State of Georgia Representative Rob Woodall has filed Bill H. R. 25 – Fair Tax Act of 2019 on January 3, 2019. Representative Woodall cited Clause 1 of Article I, Section 8 in his Constitutional Authority Statement asserting that Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuant to the foregoing Clause. The Bill was filed in the House of Representatives of the First Session of the 116th Congress (2019-2020). The Bill repeals the income tax and other taxes, abolishes the Internal Revenue Service and enacts a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States. You can read the entire Bill at: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/25/text
Representative Woodall is wrong about the authority for his Bill. His Constitutional Authority Statement reveals how little members of Congress understand the Constitution and how government taxation works. Essentially, this is how “a Congress” enacts a tax law and “the Congress” determines the amount of the tax and attempts to collect it. “A Congress” is a two-year Congress that must according to Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 originate “All Bills raising Revenue.” This exhausts the taxing power of “a Congress.” The Constitution itself declares that only “the Congress” has the power to lay and collect taxes: Sixteenth Amendment. “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
There aren’t many Americans who like to pay taxes. The American Revolution was caused in part by British taxation without American participation in Parliament. No taxation without representation! That was one of the calls to arms of the American Revolution, but it turns out it was wrong. Minority representation in Parliament would not satisfy the newly declared free Americans. Full representation in the Confederation, the United States of America, it turned out, allowed only for taxation within the territory the British lost to the Americans. The Framers of the Constitution used this knowledge to divide taxation into two parts: enactment of tax legislation and establishment of the tax collection force.
Significant taxation legislation enacted by “the Congress” prior to the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, began with the Resolution of the 23rd of April, 1784 dealing with the temporary government of territory managed by the Confederacy and the division of that territory into distinct States. That Resolution set forth seven principles which were to be binding on both temporary and permanent state governments. Those seven principles were incorporated in the Northwest Ordinance’s “articles of compact between the original States and the people and the States in the said territory and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent.”
“The inhabitants and settlers in the said territory shall be subject to pay a part of the federal debts contracted or to be contracted, and a proportional part of the expenses of government, to be apportioned on them by Congress according to the same common rule and measure by which apportionments thereof shall be made on the other States; and the taxes for paying their proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the district or districts, or new States, as in the original States, within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled.” Northwest Ordinance
The “Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” was always located in “the Congress,” then and as is now known as the United States of America, in Congress assembled. It took a while for Americans to learn that British government taxation is based upon the total government power of the English monarch. Representation in an American legislative body does not provide the legal basis for taxation and the Constitution of September 17, 1787 proves it. That Constitution separates the power to make laws from the power to tax in order to create the illusion that federal tax law applies on non-federal territory and tax collectors don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate.
“A Congress,” is just one of the 116 two-year congresses vested with all the lawmaking power in Article I, Section 1: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” While the “Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” remains with “the Congress,” previously named the United States, in Congress assembled. “The Congress” is not a Congress of limited duration, as is “a Congress,” at least two thirds of its members have been in office at any one time the, as Senators, since the first quorum of the Senate on April 6, 1789.
SUMMATION
The division of legislative power and the power to tax represents the Framers’ of the Constitution solution to the conundrum: how can a free people be governed and taxed? Once the People’s unalienable rights were recognized by the State governments of the United States of America those rights could not be the subject of legislation or taxation. The People of the United States of the Northwest Territory were subject to being governed and taxed by “the Congress” of the United States of America. The Framers drafted that Constitution so that the People who could not be governed or taxed imagined themselves to be, “We the People of the United States.”
Article I, Section 7 confirms that Article I, Section 1 is the authority for the enactment of all tax legislation: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” The House of Representatives is a component of “a Congress,” which is, of course, a two-year Congress. Any two-year Congress could undo any law a prior two-year Congress had enacted provided the Senate concurred. This means the States represented by the perpetual Senate were really in charge of their property, the United States and the People living in the United States.
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