President Jimmy Carter once called our tax code “an insult to the human race”; after all, it is three times thicker than the Bible. Furthermore, new tax laws are being passed all of the time, laws that many of our lawmakers don’t even read, much less understand. For instance, a former Minority Leader of the United States Senate, Tom Daschel, and a former Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax laws for Congress, Charley Rangel, both pleaded innocent of tax invasion on the premise of their professed ignorance of our tax laws. Even a former head of the IRS, Timothy Geithner, explained his failure to report taxable income on his tax return as nothing more than a mere matter of his personal inability to understand the U. S. tax code. Is there any wonder that Albert Einstein once quipped, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, the United States Supreme Court once ruled that income taxes were unconstitutional? In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that the income tax was “class legislation” and therefore in violation of our Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Field penned these prophetic words, “Whenever a distinction is made in the burdens a law imposes or in the benefits it confers on any citizen by reasons of birth, or wealth or religion, it is class legislation and leads inevitably to oppression and abuses…the present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but a stepping stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.”

James Madison, one of our Founding Fathers and our nation’s 4th president, wholeheartedly agreed with Justice Field. Madison once said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” Yet, the bulk of today’s Americans believe the income tax is enshrined in our Constitution and has always been the indisputable fountainhead that funds our federal government.

As Justice Field both foresaw and forewarned, the income tax has been a constant instigator of class warfare in our country. Democrats, in particularly, are constantly fanning the flames of class warfare between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” despite the enormous disparity in taxes paid by the prosperous and the poor. For instance, while 80% of all taxes are paid by America’s wealthiest 5%, only 20% of our government’s tax revenue comes from the other 95% of taxpayers. In addition to this, there is not only what Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder,” the taxing of 60% of the total income of the wealthiest Americans, but also what George McGovern called a “Demogrant,” tax refunds paid to non-taxpayers living on government welfare.

America’s present-day tax and spend politicians are proving themselves to be comrades with the late Karl Marx, the Father of Communism. In his 1984 “Communist Manifesto,” Marx taught that the implementation of his famous axiom, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” necessitated “a heavy progressive or gradual income tax.” In light of this, we can clearly see why the wise King Solomon penned the following divinely inspired and cautionary proverb: “By justice a king builds up the land, but he who exacts gifts [heavily taxes his people] tears it down” (Proverbs 29:4 ESV). On this Tax Day, how can we not help but wonder if our country is continuing to be torn down by ruinous taxation?