Are US Income Taxes Illegal

You’ve probably seen programs advertised that say they can show you how to not pay anything in income tax. Many of these programs make statements that the US income tax is illegal and as such it is unenforceable. I’ve heard people claim that they don’t pay any taxes and that the IRS leaves them alone because the IRS knows it is legal for them to not pay tax.

For a moment, lets consider the possibility that income tax is illegal and the law doesn’t require anyone to pay income tax. Even if that was true, you have to look at how it is enforced. The IRS can take you to court and if you lose you can go to jail. It doesn’t matter if the income tax is invalid on a technicality, the truth is you can go to jail for not paying your taxes–regardless of how right you think you are.

If you do go to court and end up in a jury trial, you are going to be judged by average citizens. Since most of the people in the US pay the taxes that they owe, it is unlikely that they are going to be sympathetic to your claim that you shouldn’t have to pay anything. So even if it were true that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes, you still face the very likely possibility of going to jail.

When it comes down to the law, taxes are legal. Some people say that they aren’t legal because at one point in time they weren’t. The federal government didn’t always have the power to tax individuals directly. It could tax the states, but it had to be done proportional to their population. The idea of taxing citizens directly wasn’t legal. However the 16th amendment to the Constitution, specifically addresses this.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

That makes it pretty clear that the government has the ability to tax individual income. If someone tells you otherwise, they are either making money by telling people what they want and paying taxes on that money or they are operating illegally and will potentially face very serious consequences in the future.