Happy Tuesday everyone!!! Today’s post is brought to us by Stephen Hall. Thanks, as always, Stephen!
Now that the Supreme Court Justice has been confirmed, we can finally get back to our regularly scheduled foolishness and stupidity. Isn’t that a relief? Yeah, I know there will be incessant whining for some time, but there is no longer any pressing need to counter it, merely to point an laugh.
While you were distracted, actually it’s been creeping around for some time but becoming increasingly prevalent, is the implementation of one of the most onerous and idiotic taxes of all times, and that really does say something, it is a very low bar to slide under.
Certain governments have taken it upon themselves to tax the rain. More precisely to tax the rain which falls upon the citizens’ property due to the runoff of that rainfall into the drainage systems of the respective localities. https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbrown/2014/01/03/when-it-rains-it-pours-tax-dollars-in-maryland/#5196745b7c69 Simultaneously, in other jurisdictions, you can be taxed for collecting the rainfall and keeping the rain from running off of your property. http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/collecting-rainwater-now-illegal-in-many-states/42532
The difference appears in localities based upon whether the area gets too much or not enough rainfall, and therefore it becomes the business of society at large rather than the individual property owner as to what is permitted to be done with the rainfall, at least according to those who advocate for statist control of property.
The issue appears to be spreading into other jurisdictions as states look to their neighbors and see what they are able to get away with regulating. The unfortunate truth of government control is that if one government gets away with asserting authority in an area of society, all the others soon follow making the absurd state power grab look “normal”.
This is, to say the least, a problematic tax, whether taxing run-off or taxing the interference with run-off, for a variety of important philosophical and legal reasons.
Much like property taxes, there are some serious Constitutional questions as to the essential legality of such a tax scheme.
A property tax is economically problematic in that it taxes wealth rather than income, or production if you will.
However, if one were to limit the notion of a property tax to only a residence, then the Constitutional problems would become more apparent. Simply put, everyone resides. Everyone has a home, whether it is their own home or a rented apartment. As any worthwhile landlord will incorporate the necessary property tax into his rent calculations, the renter is the person paying the property tax, not the landlord. In fact, I have seen people rent property at a very low rate solely for the purpose of covering the property tax.
Why is this problematic? Because, everyone resides. Everyone has to pay that tax. “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” Para. 4, Sect. 9, Article I, US Constitution. That is the very definition of a “capitation” or “head” tax, i.e. if you have a head, have not been decapitated, you are taxed.
Okay, technically, this is a restriction on the Federal government and not the states, however the Constitution does not explicitly state that, and for those who support the concept of incorporation of rights, i.e. that the rights in the Bill of Rights apply to the states as well, then one must admit the notion that the restrictions of the body of the Constitution and not merely the bill of rights also restrict the states actions through the doctrine of incorporation.
A tax upon the rain which falls upon one’s residence, must stand in this same light of a tax upon the resident themselves no differently than any other property tax, thus a “rain tax” is as problematic as any other property tax in taxing people’s very existence, a capitation tax.
(Because it will fall additionally upon non-residential property, it also carries with it a character somewhat of being progressive, whereas a straight capitation tax is one of the most regressive of taxes.)
Certainly reminiscent of the Beatle’s song “Taxman”.
There exists another problem associated with the “rain tax” in that it is intimately and incestuously tied to the public water and sewer system services.
By intimately, payment of said tax is attached to the provision of those services. Just as failing to pay your sewer bill is linked to shutting off your water services, even though technically they are different companies running the two systems, the failure to pay your rain tax is also grounds for disconnecting a resident’s water services.
The public utility of providing potable water is tied to the other public utility of sewage and water drainage systems on the theory that if water is coming into the residence, then water is leaving the residence thus using the sewage services. Of course, if a person had an independent source of water, such as a spring or a well, then they would still be able to use the sewage services as their leverage for forcing people to pay by cutting off their water supply would be non-existent, and use that leverage they do.
By incestuously, these public utilities are most often private corporations not owned by the state or the city, but regulated and controlled by the respective governments, though sometimes they are owned and operated by the municipalities.
The control of private companies by the state is the very distinction of fascism as a form of socialism compared to the direct operation of state enterprises in other forms of socialism.
With regards to the “rain tax” we have an application of the state using the coercive power of a “private” company, which power was granted by the same state, to collect the taxes imposed by the state, by refusing to provide that company’s services because those services were deemed so essential that the state had to regulate that company to prevent them from using coercive tactics against those same customers.
Confused yet?
Finally, one must have a little perspective on the pernicious legal concept of “sovereign immunity” and the wilful misinterpretation of legal precedent in contrivance of fostering such an ill conceived notion.
In Common Law, if your property were to be damaged by a tornado, by flood, lightning, earthquake, tsunami, fire, or other natural disaster . . . flies, frogs, locust, rivers turning to blood, that sort of thing, it was deemed an “Act of God” and thus nobody’s fault and the damage you suffered was simply yours to endure, much like the sufferings of Lot.
There was no one to be sued, no claim you could file to be made whole, after all, you couldn’t sue God. Where would you even begin to serve the papers? Or was there? It turns out that a rather enterprising fellow had an idea. As an English citizen, he sued the King. Poppycock, I hear you say . . . okay, that may just be the voice in my head . . . but hear me out.
You see, this was after Protestantism had come to England. In the Catholic Church, the Pope is declared to be God’s representative on Earth. Under the Anglican Church, the King of England was the head of the church in England. Ergo, the King was God’s representative on Earth. As the destruction of the gentleman’s property was deemed by the courts to be an “Act of God”, and as the King was God’s representative, legally his agent, the gentleman sued the King as God’s agent for the damage to his property.
Rather sound reasoning given the temerity and hubris of any mere mortal claiming to be the representative of God himself, if you asked me.
However, rather than taking upon the Crown the bankrupting financial burden of paying for all damage from any natural disaster, yet unwilling to admit their own folly and hubris of declaring itself to be God’s own representative, the King’s Court, the English court analogous to our Supreme Court, simply declared that the King, as sovereign, simply could not be sued.
Many years later state governments would seize upon this precedent and declare that the states could not be sued in state courts even going so far as to write it into their state constitutions. However, the US Constitution mentions suits specifically against states: “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, . . . to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States, —between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.” Para. 1, Sect. 2, Art. III, US Constitution.
The states very quickly realizing onto just what they had signed, said a very audible “Oops!”, and quickly passed the very first Amendment after the Bill of Rights: “The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.” Amendment XI (ratified 1795).
How does all of this relate to the notion of a “rain tax”? Well, simply put, rain is an “Act of God” in the very real sense of those natural disasters, though the rain is not a disaster, the concept of that which is labeled an “Act of God” would apply equally to the blessings or bounty as to a disaster. It is not something over which the state has control, so why would any person imagine that an individual citizen would have control over the rainfall?
Inasmuch as the state enjoys the privilege, elected to itself, of sovereign immunity from being sued for Acts of God, there can be no basis for that same state taxing those very Acts of God against their citizens. The citizen is no more a representative of God than the King, and unlike the King, never claimed to be such.
Would not that same logic imply that the citizen has some form of “peasant immunity” from the taxation of those Acts of God the same as any sovereign?
