Remember your first paycheck?
Do you remember -- particularly if you are a certain age -- the pride and excitement you felt as you ripped open the envelope where that crisp check was nestled to see how much you would be putting in your bank account?
Do you remember the disappointment, confusion, and revulsion when your net pay didn't seem correct? Did you wonder if you misheard when the hiring manager told you how much you would be making?
No doubt that first paycheck was your initial experience with the tally of deductions that the government took from your labor. Perhaps you didn't realize that the fun was just beginning.
As you matured and began a career, taxes became exponentially more complex. Did you buy or sell a house? Get married or divorced? Have a child? Move out of state? Work more than one job during a calendar year?
Navigating the confusing, frustrating, and seemingly contradictory tax codes, rules, and regulations written by members of Congress and "clarified" by unelected bureaucrats likely necessitated the help of a tax preparation professional.
As one such individual said to me regarding withholding, "You must be careful when filling out these forms; the government gets angry when their money is late."
Their money?
According to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, the average American taxpayer who files a 1040 form will have spent 13 hours and $290 preparing the return for the year 2024 to the Internal Revenue Service to avoid angering the government.
The NTUF has also found that the compliance burden for individual income taxes on the 1040 reached an record-high of $144 billion, an all-time high, and that taxpayers will spend an estimated 7.1 billion hours complying with the tax code for Tax Year 2024, equal to $316 billion in lost productivity. As the NTUF indicates, this is itself a hidden tax on the American workforce.
Is that time, production, and money yours or theirs?
If it's "theirs" the money has surely been put to good use, right? No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, that dog just doesn't hunt any longer.
DOGE has exposed in sharpest relief what countless other studies and reports have -- the waste, fraud, and abuse associated with tax revenue is obscene and unbecoming of a representative republic. It is degrading and an insult to every law-abiding citizen.
But in this representative republic lies a powerful resource given to us by the Founders -- Article V of the United States Constitution.
As Convention of States Action Senior Vice President for Legislative Affairs Rita Peters has said:
“The obvious solution is for us to use the same constitutional process that was used to expand Congress’s power to tax -- but in reverse. The same article that gave Congress power to propose the 16th Amendment provides the states a way to propose amendments to limit income tax rates, restrain federal spending power, and require the feds to balance the budget. We don’t have to keep feeding the monster.”
It's your money, not theirs. It's your time, not theirs. Sign the petition below and join the most effective grassroots effort to permanently make the federal government understand that through an Article V convention.
While you're at it, visit Article V Outfitters and pick up a slick "Income Robbery Service" t-shirt to demonstrate what everyone's least favorite acronym really represents.
