Tax Revolt

A tax revolt almost as momentous as the Boston Tea Party erupted in California in 1978. Its reverberations are still being felt, yet no one is quite sure what general lessons can be drawn from observing its course. this book is an in-depth study of this most recent and notable taxpayer's rebellion: Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13, the Gann measure of 1979, and Proposition (Jarvis II) of 1980.

Tax cuts are such a pervasive feature of the American political landscape that the political establishment rarely questions them. Since 2001, Congress has abolished the tax on inherited wealth and passed a major income tax cut every year, including two of the three largest income tax cuts in American history despite a long drawn-out war and massive budget deficits. The Permanent Tax Revolt traces the origins of this anti-tax campaign to the 1970s, in particular, to the influence of grassroots tax rebellions as homeowners across the United States rallied to protest their local property taxes. Isaac William Martin advances the provocative new argument that the property tax revolt was not a conservative backlash against big government, but instead a defensive movement for government protection from the market. The tax privilege that the tax rebels were defending was in fact one of the largest government social programs in the postwar era. While the movement to defend homeowners' tax breaks drew much of its inspiration—and many of its early leaders—from the progressive movement for welfare rights, politicians on both sides of the aisle quickly learned that supporting big tax cuts was good politics. In time, American political institutions and the strategic choices made by the protesters ultimately channeled the movement toward the kind of tax relief favored by the political right, with dramatic consequences for American politics today.

Ever since the Boston Tea Party, courageous and patriotic citizens have rebelled against the government's overbearing and abusive taxation of its constituents. This book is the powerful rallying cry to all Americans to continue to fight against our ever-increasing taxes. Using as a touchstone the heroic incident in Tennessee, when citizens converged on the state capitol to protest and repeatedly beat back attempts to pass a state tax, Valentine weaves an inspiring story of how patriotic citizens have stood up to taxes in the past, how many intrepid constituents continue to fight, and how Americans should resist and even revolt against taxes on a state and national level. By exploring the crippling effects of taxes on our economy and the lives of each individual citizen and drawing from the stories of other revolts (with exclusive behind-the-scenes details about the Tennessee rebellion), Valentine will anger and incite readers to action, giving them the motivation and know-how to spread the word and activate a powerful new revolution.

Suppose the social fabric tore. Suppose uninformed or misinformed citizens, unmindful of how taxes translate into public services, chose not to support their government; to let the institutions wither away. How could it happen? What might the aftermath look like? With the system in collapse, can Americans restore trust in the miracle of self government? Imagine a complex timepiece, scattered into its' many parts, and no one knows how to put it back together again; the watchmakers long since dead. Can Americans revive the institutions that have been built up over the years from the model of the Founding Father's? How do you rebuild the infrastructure of a modern society? Examine the remarkable thing called 'self-government' by seeing what it would be like should it fail through neglect of its' citizens. Could a small faction seize power while the public is not paying attention? This is a chilling view of an American Insurrection.

An engaging and enlightening account of taxation told through lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the world and across the ages Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts—and, in repressing it, ended up burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed astonishingly, as when, in eighteenth-century Britain, a cut in the tax on tea massively increased revenue. In this entertaining book, two leading authorities on taxation, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, provide a fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic—from the plundering described by Herodotus and an Incan tax payable in lice to the (misremembered) Boston Tea Party and the scandals of the Panama Papers. Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of tax rascals, and even a few tax heroes. While it is hard to fathom the inspiration behind such taxes as one on ships that tended to make them sink, Keen and Slemrod show that yesterday’s tax systems have more in common with ours than we may think. Georgian England’s window tax now seems quaint, but was an ingenious way of judging wealth unobtrusively. And Tsar Peter the Great’s tax on beards aimed to induce the nobility to shave, much like today’s carbon taxes aim to slow global warming. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is a surprising and one-of-a-kind account of how history illuminates the perennial challenges and timeless principles of taxation—and how the past holds clues to solving the tax problems of today.