There's A Lot More To Taxation Than The Income Tax

By Ron Paul

There's a lot more to taxation than the income tax. There are so many hidden taxes that most people don't pay attention to or even think of as taxes. As a matter of fact, the income tax is a lot less important than the hidden taxes.

Many people will say: "Well, poor people don't pay income taxes". This is true. However, tariffs are taxes, and they hurt the poor tremendously. When the government "slaps a tariff" on China, they're really slapping the tariff on Americans. After all, it's the American consumer who pays the tariff, not China. So even if you're not paying income taxes, you're paying government's hidden taxes, of which tariffs are just one.

The big hidden tax that I've talked about frequently is the "inflation tax". This one is really devious because it's not one that you can directly see or point to: like a tariff. The inflation tax hits the poor and the middle class the most. 

Of course, the culprit of the inflation tax is the Federal Reserve which prints up dollars for whatever the government wants. If the government wants war, the Fed will print. If the government wants to dole out more welfare, the Fed will print. Every time the Fed does this (and they print by the trillions) they reduce the purchasing power of the dollar. In other words, they pick everyone's pockets without the victims even realizing that they've been robbed!

Americans ultimately do realize that something is wrong when they see consumer prices and their bills constantly going higher. But most people (at least at this point) don't make the connection to the Federal Reserve. There are many other excuses that are fabricated by politicians and the media in order to keep attention off the Fed. They don't want the American public to kill the goose that lays the paper dollar egg.

Another tax is the "withholding tax" which forces all businesses to be unpaid tax collectors for the government. If a business doesn't withhold taxes from their employees, they're in big trouble and can go to prison for it. Businesses are enslaved to keep the records, collect the taxes for the government, and send it off. Once again, most people pay little attention to this. They don't look at their gross income. They just think: "What's my check going to be?"

We're obviously in another presidential election season at the moment. When you go to the various candidate websites, you'll always get the impression that they're not going to raise your taxes. You don't win elections by openly saying that you're going to raise taxes. That's why hidden taxes are so valuable to politicians. They can raise your taxes with their policies while telling you that your tax burden will not be increased!

Government also promises FREE stuff. We're definitely seeing a lot of that these days as well. But politicians are merely acting as if they were magicians. While they hand you something with their right hand, they're picking your pocket with their left. 

There are no free lunches, no matter how much emotion and excitement politicians are able to generate in their campaign speeches. Don't focus squarely on the income tax. It's through the multitude of hidden taxes that the government's really going to get you.