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April 6, 2005
Time to starve tax collectors of their large appetites
These words were written 200 years ago by the patriarch of the Democratic Party. Isn't it amazing how much the founding fathers understood human nature and our place in the natural order of things? But with time comes forgetfulness and events can become fuzzy in their precedent and meaning. This is the place we find ourselves in today. From the halls of Congress to the steps of the Capitol in Carson City, legislators are raising taxes and undermining the rule of law as if nothing they are doing has ever been tried before. Their efforts should provide the long-departed King George just satisfaction in the knowledge we are doing to ourselves what he was vilified for doing some 230 years ago. In Fredericksburg, Va., the Charles Washington house stands testament to the ingenuity of man in evading from un-warranted taxation. As a relative of the first president of our country, Charles was faced with a taxing authority and bureaucracy that was relentless in its pursuit of other people's money. And even back then, if a person had the ability of owning their own home, it must surely follow that they can also afford to pay the most to the tax collector. Everything having to do with construction in those days was open for one form of taxation or another. If you wanted to have a two-story home, the second story was taxed. If you wanted to have a closet, or doorknobs, or glass windows you could look forward to investing in the king's government. As a result, some homes became quite unique in their development. In Charles' case, the home was built with ceilings low enough on both floors to measure only one and one half stories and not eligible for the tax. The home has no closets, doorknobs or glass windows. There were hooks and armoire for clothes, latches on doors instead of knobs and sugar panes for windows. Note: Today we have planning departments that don't plan but are more than willing to charge for every step in the process of building a home. And to ensure their greed is not too openly displayed, they hide their intent with regulations requiring further expenditures in preparation of construction. But the taxman was not to be denied. After all, didn't these ungrateful colonists understand the king required money to provide all of the critical services the people demanded? And so the laws would change as needed to ensure a constant and continuous revenue stream would be had. Note: AB 489, "State and local governments provide critical services to the residents of the State and must be assured of sufficient revenue to fund such services ..." And it came to the attention of the king and his tax collectors that the colonists were finding the means to entertain themselves in local taverns and the government was not getting a share of the profits. Colonists were buying drink and paying to play a game called nine pins, which was a set of nine pins they would try to knock down with a small round ball. Neither of these was taxed in taverns at the time. The king therefore ordered all taverns to pay a tax on each mug in the tavern as well as a 1-pence tax on each game of nine pins played in the tavern. Because the price was two pence, this tax was 50 percent. As you can imagine, this was not accepted very well. By what right did the king have, who didn't even live in America, to tax people on simple pleasures and believe it was their obligation to simply pay? It didn't take long before all mugs were gone from the taverns as the patrons began bringing their own. Each mug had the owner's name or crest embossed on it so the tax collector could see it was not the property of the tavern owner. As for the game of nine pins, the tax caused it to disappear entirely, to be replaced by a new game invented for the purpose of evading the tax. In order to remove the obligation from the tavern keeper to collect the tax, the players moved the game outdoors, in the alley. And because they knew the tax collectors would still try to find a way to collect the nine pin tax, they decided to add a tenth pin, stuck right out in front of the other nine and called it the kingpin. That way the ball would strike it first. Today we seem to have substituted elected kings for anointed ones but with the same result. The time has come for the descendents of the Sons of Liberty to once again take up the task of limiting the tax collectors and their appetites. It is time for Nevada to pursue a taxpayers' bill of rights so we can take care of our own critical service areas. Like providing for our children and ourselves. Little writes from Pahrump. His column, "The Other Side," appears here on Wednesdays. |
