Traveling to Consciousness with Clayton Cuteri
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Traveling to Consciousness with Clayton Cuteri
The Federal Income Tax is ILLEGAL! Here is why. | Ep 272
Summary
In this podcast episode, Clayton Cuteri explores the topic of the federal income tax and argues why it is illegal. He discusses the historical background of the tax, its connection to wars, and the procedural irregularities in ratifying the 16th Amendment.
He also examines Supreme Court decisions that challenge the authenticity of the income tax and its impact on different income groups. Cuteri emphasizes the need to eliminate the federal income tax, stop funding wars, and focus on issues like education, healthcare, and social inequalities.
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Timecodes
00:00 - Introduction: Exploring the Illegality of the Federal Income Tax
02:01 - Historical Background and Connection to Wars
05:10 - Procedural Irregularities in Ratifying the 16th Amendment
07:46 - Supreme Court Decisions Challenging the Income Tax
12:09 - Impact on Different Income Groups
15:35 - Eliminating the Federal Income Tax for a Better Society
23:29 - Getting Involved with the American Congress Party
When We Die Talks explores life’s biggest question: what happens when we die?
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exploring spiritual journeys to find answers in uncertainty. up conscious monkey is welcome to another episode of traveling to consciousness. As always, I'm your host Clayton Gutierrez. And in today's podcast, we are going to be discussing the federal income tax and why it is illegal. And here's the thing, even if you get to the end of this and it's not convincing enough, it is definitely one of the very first things that we need to get rid because first of all, it wasn't even a part of our founding. And as a matter of fact, it, our founding was based on the facts that we were taxed without representation. And I don't know about you, but I look at Congress and I don't think that they represent me. I mean, you know, what do we have over 535 Congress men and women? And I can look at them and say, maybe, maybe there are five who I feel like they represent me. Maybe like maybe So I don't know who they're representing because I consider myself, you know, relatively average whenever it comes to the Americans. And I think that you listening to this and even the people throughout the country agree that they're not representing us. National polling data shows that they're not representing us. So we don't deserve to be taxed without representation. And if they're not representing us, then why do we keep giving them our money to do unjust wars? And that brings us to the income tax because the history of the federal income tax is very, very closely aligned with, with wars. So whether or not you knew this, we never had a federal income tax when we were founded. When we were a nation that became founded, we did not have a federal income tax. did not exist. Something that wasn't in existence. was it? 1776 that we essentially signed the constitution. Took a couple of years to get it like fully in the in the thick of it, if you will, with the the with all the states. So I think it was like technically around 1778 whenever we were like officially, OK, a country. Now I'm to go over a quick history on the federal income tax. So you guys have a good idea because of how close it is tied to war. the very first income tax, what we were just talking about there, 1778, almost about a hundred years later, the first income tax was introduced during the civil war in 1861 to fund the union's effort. So that's why the very first income tax was emplaced was to fund the union's but then it was repealed in 1872. So that means that it was in place for 11 years. Now the modern federal income tax system was established with the 16th amendment, which we'll get into a bit in 1913, allowing Congress to levy taxes without a poor P pro -sh portionation, a portion, a poor Shenning, a portioning. There we go. Them among the States. This became crucial during World War I as revenue was needed to support the war effort. So look at this again. We're reintroducing the federal income tax to support war. During World War II, the Revenue Act of 1942 expanded the tax base to include more Americans and introduced payroll withholding. You know, payroll withholding, you know, it's that money that gets withheld so that you don't see what you're getting jipped out of. I don't even know how they got that in place. can't believe there wasn't people up in arms. They must've had a pretty good propaganda machine saying, Hey, yeah, like this is good. but this made income tax a primary revenue source for the government. And then of course, subsequent conflicts such as the cold war, the Korean war, the war on terror, the Vietnam war, these sought to further adjustments. They saw further adjustments to the income tax so that we could fund military operations. and maintain our defense spending and increase all these bills, which if you know anything about me, we absolutely need to stop these wars. We have to come to peace with all of these countries. It's very easy. The people want nothing more than that. It's the political leaders that are fighting each other. So with that in mind, let's actually get into some