When Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) said during the recent House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the IRS scandal that the U.S. tax system is “a voluntary system,” Stephen Miller said, “Agreed.”
In fact, Becerra said it is “a voluntary system” twice. Becerra said those exact words at one hour, twenty nine minutes and eight seconds and again at one hour, thirty minutes and thirty five seconds, according to the C-SPAN transcript.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the same thing in an interview with Jan Helfeld in 2008.
In the interview embedded below, Helfeld asked, “If the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare benefits to others, how will the people whose money is being taken feel about the government?”
“Well, I don’t accept your phraseology. I don’t think we force people,” Reid answered.
“Taxation is not forceful?” Helfeld asked.
“Well, no…” Reid said. “It’s voluntary?” Helfeld asked.
“Quite the contrary. Our system of government is a voluntary tax system,” Reid said.
“If you don’t want to pay your taxes, you don’t have to?” Helfeld asked, to which ReIntuit, the makers of TurboTax, wrote an article (note: it heavily promotes TurboTax) about what “voluntary compliance” really means. It has nothing to do with the payment of the taxes. That is not voluntary. Instead, it speaks to “the manner in which people submit their own taxes.”