Lawyer In Seattle Tax Dispute Says 'Income isn't Property' - Granite Grok

Lawyer In Seattle Tax Dispute Says ‘Income isn’t Property’

Seattle - Image-WikipediaSeattle imposed a high earner tax, and both sides are in court fighting for the right to tax or to not to be taxed. The city wants to take other peoples money. The people who earned money would rather not part with it. And in the midst of this fight, the lawyer for the city said,

…what’s preventing a state income tax is an interpretation — a wrong interpretation, Lawrence says. Because, he says, income is not property.

“It comes to you; you then take it and turn it into property — whether it’s a stock or bond or a piece of property — but it’s a very different type of thing,” he says.

What a load of rubbish.

Income is property because income isn’t limited to currency.

Webster’s definition includes Income as, a gain or recurrent benefit usually measured in money that derives from capital or labor; alsothe amount of such gain received in a period of time 

I can’t speak to the traditional legal definitions, but currency (money) is nothing more than an agreed-upon form of barter, which is trade by exchanging one commodity for another. Currency takes the place of other types of property or service, to simplify the exchange between individuals or groups of individuals.

If your income isn’t your property than neither are your labors.

If your time and labor are not yours, what right do you have to require or expect anything in exchange for your time and effort?

And if your income is not property, then why does it belong to the entity that accumulated it, including the government that used the law to take it? Why is removing the notes whose denominations quantify it without permission a crime?

What manner of exchange is immune to this presumption?

The courts in Washington state will have to decide whether their constitution prohibits the proposed income tax, which hinges on an almost 90-year old State Supreme Court interpretation. That decision shouldn’t relate in any way to how other states or the federal government interpret property, but it could have far-reaching effects on how people in the Evergreen State view it.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps income isn’t property, and that’s just another slippery slope we’re already on toward serfdom.

After all, depending on who you ask your property isn’t your property. It’s stuff that belongs to the State that the government hasn’t bothered to take from you yet.

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