Remember that one time we had truth in a presidential debate?

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Transcript:

Hillary Clinton had just attacked Donald Trump during their 2016 presidential debate for not paying as much taxes as he should. Trump, a billionaire businessman, countered her, saying that was because Senator Hillary Clinton, a former lawmaker, had deliberately refused to change the tax code for fear of affecting her rich donors. This was one of the most honest things to be said publicly by any presidential candidate in over 200 years.

In 2020, Joe Biden, a former lawmaker, also attacked Trump with the same argument. The argument is that the rich should pay more in taxes and give to the poor. As President, Biden has repeated the same argument, explaining that he would like to punish the rich to help the poor. The rich, earning over $400,000 would pay more in taxes while the poor would all benefit from that. Almost like what Robin Hood was said to have done, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

However, as Robert Kiyosaki explains in his explosive book, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, originally in England and America, there were no taxes. Occasionally, there were temporary taxes levied in order to pay for wars. The King or the President would put the word out and ask everyone to chip in. Taxes were levied in Britain for the fight against Napoleon from 1799 to 1816, and in America to pay for the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

In 1874, England made income tax a permanent levy on its citizens. It was only in 1913 that an income tax became permanent in the United States with the adoption of the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution.

At one time, Americans were antitax. It had been the tax on tea that led to the famous Tea Party in Boston Harbor, an incident that helped ignite the Revolutionary War.

It took approximately 50 years in both England and the United States to sell the idea of a regular income tax. What these historical dates fail to reveal is that both of these taxes were initially levied against only the rich. I hate repetition, but let me repeat that, the idea of taxes was made popular and accepted by the majority by telling the poor and the middle class that taxes were created only to punish the rich. This is how the masses voted for the law, and it became constitutionally legal.

Although it was intended to punish the rich, in reality, it wound up punishing the very people who voted for it, the poor and middle class. So, the passage of taxes was only possible because the masses believed in the Robin Hood theory of economics, take from the rich and give to everyone else, as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have repeatedly said.

The problem was that the government’s appetite for money was so great that taxes soon needed to be levied on the middle class and from there it kept trickling down to the poor who voted for the law.

When taxes were taken from the rich, cash started flowing into government coffers. Initially, people were happy. Money was handed out to government workers and the rich. It went to government workers in the form of jobs and pensions and it went to the rich via their factories receiving government contracts.

As the government needed more money, and the cycle of growing government spending continued, the demand for money increased, and the tax. The tax the rich idea was adjusted to include lower-income levels down to the very people who voted it in, the poor and the middle class.

But did the rich get punished? Did they pay more in taxes? No, they did not. They all formed ‘corporations’ to protect themselves.

“What many people who have never formed a corporation don’t know is that a corporation is not really a thing. A corporation is merely a file folder with some legal documents in it sitting in some attorney’s office and registered with a state government agency. It’s not a big building or a factory or a group of people. A corporation is merely a legal document that creates a legal body without a soul,” Kiyosaki says.

Using it, the wealth of the rich was once again protected. A corporation is popular because the income tax rate of a corporation is less than the individual income tax rates. In addition, certain expenses could be paid by a corporation with pretax dollars. This war between the haves and have-nots has raged for hundreds of years.

Trump, as a businessman understands this, and so he pays taxes through his corporation, the Trump Organization. Clinton and Biden were never willing to change the tax law. And Trump, like all other businessmen and businesswomen, pays less in taxes using their corporations. They are doing nothing wrong.

Guest Contributor

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