Your View: Possible Way of Ending the Old Federal Income Tax

Editor, The Auburn Plainsman

The passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution authorized the Federal Income Tax.

The 16th also created an ever-being-replenished pool of tax dollars.

Every payday withholding tax goes into this pool.

This money has created a deeply entrenched spending industry in Washington, D.C.

Citizen protests of increased federal spending are essentially worthless.

Look at spending since September 2008, despite many reasonable protests.

What can be done?

Repeal the 16th Amendment.

The replacement will be the CONSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT TAX (the CST).

Under the CST, the Federal Budget will be divided among the states by a fair-to-all-states formula.

This "1040 formula" will be based upon income totals taken from greatly simplified tax returns from all income earners.

No Federal bureaucracy will create the formula.

Each state's citizens will decide how to tax themselves to pay their state's share of the budget.

The CST will have multiple constraints on federal spending. The key constraint is that whatever budget Congress sets will need to be "sold" to the states.

Congress will need a concise regard for what the Constitution allows as federal spending.

Until the Income Tax is replaced by the CST, controlling federal spending will be a pipe dream.

Cy Mallinson

Kalamazoo, Mich.