of the legislation as to why this is actually illegal in the first place. So, mean, for a second here, right? If we have no war, we don't need an income tax. So let's stop having wars. Let's stop finding wars and we don't need an income tax. Pretty simple, but we should dive in real quick to actually talk about a couple of the reasons that the income tax is illegal. So let's start off with one of them, which is the historical and the procedural irregularities that occurred whenever they were trying to ratify the 16th amendment. So in order to get a amendment ratified, so this would have been amendments 11 through 27, there's a process that goes within each state so that they can essentially say, okay, this is ratified, this is legitimate. And then once you have three fourths of the states agree on it, it becomes an amendment and federal, a part of the federal constitution, the U S constitution. So in the process, there were actually several states that did not follow their own legislative procedures when ratifying the 16th amendment. Specific examples would include Kentucky, California, and Ohio. So with Kentucky, and I'm not going to go too deep into this because this takes up a lot more legal knowledge that I'm not very knowledgeable of, but also we only have so much time in this podcast. So with Kentucky, their legislator, there's legislature. ratified the amendment without a proper quorum, is, which is required by their state constitution in California, their governor, Haram Johnson, he signed the ratification resolution without it being properly passed by the state legislator, again, violating the procedural requirements within California. And then we have Ohio where the Ohio regist legislature, when they ratified the amendment, did not hold the necessary committee hearings, which meant they bypassed the required legislative procedures as So this is also crazy. Now there's also, so this is just to get into law. Now let's get to the point. Okay, fine. If this doesn't make it unconstitutional, we then get into the Supreme court decisions that challenge the authenticity of it. And the first Supreme court decision that I want to talk about is Eisner the verse McComber. I hope I pronounced those names correctly. But what's interesting about this Supreme Court decision is that they argued about the definition of income. So the argue and the argument that I generally agree with is that income has been broadly interpreted nowadays. And this is how you know of it is that it's been broadly interpreted to include wages and salaries. which fundamentally differs from the original understanding of income as gains or profits from property. So in this, in this court case, The Supreme Court considered whether a stock dividend constituted taxable income. That was kind of what this was The court ruled that income must be something that comes in or is derived from capital or labor and not simply a conversion of existing capital. And this narrow interpretation implies that income quote unquote income should be understood as profits or gains and not merely a transfer or conversion of existing assets. This interpretation supports the argument that wages are being in exchange. that the wages, being an exchange of labor for money, you do a certain job, I give you money for it, are not gains, but an equal trade. Right? Because you're not technically making gains. We're making an equal trade. I give you some of my time. You give me some money equal trade. It's not a gain because I've given you time and energy and you've given me something in return. And thus it should not be considered taxable income under the 16th amendment. That's really to me, that's like one of the biggest, the biggest things that I've glaringly obvious reasons that the income tax is unconstitutional. And now if that's not enough for you, we get into this interesting debate now about direct versus indirect taxes. So the federal income tax, when you start applying it to wages and salaries becomes a direct tax. like it's the federal government directly targeting the salary and wages is. And when that occurs, it should be subject to apportionment among the States. And this is in article one, section nine of the constitution. Now the 16th amendment did not explicitly change this requirement, thus rendering the current tax system unconstitutional. And this was held up in another Supreme Court decision. Bush a bar Bush a bar Bush a bear versus Union Pacific So in this case, the Supreme Court clarified the scope of the 16th Amendment stating that it did not grant the federal government new taxing powers over subjects previously untaxable, but rather it simply eliminated the apportionment requirement for income taxes. This decision emphasized that the 16th Amendment primary function was to allow Congress to levy income taxes without distributing the tax burden among the states based on population. Here's where it gets important. Consequently, consequently, the ruling maintained that the federal government's authority to tax income was already inherent and amendments role was to streamline the process by removing procedural requirements constraints. And the amendments role was to streamline the process by removing procedural constraints, not to broaden the range of taxable entity or types of income. So income tax as we know it today has been