Taxes and Independence Day

Over the holiday weekend, I came across this great article by Neil Buchanan via the Tax Professor discussing the connections between Independence Day and taxation. Check out a clip from their post below.

I thought I would take another look at our oft-mentioned and seldom-read Declaration of Independence to see what it has to say about taxes and other issues of import. Herewith, a quick (and admittedly incomplete) summary of the contents:

Obviously, the most important issue addressed in the Declaration was the ongoing violence in the colonies. Among its more memorable descriptions of conditions at the time, the Declaration reminded the world that King George III "has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." The founding fathers were understandably focused primarily on matters of life and death.

Beyond those immediate concerns, though, the bulk of the Declaration expresses, in essence, a thirst for politics. That is, the major non-war-related complaint is that there is no locally elected legislature passing laws for the colonies. Our founders were willing to lay their lives on the line, in other words, to create legislatures.

For those of us who are law professors and lawyers, it is interesting that the Declaration also seems to express (or at least imply) a desire for lawsuits and defense lawyers. The king "has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing Judiciary powers" and "depriv[ed] us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury." (Current readers are likely to split into two camps in their reactions to those statements, with some saying "If they only knew what they were getting us into," and others saying, "Yes, lawyers are an essential ingredient of a stable nation.")

The Declaration also notes that the king had prevented colonists from trading with foreign nations, which was an especially sore point for our resource-rich and young nation. (There is also, I should say, a rarely-quoted—and inflammatory—comment about the American Indians, reminding us that even the Founding Fathers made controversial statements.)

Finally, though, what about taxes? Exactly one statement appears on the subject: The king had assented to Parliament's laws that "impos[e] Taxes on us without our Consent." That's it. For some reason, I always thought that taxes played a bigger part in the Declaration. All it says, though, is that taxes are unacceptable if we do not impose them on ourselves.

4th of July Tea Parties Planned

According to the official TeaPartyDay.com website, there will be tea party protests in over 1,271 cities on the 4^th of July. The group—whose name stands for “taxed enough already”—gained National attention when thousands attended their April 15^th protests.

Now, the organization is ready for their next event with thousands of additional participants and hundreds of new locations. One of the tea party leaders is even planning on running for a seat in the Senate, according to Politico.

If you are interested in participating in a protest then you should definitely read up on the organization by checking out their website. Alternatively, you can find out if any tea party protests are scheduled in your hometown by visiting their locations page.

While I was looking up stories on the TEA protests, I came across this article from Olympian.com on a local chapter’s plans for their Independence Day protest.

More big protests against the Obama administration are planned at the state Capitol on the next two weekends, but a top state Democrat says he’s not yet worried about the effort to build a backlash movement against the new president.

The protests include a June 27 “TEA party” rally at Heritage Park with popular right-of-center motivational speaker Bob Basso, who dresses up as patriot Tom Paine, and longtime Republican political operative Floyd Brown.

The specific targets for both events include efforts by President Barack Obama’s administration to bail out automakers, rescue banks from insolvency, create a cap-and-trade proposal to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions, and establish universal health care coverage.

“This is definitely aimed at Washington, D.C., and reining in the uncontrolled spending. … We’re concerned about how the Constitution is simply being shredded. Laws are being broken. People who run the government don’t seem to understand what the Constitution says,” said Ken Morse, organizer of Saturday’s rally.

If you are interested in learning more about other tax protests, check the blog entry I posted a few weeks ago on the 5 biggest tax protests in US history.