Federal Land Patent Barring Property Tax Argument Fails In Wisconsin
A lot of land in the United States traces back to federal land patents. We don’t want to think too hard about how it is that the federal government came to own the land. It was not always a pretty process. One of the reasons taxes were low in the 19th Century was that the government had quite a bit of revenue from land sales.
Why Tax Reform Is Impossible
Credits and deductions bridge the ideological gap that that creates a presumption on one side that everything is done better if it is done by free market forces and that on the other side presumes that if somebody is making money on it it must be bad for everybody else. The collateral damage from that mode of compromise is a messy complicated tax code.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.