Voluntary Compliance
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <5/28>

      There is a running joke that the income tax is based upon voluntary compliance. This is a presumption of any law, that its success depends upon voluntary compliance. Certainly a law making smoking illegal would have no more success than did the law against drinking alcohol, despite the particular form of the law.
      Although both the IRS manual and the inscription over the entrance to the IRS headquarters in Washington DC proclaim voluntary compliance it is not. You do not comply in the least. Your employer complies by withholding money from your paycheck. The only thing you do voluntarily is file a tax return. You only do that because of a Catch 22 in the law holding the IRS need not prove you are guilty in violation of the Constitution in a rather clever manner.
      But the larger issue is that no law can be passed without voluntary compliance of some large fraction of the population. Pick your own number; I would say about 90%. If compliance is less than that there is no way the government can afford to both enforce the law and follow constitutional procedures at the same time. I will note there is no exception in the constitution to abridge rights when enforcement is too hard. Prohibition was an example. The drug laws are an example.
      In regard to the income tax, it is admitted that 90% of the non-filers the IRS talks about are the elderly and no one really cares if they file their Social Security and pittance other income. That is just a play for more staff. And who is going to summon a drooling alzheimer's case for an audit? The hidden message is that they do not have the personnel to deal with the remaining 10% of non-payers.
      OK, I made up the percentages, but you tell me how many people in nursing homes you think file 1040 forms.
      That is the limitation of enforcement if it is not voluntary. No government following our rules can enforce laws that do not have more than a super majority, at least a 90% majority, a superlative majority, in order to have validity in any sense of enforcement.
      The confusion in the simple observation of reality comes with local applicability. Certainly 200 million or more will comply with the Endangered Species Act. And equal number will comply with paying income tax (family members included in both cases.) The difference is that the Income Tax is not voluntary as the employer collects it, without compensation I might add, a cost of doing business imposed by the federal government that is not delegated to it by the Constitution.
      Let us be frank about this. Were not the obligation of payment of income tax upon the employer (a second class citizen) the income tax would be a joke that no one would pay. This entire edifice we have to voluntary taxation would devolve to human nature in an instant were not the employer the unpaid enforcer for the federal government.
      The income tax could not exist if it were, as the law, the IRS manual, the IRS HQ says, voluntary. It is forced, period. And it only succeeds because the burden of proof of innocence it put upon the citizen contrary to all other legal requirements for the government.
      Similarly laws protecting rats and owls, laws protecting swamps, laws protecting minorities, laws protecting majorities (women), laws protecting alcoholics and drug addicts, and this government actually expects voluntary compliance. Worse yet it expects the slim majority to hold the huge minority as evil and required to comply for some reason. This is not a just form of government.
      It violates the basic rule of delegated powers. Worse, it stetches the implication of implied powers beyond what the average person is willing to accept. That a government is run by the better qualified is not in question. That a government can not achieve the required 90% voluntary compliance is the failing of that government. It is a failing of the laws of the government.
      Here I wish only to point out the limitations of government. All governments are limited in their power by their ability to pass 90% voluntary compliant laws under a delegated power type of government. If such compliance does not occur the law can only lead to a tyranny if enforced. This leads to no better case than requiring 90% of the representatives to pass a new law.
      This is Government v People in the classic sense. Even if 51% insist upon a law, if there is not 90% compliance it is a worthless law. It is time our government learns this lesson.