If so, please help me understand in exact detail why they are.
It will do us no good debating which taxes (power of the purse) we shouldn’t have to pay, if we don’t define why they are unconstitutional. No politcal forum, debate, or any public gathering of people will take you seriously, if you can’t point out how a tax is not authorized in the constituion.
I know some of you think that any form of government itself is illegitimate if every single citizen doesn’t sign up and continue to sign up and pledge alliegence to that government voluntarily. But that argument alone will get us nowhere for the time being. If you want to wake up people, as I do, framing your crtiticisms as unconstituional or constitutional, as Ron Paul does, and so many of the writers on lewrockwell.com seems to work best.
I thought for a tax to be justified, it has to be authorized in the constitution. If its not specifially authorized, it is not allowed under the constitution.
So, we don’t look for taxes to be banned in the constitution, we look for taxes that are permitted.
But, if a tax is not authorized under the constitution, then it makes no difference whether its the federal government, the state government, a local government, some other etc government, it is not authorized therefore not permitted, regardless of which locality is trying to collect the tax.
Technically speaking, the Constitution only applies to the federal government, except for the parts which explicitly mention the states. However, now that American Constitutional law has developed in such a way that it also applies to the states (i.e. how the 1st and 2nd Amendments erroneously apply to the states), one could probably make the argument that property taxes are direct and therefore unconstitutional.
And we’re telling you that there are different jurisdictions. It sounds as if you think the federal constitution has to say something about property taxes; you’re incorrect. Property taxes are state matters currently, and as such are dealt with in state constitutions. Should the federal government want to implement a property tax, the federal constitution would have to be amended, I believe.
Maybe, what I’m getting at, is if property taxes are a violation of the freedoms implied int he constitution, then they would be unconstitutional and not permitted at any level of government, correct?
In other words, the states can’t pass laws that would violate our freedoms, correct?