A Catholic Case For Axing The Federal Income Tax, by Carina Benton

President Trump once said in reference to the arithmetic-defying 2020 election results that “if you are a bank robber, or you’re a jewelry store robber, and you go into Tiffany’s and you steal their diamonds and get caught, you have to give the diamonds back.” This is the sort of classic Trump logic that resonates with the American people and just secured him another four years in the White House. So it’s not surprising that after the exposure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a publicly-funded money laundering operation, and last week’s revelations by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) about some 4.7 trillion dollars in untraceable Treasury payments, taxpayers are starting to apply the same Trump logic to their own losses: when do they get their diamonds back?

The distinction between taxation and legal plunder dates to at least St. Augustine, who posited in City of God that without justice, kingdoms are but “a great band of robbers.” Since the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, which authorized the imposition of a federal income tax, trillions of dollars have been purloined from the wallets of hard-working Americans, and squandered on propaganda, pet-projects, and pay-offs. Hitherto, national revenue mostly came from tariffs and, with the exception of a temporary Civil War era income tax, revenue tended to outstrip expenditure, and debt-to-GDP ratio generally hovered below ten percent. …

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