Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
As a "non-American" it seems exceedingly odd to me that the government of the country is not allowed, by its own constitution, to control taxation - raising taxes is one of the primary duties of the government in most countries  . |
The Federal government does tax people... through income and property taxes. But it allows the states to control their internal taxes (my state also taxes my income, as well as my purchases... other states do differently), the idea being to give the states some autonomy and to avoid the Federal govt having too much control over the states.
The idea was to create a government as egalitarian and decentralized as possible, the image of the ultimate Democracy, and all of these steps were designed with this in mind. That's why some of the Constitution gets intricate, to say the least, and getting decisions from Congress can be like pulling teeth, but is all designed to prevent the rise of absolute central control.
Uh...
Weren't we talking about e-book piracy? How did we start examining government taxation?