From the Rosetta Stone to the US Tax Code

From the Rosetta Stone to the US Tax Code: The History of Taxation. A Seminar with Charles Adams ★★★★★
This is a series of 10 lectures in 14 hours that Charles Adams delivered for the von Mises Institute. Charles Adams was a young lawyer when he inadvertently became involved in his undesired rise to fame as a tax lawyer. Adams eventually wrote a book on tax law which had difficulty being published but eventually caught the eye of certain people high in politics, leading him to further fame. He is strongly libertarian, though he is unwilling to claim that it is rational to expect eliminating taxes altogether. Adams successfully shows how much of the events that shaped the world, such as major wars and revolutions, and even things such as the Rosetta Stone, revolved around the issue of taxes. He is the first to persuade me that the Civil War probably had more to do with uneven distribution of taxes than issues of slavery or state rights. There are many gems throughout. An example is his emphasis that a graduated income tax is a misnomer, which should be called income extortion since all graduated “taxes” are in reality extortions. He was also able to show how graduated taxes were a major source of political instability, the cause of social class instability, and ultimately the instability of the state. Adams lectures in a  casual style, very relaxed, telling many anecdotes about his own personal history with rogue internal revenue agents, mostly in terms of fighting for his clients. The lectures are slightly disorganized, and they don’t fit neatly with the titles that they were labeled with.
A few people who will have read to here will still think that the state is your friend and looking after your best interest. Perhaps so, but definitely not the United States. He shows how US tax laws have some unique differences from any other tax law in the world. He rightfully identifies the IRS as worse than the Gestapo, since the IRS has certainly way outdone the Gestapo on spying on US citizens, knowing their every move and every dollar spent. Yet, they are also able to persuade the masses that they are an impartial and benign entity. Recent IRS news shows us just the opposite. I didn’t realize it that every country in the world taxes people as residents and not as citizens: this implies that US citizens are the ONLY people in the world who are supposed to be taxed even though they no longer live in the United States. Adams ends by showing how 8 simple laws can help bring sense back to taxation. The laws aren’t what you think they’d be. The first is to end government spying on American citizens’ cash flow. He strongly recommends an emphasis on indirect taxes, with direct taxes being apportioned evenly throughout the population (e.g., a flat-rate income tax, everybody pays, and all pay the exact same percent) as has been stated so clearly in the US constitution.
This lecture series can be obtained for cheap from the von Mises Institute website and is highly worth it.