actually was. Some people have trouble paying their property taxes (ours is about $100 a week, paid twice a year) and you don't receive any particular privilege for having paid the tax either. In the case of the poll tax, effectively, it meant that mostly well-off people paid the tax, elected the officials and pretty much ran the county, but they paid for everything, too.

 

[mehavey]

In any event, the Stamp Act was in no way intended to restrict any right.

But it still sowed the seeds of Revolution, no?

Taxes of whatever kind/on whatever element are legitimized by consent of the governed (those taxed)
That said, Rights & Taxes are orthogonal -- not in diametric opposition to each other.
They can coexist.

But either one, taken in excess, are seeds of discontent -- and Revolution.

I would offer that taxes to raise revenue for public expense are one thing.
Taxes to "shape" society are quite another.
It is the latter that have been increasingly abused for the last half century

 

[klyph3]

Excellent point. The real problems we are dealing with are due to the fact that politicians have subscribed to the ideology of social behavior modification through taxation. It has nothing to do with raising money and should never be a government function in a free society. The United States of America is NOT a free society.

 

[Al Norris]

The United States of America is NOT a free society.

If that is so, then every other nation on earth is a tyranny, in comparison. Where ya gonna go?

We are the most free nation on this little ball of dirt. No other peoples enjoy the amount of freedom we do.

Are we over regulated? IMNSHO, yes. So we work on it. But to baldly say the above is pure ignorance of the conditions the rest of this planets peoples live under.

 

[Dr Big Bird PhD]

Al, I think you feel too kindly towards your politicians in Washington.

 

[BlueTrain]

I don't think politicians are so bad, having met some and known one or two, all local. There are some things that are bad about politics, mostly having to do with money but if you're going to have government, there will be politics. It exists in most organizations totally non-governmental. One might even say the constitution was written by politicians. I suppose there is no politics in a monarchy but even that's probably not true. Even total dictatorships have politics after a fashion.

You are correct, Mr. Mehavey, in that the Stamp Act sowed the seeds of revolution and I even said that. Not all revolutions are caused by tax issues, of course, and not all taxes are levied with the consent of those who pay the taxes. That's why I mentioned the extra taxes you pay when you stay in a hotel. The local folks don't stay in the hotels.

I still hold that the chief purpose of a tax is raising money. Some taxes are easier to pass than other, although such taxes could easily be seen as attempts at social modification. Think of "sin taxes." But in any case, all governments exist, partly, as a form of social control. All societies prefer some form of government over anarchy, even though there seems to be a problem with that here and there. But generally speaking, I'd have to say to claim that using taxes to "shape" society is a weak argument.

There is a lot more to be said about taxes but it's getting off the point.

 

[Nathan]

"Infringed"...you look it up.

At some level, any tax is an infringement. Taxing ammo infringes your right to own guns also as our forefathers expected us to own shootable guns!

 

[klyph3]

If that is so, then every other nation on earth is a tyranny, in comparison. Where ya gonna go?

They are, which is why we should demand our liberty right here.

We are the most free nation on this little ball of dirt. No other peoples enjoy the amount of freedom we do.

Are we over regulated? IMNSHO, yes. So we work on it. But to baldly say the above is pure ignorance of the conditions the rest of this planets peoples live under.

The tyranny that others must endure does nothing to alleviate the increasing tyranny that we permit. To pretend that it does is defeatist, and illogical. You either have freedom or you don't. To say we are over regulated, but we are "more free" is borderline Stockholm syndrome. Freedom is not a sliding scale or a broad spectrum, it's black and white. We are not free.

 

[BlueTrain]

I partly agree that we are not free. But some of us are, to be sure, so there is something amiss somewhere, I suppose. When the constitution was written, it was pretty much the same. Some were certainly free, others were not.

We as a nation from the time the first Englishman set foot on North American soil have often talked in high and mighty terms but apparently never really meant it. That has caused much confusion both in the past and in the present when talking about the past. The settlers in Massachusetts came for religious freedom, it is said, only they meant freedom to run their colony and their religion exactly the way they wanted. You weren't free to practice your own religion at all. You couldn't even live anywhere you wanted. You had to live in town. That was 150 years before the revolution. Things changed somewhere along the way. They, the Pilgrims, were not being in the least hypocritical but we tend to see what they did a lot differently.

Those who came to Virginia did not come for religious freedom at all and there was technically no religious freedom there, either. Only in Maryland, The Free State Of, was there true religious freedom.

But this forum is not about religion.

 

[mehavey]

"...using taxes to "shape" society is a weak argument....."

I need to clear up your meaning here. Social Shaping is a weak argument if used in favor of taxes? If so, I think I am in violent agreement.

Unfortunately, "social shaping" is increasing becoming the shape of taxes. At that point the "consent of the shaped" needs to be a serious consideration. Case in point our whole discussion point here: Can the 2A (as a supposed Right) be effectively "social-shaped" out of existence by deliberate use of the tax code?

 

[BlueTrain]

Perhaps you could elaborate on what you mean by social shaping first. That's not an expression I've ever used.

 

[silvrjeepr]

If you take a walk I'll tax your feet...

Unfortunately the gun grabber's best hope of containing freedom is a tax.

 

[mehavey]

...what you mean by social shaping...

aka "social engineering" -- the art of manipulating people into performing (or not performing) desired actions, and/or re-directing the values/standards of an entire culture through the use (in taxation) of monetary reward or penalty.

Don't like someone's action (or what they might consider a "Right") ?
Tax it to death

Want someone to do something their cultural upbringing would normally prohibit ?
Buy them w/ the reward of tax relief (or outright gift of someone else's tax money)

 

[BlueTrain]

Give some examples. There's no doubt that tax policy is used to carry out government policy, usually never without some controversy. Take for example real estate taxes. They are paid to local governments, usually the county. But they are deductible from your federal income tax (that is, they reduce your taxable income). Presumably it is to encourage home ownership, after a fashion. But you could call it a tax loophole, too.

However, I think you'll get an argument is you think you can tax something out of existance. You can't even make think disappear by making them illegal altogether. Basically, I don't think social engineering works nor are that many people interested in it.

I'm more worried about privitization.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

It's a lot easier to tax it out of existence than it is to make it disappear by being illegal. Criminals will get what they want. Law abiding citizens will not. A high enough tax can eliminate a product from the hands of all but the super-rich.

How could you argue against it? Imagine a $2,000 tax on all guns, ammunition and components. That wouldn't effectively tax them out of existence?

If that number is $20, it has an effect. $50, more. So on and on until it's enough to eliminate the use from any "standard income", law abiding citizen.