broadened and this goes against a Supreme Court decision. That's the important thing about. And now let's even go to the next stage of all of this. Maybe my arguments haven't been convincing for you enough, but if you go to the next stage in this, we have to look at how this impacts the citizens of Because here's what's happened. Here's what's happened in today's in the way that the tax system is set up is believe it or not. And I honestly didn't believe this. I had to look this up quite a few times. But the current tax system disproportionately burdens lower income households. And you might think, how is that possible? It's a percentage, right? You have a progressive tax system where it's like 3 % and then it's 5 % and then it's six and you get more basis. go up the tax bracket ladder. But lower income households, again, even though they face a lower average tax rate, experience significant relative burden when compared to their overall income. So for example, in 2021, the bottom 50 % of taxpayers, those earning under about $46 ,000 per year, faced an average federal income tax of 3 .3%. This group earned 10 .4 % of the total adjusted gross income, but paid only 2 .3 % of all federal income taxes. So the effective tax rate, although lower in absolute terms, constituents in a substantial portion of their limited income affecting their ability to cover basic needs and expenses. So basically they're not contributing a lot to the pie. Right? Whenever it comes to the big pie of federal income, they're not contributing a lot to it. Not contributing that much, but for them on an individual basis, it's madness. It's destroying them. It's absolutely wrecking them. So it's like, it's like, what, what are we doing here? Why are we hurting them? And we're not really moving the needle that much to help the country as a And then to exacerbate these inequalities is the unequal distribution of the tax burdens. So even when it comes to middle income, so like lower and middle income households often experience even more significant financial strain, which can hinder the economic mobility and the stability of our economy as a whole. And the higher these tax burdens go on these groups, on us, because I'm in the lower middle class. They may limit their ability to save, to invest, spend, which in turn slows the economy. And it even more amplifies social inequalities because conversely you have high income taxpayers and despite their substantial, substantial tax contributions, they are, they're absolutely substantially, they generally have more disposable income and greater financial resilience due to this, which I mean, it makes sense. And I'm not even advocating that we tax them more. I think we need to tax everyone far less, get rid of the federal income tax that Poor people can have more money to Rich people can have more money to spend. then rich people can build more businesses. Poor people can have more jobs, more access, and then also not have to worry about working four or five jobs in order to make a, make a living, which is a preposterous term in the first place to think that we even need to make a living. You should be inherently have that right to And again, I mean, you even have experts, experts will argue the same exact thing that I just said. Experts argue that the current federal tax system while progressive does not adequately address the disparities and economic impact across different income groups. According to the tax policy center, the structure of tax rates and deductions can sometimes favor, can sometimes, can sometimes favor wealthier individuals who have access to sophisticated tax planning strategies and greater economic resources. The tax foundation's data corroborates this by showing how high income earners can often leverage various credits and deductions to mitigate their tax liabilities more effectively than lower income groups. And this is so true. Once you start running multiple businesses, you can find different loopholes within the tax code, which is like a 2 million page document. I actually think it's over a million pages. It might not be 2 million, but I know it's an over a million page document, which lays out all the tax law. So if you can If you're going to afford to pay someone to find every single little loophole to get you out of taxes. I mean, I think that's genius, but again, it, it creates barriers for people to get out and lift themselves up out of where they are. And I'm not saying it's impossible. I think it's a hundred percent possible for people to do, but we should alleviate that burden. Let people keep their money, keep your tax and stop paying taxes. We don't need more war. We stopped doing war. We're We stop war. We stop the federal income tax. Vote American Congress Party. Vote Clayton Gutierre. Should be that simple. And even more so, we can look at this from like an ethical or philosophical perspective because that's what a lot of the framers of our Constitution did. So if we're looking at like natural rights and liberty, you know, there's philosophical arguments about the individual liberty and the property rights. which are deeply rooted in the principles of our natural rights, which assert that individuals, you and I inherently possess rights to life, to liberty and property that are not granted by governments. They're not granted by governments. They