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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if you mean it this way, but your comment reads as if you presume that taxes on income are the only way the provide for "the functioning of a country".

I prefer wholesale deprecation of the state - also to advance functioning of the country - but even during the time period where the state continues to exist, I think that income tax is specifically unjust (compared to taxes on gains and consumption, for example).

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> your comment reads as if you presume that taxes on income are the only way the provide for "the functioning of a country".

Did I say income?

Maybe I'm missing a piece here, but the entire discussion (and indeed the thread in question) is regarding the filing of income taxes.

If that's your jam why wait, book your flight to Somalia today and start living the dream.

There's no need, you can do it today from within any country by living with cash.

Why do people always used a collapsed socialist state as their "gotcha" against libertarian type arguments?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Revolutionary_Sociali...

because all of the libertarian ideals apply in any collapsed state (no governmental controls, unfettered free market, etc). What that state started as before it collapsed isn't relevant.

Somalia doesn't lack a state though, it has competing warlords fighting for control of the remains of the socialist state.

And you presume in the absence of a state, no force will attempt to fill the power vacuum?

Arguably the various insurgencies and federal government of somalia all form a state. The communities over which they rule have little say in the governance. If the OP is arguing for anarchy or communism, Somalia isn't a good example.

The country ran just fine with 0% income taxes until 1913.

We were almost 150 old as a nation then. We had already become a superpower, as WW1 and WW2 would shortly confirm.

> The country ran just fine with 0% income taxes until 1913.

Sure, apart from that whole Civil War fracas in the mid-1800s and the ensuing decades of reconstruction.

The Civil War was a fight over the efficiency and ability of the country to run itself via taxes or not?

My point is that regardless of the tax regime, America pretty clearly did not run "just fine" in that era.

It seems that you could also say it didn't run fine if there were an invasion, for much the same reasons, but that wouldn't, in most cases, make it a valid critique of the way things were being run, especially with regard to the actual subject here, which regards the tax regime.

There were income taxes before 1913.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1861

He means permanent. In times of urgent need, such as in times of war, the government would raise money as necessary. The federal government assessing a permanent tax on people was a huge deal and required a constitutional amendment, the 16th, passed in 1913. The act you're referencing was in response to the Civil War (which started in 1861), and would be allowed to ultimately expire about a decade later.

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