Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 days agoThe Internal Revenue Service. It’s the U.S. tax collection agency, created a bit over a century ago under, shall we say, questionable circumstances.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
What do you mean by questionable circumstances?
brandon@piefed.social 6 days ago
They are referring to some fringe "tax protester" conspiracy theories which dispute that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments#Sixteenth_Amendment_ratification
Suffice it to say, these 'theories' have been largely rejected, including by the states themselves, and by the SCOTUS.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Sorry, saw your response just after I had posted the same in response to his comment.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 days ago
There is no historical agreement that states ratifying the income tax itself actually happened.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
There is no historical agreement that the earth is round, but guess what?
When the second argument that is listed in Wikipedia is that Ohio doesn’t count when it had been a state for over a century before the amendment was proposed, I start to think these arguments are specious at best. It seems every judge the case had gone before agreed with that stance, which also sounds like historical agreement to me. Given the amendment was proposed due to the Supreme Court overturning income tax as unconstitutional, it also appears the courts were more than willing to rule against income tax prior to this supposedly dubious amendment.
Do you have any evidence that is stronger than the Obama birther conspiracies?
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 days ago
If you sole-source Wikipedia, I don’t know what to tell you. But I’m not going off on a research excursion to prove myself right from things I’ve read over decades. It’s of no import to me whether you believe me; if you’re truly curious, look into it yourself. The origins of the income tax are more complex than one article can assert.