exist as a part of our human condition. And, know, this is when they talk about the creator, about God, about nature, that just are inherent promises to us. And, you know, I'm not sure if you're aware of who John Locke was. He was a prominent thinker, like early enlightenment thinker and argued that the primary role of government was to protect those natural rights, which is kind of ironic. You know, I think it's a little bit ironic. Maybe he didn't really see what was going to happen, but I think it's a little bit ironic to have them protect the rights. It should be us who get to protect that rights from the government. I don't know. That's kind It's kind of a tricky one. It's kind of like a mind bender. I'd have to like sit on that for a little bit. It's starting to get late here. So I might be a little woozy, but that's like a weird one to me to think But in his second treaty of, second treaties of government, Locke emphasized that individuals have the right to acquire property through their labor and that government interference in this right must be minimal and justified. Completely agree with that and almost probably should almost be non -existent unless you're doing something illegal. Of course, you know, then in those cases, maybe there's some intervention and now Thomas Jefferson, sure you've heard that name influenced by Locke incorporated the ID, these ideas into the Declaration of Independence, asserting that governments are instituted to secure the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Sounds evident. James Madison, another key framer of the U S constitution, advocated for a limited government that would protect property rights and prevent excessive taxation and government overreach. Again, think they needed to, they probably needed to word it a little bit stronger. If I had to give them a little bit of advice, maybe you got to word that a little bit stronger. So Madison argued in Federalist number 10. So the Federalist papers were before the U .S. Constitution, but they were used to help create the Constitution. They like a founding. I don't know how that, I don't know what the right way to phrase that is, but they were kind of just like the thought process for But he Madison argued in the Federalist number 10, that protecting the rights of property owners is essential to ensuring liberty and preventing tyranny. Now, not everyone was property owners at the time. There might be a little bit of a touchy kind of subject, if you will. As we've grown, grown as a nation, a lot of people become property owners. Again, we're running into the issue now where millennial end of millennials and Gen Z's it's going to be almost impossible for us to become property owners. until we change, get a little regime change going in the, Congress and the white house. And that goes for both parties. because absolutely been devastated. It's just not happening until that, until they go, because I don't hear anyone talking about the fact that, we're becoming a renter society, how we need to get all of these corporate industries out of the housing market, how we need to build home for how homes for housing people. If, If we're not going to just, you know, allow the economy to correct itself or put regulations in to prevent corporations from buying housing. That's a whole another side thing. That's don't get me going on that. But I bring up these framers, these these founders, because it's good to understand the historical perspective of limiting government to protect our rights, because, you It's crazy how they had this frame of like a right to life. But everywhere you look nowadays, it seems as if it's just becoming bleaker. It's becoming dollar. But hopefully, I mean, hopefully, though, just this knowledge helps you gain more footing and gains more traction so that we can actually eliminate the federal income tax. We don't need it. If we stop going to war, if we stop funding other countries going to war, which 70 % of Americans agree So again, I ask you, do you really feel like you're being represented? I mean, don't even look at it as your own representative, but even just like any of the representatives in Congress, like I legit feel like, you know, of course, like you're not going to 100 % agree with anyone, but I try to at least shoot for like 80%. Like I think I feel like there's like 80 % of ideas that like we can all, I really there's ideas that we can all agree with. Right. So like if we're about 80%, then we're good. You know, things Let's stop war, peace, stop poisoning the food, stop poisoning our air, stop poisoning our water. You know, let's not have corporates, corporations buying all single family homes. Let's get rid of federal income tax. You know, like these basic things that I think like 80, 90 percent of people agree with. What was the other one? Term limits in Congress, you just like these seem like so basic and straightforward that everybody agrees with. think it's like 95 % of Americans want term limits and yet we don't have them. So again, it begs the question, who's really representing us? Are we being truly represented in Congress? And so, you know, again, I just feel like that's like the most powerful thing to me is like, where are the people who truly want what's best for we, the people? don't see them in Congress. They're not in Congress. Maybe