fuzzrabbit wrote:The power to tax is expressly delegated to the Congress of the United States by Article I, Section 8.
That is IRRELEVANT to Larken's argument. He agrees.
I think we've just gone in a complete circle.
But let's try again:
Larken Rose wrote:While Congress is authorized to regulate interstate commerce (commerce crossing state lines) and international commerce, it has no jurisdiction over intrastate commerce (commerce occurring entirely within a single state). By the simple logic above, that means Congress cannot tax income from intrastate commerce.
"Taxable Income" (4/15/2002), page 17.
Now, in order to support what Larken wrote, you cite the 10th Amendment, I respond by saying that the Constitution give Congress the power to tax, you say that Larken agrees, and I quote the passage above.
The fact that you don't see the circularity might explain why it is that you can buy into Larken's fraud, because his entire "argument" is based on a kind of verbal shell game. He's constantly moving the pea from shell to shell, and I can see him do it, but you can't.
There's a good example on the same page 17 of "Taxable Income." Larken proposes that, if Congress could tax everything, then Congress could CONTROL everything. He then cites a Supreme Court opinion (Bailey v. Drexel Furniture) for the proposition that "Congress could not control by tax legislation matters which they have no jurisdiction to regulate." That statement by itself is true, but Larken never addresses the real issue, which is whether Congress can tax something without regulating it. Larken conflates taxation with regulation, moves the pea back and forth from one to the other, and you're too dim-witted to see that there could be a difference.
You're also lazy, because you've obviously never read the Drexel Furniture decision. If you had, you would have seen what Larken never tells you, which is that the court itself drew a distinction between taxation and regulation.
The difference between a tax and a penalty is sometimes difficult to define, and yet the consequences of the distinction in the required method of their collection often are important. Where the sovereign enacting the law has power to impose both tax and penalty, the difference between revenue production and mere regulation may be immaterial, but not so when one sovereign can impose a tax only, and the power of regulation rests in another. Taxes are occasionally imposed in the discretion of the Legislature on proper subjects with the primary motive of obtaining revenue from them and with the incidental motive of discouraging them by making their continuance onerous. They do not lose their character as taxes because of the incidental motive. But there comes a time in the extension of the penalizing features of the so-called tax when it loses its character as such and becomes a mere penalty, with the characteristics of regulation and punishment.
All of the verbiage about the difference between taxation and regulation would have been unnecessary if Congress could only tax what it could regulate, but the power of Congress to tax intrastate commerce was accepted by all of the parties and never questioned in the Drexel Furniture opinion. The court was addressing a situation "when one sovereign [the United States] can impose a tax only, and the power of regulation rests in another" (the state). So the only way the court could strike down the tax was to hold that it was not really a tax but a regulation, and holding that would not be necessary if Larken were right.
So the Drexel Furniture decision actually contradicts Larken, but he never tells you that, and you're too gullible to figure it out for yourself.
