Talk:Real property use tax

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Taxation, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve tax-related articles to a feature-quality standard.
Assessment ratings and other indicators given below are used by the Project in prioritizing and managing its workload.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-priority on the Project's priority scale.

	After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's comments page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses.

[edit] Notes

What is "Gillis 1999" - it doesn't link anywhere. The link is a wikilink to itself and not a hyperlink to the reference. Morphh ^(talk) 20:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok.. I see what was done. The notes are referencing the references. May need to change that... Morphh ^(talk) 20:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

What usually happens here is that you create a single reference to the paper and then use the duplication name reference tag on all the other refs. See WP:FOOT Morphh ^(talk) 21:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other reforms

I'm not sure the other reforms section belongs in this article. Perhaps moved in a limited way to the tax reform article. To make this neutral, the other point of view to the criticism would need to be included along with possible challenges of advantages to the other tax systems. I'm not sure we want to get into a "tax reform" comparison here. This should focus on the advantages and disadvantages to the Real property use tax. If it has advantages as a tax system, point them out in the normal discussion of the article. The advantages and disadvantages of each tax reform should be address on that tax reforms article, not here. If a reader wants to compare tax systems, they can read the other articles to find the advantages and disadvantages of each. Morphh ^(talk) 21:07, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problematic material

The article contains the following passages:

Americans, historically, had been protected by the Fifth, Tenth, and Thirteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution—even the government could not seize a person’s property merely because it was produced. [footnote here] However, the Sixteenth Amendment—implemented in 1913—gave government the power to tax personal income. Thus, wages and profits could then be taken whenever they were created—just because they were created—through mere statutory edict. [footnote here]

This material is problematic. Stay tuned. Famspear (talk) 20:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I haven't read the entire article yet, but here are a few comments. This article contains 51 footnotes. Of those, forty-six appear to be to: Gillis, Timothy J. (1999). Taxation and National Destiny: A Tax Systems Analysis and Proposal. That in and of itself might not be a problem. However, let's look at the above material.

There is no law of which I know that allows the government to seize a person's property "merely because it was produced." This is supposed to be an article about "real property use tax." The relevance is unclear here.

Now, let's look at this:

However, the Sixteenth Amendment—implemented in 1913—gave government the power to tax personal income. Thus, wages and profits could then be taken whenever they were created—just because they were created—through mere statutory edict. [footnote here]

This is incorrect; the Sixteenth Amendment itself did not "give" the government the power to tax personal income. Congress has had that power since about the year 1789 and, in fact, did tax personal income several times, long before the Amendment. Wages and profits have always been susceptible to being taxed (or "taken" if you prefer). The Sixteenth Amendment removed the apportionment requirement with respect to income in the form of rents, dividends, and interest that had been imposed by the Pollock decision. This has been covered over and over and over again here in Wikipedia.

So, this article needs to be changed to reflect that the quoted material above is the position of Mr. Gillis (if Gillis really said that in his book).

Further, this Gillis "interpretation" of the Sixteenth Amendment, if it is really his, would be considered fairly close to being a legally frivolous position in a court of law, and in the world of legal scholarship. At best, the Gillis position is a fringe position. Therefore, we need to add the sourcing to the actual court cases, etc., stating what reliable, published third party sources say about this point. Otherwise, we are affording undue weight to an extreme minority position.

These inaccuracies draw into question the wisdom of the heavy reliance in this article on the Timothy Gillis book. Fifty-one footnotes with 46 of them citing Gillis is pretty heavy reliance. This article needs to be checked. Is Gillis really taking all these positions attributed to him? Famspear (talk) 20:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Another comment. About this statement again:

Again, I am wondering whether Gillis really says or implies this. I haven't read the Gillis book. Another interpretation of this passage would be that the tax collector could not seize a person's assets to satisfy a personal income tax liability before the Sixteenth Amendment, but that the Amendment changed that. If that is what is being implied, that would be blatantly false. The tax collector has probably always had that power. Indeed, there is at least one U.S. Supreme Court case where a taxpayer's real estate was sold right out from under him (literally -- it was sold by the tax collector while the taxpayer was still in possession) -- and this was upheld by the Supreme Court. And this was an income tax on personal earnings. See Springer v. United States, a case from the 1880s.

So, even if it is really Gillis' position that the Amendment "gave" the Congress the power to seize a person's property (and I'm not saying that it is), this needs to be clarified one way or the other. If it's not Gillis' position, then the verbiage needs to be deleted. Famspear (talk) 20:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)