there's someone that's probably someone listening to this podcast being called, or maybe this is your calling to get involved and do something. And if it does feel like you reach out to me, you can shoot me an email contact at Clayton24 .com get involved with the American Congress party. Cause this is going to be a long -term vision. This is not like this, this and done this, this campaign and done. There's gonna be a lot more campaigning. We have a lot more to do for sure. For sure. For sure. But we have to do it. We need people to do and maybe you're one of the people that needs to do it with Because there's so many problems going on with their country. And as much as you hear them somewhat sort of talk about it in the news, to me, it does not feel as though they are talking about it. Or do they're talking about, but they're not doing anything To me, it's childish. It's very childish. And it seems like it seems like it's gotten to a point where they feel like they can just pull our leg, pull us along and lie to us. And we can't do anything about And that to me feels like the most disgusting part of it. And it's like you're beat. We're being gaslit. I mean, I've never really used that term before, but this feels like the biggest gaslighting experiment in human history is the American government, the U S Congress speaking to us about what we have to do. to defend democracy, we have to go do this. defend democracy. have to do that. Did you not see what they just did with the democratic party? Is you're not just see how they completely upended an elected official and pressured him to step out of the race and replace them with the VP who nobody voted for. I think that's so insane. So insane. Talk about the least, one of the least democratic possible things you could do. And we have to protect democracy. Give me a We are being gaslit. are absolutely being gaslit into thinking that we're either not enough. We're not doing something right. It's our fault. Yada, yada, yada. The reality is the situation is, is that the government does not want us to succeed. They want to extract whatever they can. Have you seen the matrix? Have you seen the matrix? my gosh. First of all, if you have not seen the matrix, you have to go and watch it. So you get this reference and then come back to this point in the podcast in the matrix, they're hooked up to these machines and the machines are basically like using the human's bodies as batteries. And I seriously feel like that's what the government sees us as, sees us humans as it's just their batteries that can just suck our money out of us. They can just send it wherever they want. They can just take our rights. It's just little by little. They want to take certain rights away from different groups. And if you disagree, then that creates infighting and it becomes this whole, divide and conquer strategy. It's absolutely insane to me what's happening right before our Insane, insane, insane, insane. And hopefully, hopefully this is a call to get to someone. Someone's listening to this and hopefully We leverage your ability with the American Congress party so that we can stop this ridiculousness because that's what it is. This is absolutely ridiculous. And, you know, I just I'm exhausted for words at this point and I'm exhausted because it's hitting about midnight. So I'll get this guy to get this out to you guys tomorrow. But yeah, I appreciate you guys. If if you believe in eliminating the federal income tax, I hope you send this to one other person. That's your that's your job. is if you believe in eliminating the federal income tax, you should send this to one other person. Because it's going to be a grassroots movement. I'm not a millionaire, at least not yet. And so I need you guys. We have to end the wars. We have to end the federal income tax. We need chemical free food. We have to support life. We have to support life. I need free education, better education. Education has become a business. Education is now a business model. Do I become a doctor? well, I make a lot of money. So yes. It's not about helping people. It's not about curing people. The people that want to do that are not even in medicine. The ones that want to truly heal you are not in medicine. The people who want the paycheck and want to make money, they're in medicine. They're making great money off of it. Look how sick we are. If everyone got healed, they wouldn't make money. We have to fix this system guys. There's so many, it depresses me, but it invigorates me at the same time to realize that there is so much that we can fix. So much that we can make great and better about the world, about America. I mean, we're supposed to be the beacon of freedom and hope and prosperity. We need to start acting like it because we're not the decisions that happen throughout Congress are very blismole, very bleak, very negative. So let's do this. Let's make the world a better place. And it starts, starts with How are you gonna get involved? What are you gonna do? Are you going to get involved with the American Congress party? You're going to send this podcast to one other person. Are you going to register with the American Congress party as your voter registration? Cause every little action, every small action, minute action has a rippling that echoes throughout eternity. What echo are you going to leave?
