T.O.R.E. (The Organization Regarding Everything) is a citizen-led think tank built on the principle that the best solutions come from the people themselves. It brings together Americans from diverse backgrounds—finance, law, technology, national security, and beyond—to address the pressing issues facing our nation. From safeguarding fiscal responsibility to strengthening national defense, T.O.R.E. operates outside the grip of entrenched interests, channeling the expertise of ordinary citizens to craft solutions that serve the public first and ensure government works for the people, not against them.
Each April, millions of Americans watch a portion of their paycheck disappear into what feels like a government black box, with little clarity on where it goes or how it serves them. The T.O.R.E. proposal—Taxation Oversight and Reform for Efficiency—seeks to break open that box, offering a constitutional reset rooted in the Clean Slate Doctrine’s call for systemic accountability. For too long, income tax has operated as an unchecked government power, insulated from the protections the Fifth Amendment extends to private property. Yet the Takings Clause makes clear: when government seizes property, it must also provide just compensation. Reframing taxation under this principle does not abolish it; it transforms it into a covenant of accountability. Every dollar taken from a citizen’s labor must yield a return—not in cash, but in clarity. Sunlight becomes the measure of compensation: every cent traced, justified, and reported back to the people whose work created it.
What America needs now is not another patchwork reform or symbolic cut, but a constitutional shift that restores primacy to the citizen. For generations, income tax has been treated as a government prerogative, immune from the protections that guard every other form of private property. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause was written to prevent precisely this kind of imbalance: it requires that when the government takes, it must also give, through just compensation. To apply this principle to taxation is not to dismantle the state’s ability to fund itself, but to transform taxation into a covenant of accountability. Every dollar taken from the labor of citizens carries with it an obligation: to account for it, to trace it, to justify it, and to return its value in the form of clarity. Not reimbursement, but illumination. Not secrecy, but sunlight.
Our latest proposal, “Taxation Oversight and Reform for Efficiency” (T.O.R.E.), is both a reflection of our think tank’s mission (and name) and a policy framework we urge the President to adopt. It advances a citizen-driven model of accountability where every tax dollar taken must be justified, traced, and reported back to the people, ensuring transparency is not optional but constitutional in spirit. Coupled with the Clean Slate Doctrine, this proposal would reset the relationship between government and taxpayer, clearing away the entrenched inefficiencies that have long protected waste and abuse. Together, they offer a path toward permanent reform—one rooted not in politics, but in restoring trust and efficiency to the core of government itself.
RELATED ARTICLE: The Clean Slate Doctrine: Reclaiming the American Economy – Tore Says
Every paycheck, Americans send their earnings into a government black box, with no clear picture of where their dollars go. The T.O.R.E. proposal—Taxation Oversight and Reform for Efficiency—demands a constitutional reset, building on the Clean Slate Doctrine’s call for systemic accountability. Income tax, long an unchecked government power, must face the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which guards private property from arbitrary seizure. Reframing taxation as a taking doesn’t end it; it transforms it into a covenant of accountability. Every dollar taken from a citizen’s labor demands a return: not cash, but sunlight through total transparency—every cent traced, justified, and reported back to the people.
No matter a citizen’s political affiliation, ideology, or background, there is one truth that binds us all: money earned through labor belongs first to the citizen. Whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or progressive, libertarian or independent, every American feels the same weight on payday when the government claims a portion of what they have worked for. It is not a partisan grievance but a universal experience—the subtraction of hard-earned income without the clarity of where it goes or how it is used. That is why taxation is the perfect fulcrum for real reform. It cuts across divisions. It speaks to fairness, accountability, and trust.
By reframing taxation under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, T.O.R.E. offers the ultimate solution, not a partisan platform. The principle is simple: if the government takes, it must also prove. If it demands sacrifice, it must show reciprocity. That reciprocity is not measured in refunds or political promises, but in constitutional transparency. Every dollar collected must be traceable, every program accountable, every expenditure visible. This is not a left-wing idea or a right-wing idea—it is an American idea, grounded in the founding recognition that property is a shield against arbitrary power.
When the government respects this principle, it strengthens itself, not weakens. Transparency restores legitimacy. Accountability builds trust. Citizens do not resist contributing to a common good when they know, with certainty, that their contribution is used wisely and openly. What they reject is being treated as mere sources of revenue, denied the very rights the Constitution promises to protect. Recasting taxation as a taking transforms that dynamic. It is the clean slate America needs: one where the relationship between citizen and state is reset, not through politics, but through principle.
The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause
The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause states plainly that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Historically, this principle has been applied to land seized through eminent domain or to assets absorbed by regulatory action. The Clause embodies a balance: government may act in the public interest, but it cannot do so by stripping individuals of their property without providing an equivalent in return. It is a check against unchecked power, rooted in the recognition that property is not the government’s to seize, but the citizen’s to surrender only under terms of fairness.
In essence, the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause ensures that private property—whether land or earnings—cannot be seized without “just compensation.” While courts have historically exempted taxation from this rule, treating it as a civic duty, this distinction is not set in stone.
Income tax directly takes the fruits of one’s labor, making it a prime candidate for reinterpretation.
When government claims the first cut of a worker’s earnings, it is not just collecting revenue—it is seizing the very product of human effort, and that demands constitutional scrutiny. ~ Terpsehore Maras
Taxation, by contrast, has been cordoned off by the courts as if it exists in a different legal universe. The doctrine insists that because taxes fund government itself, they are not “takings” but obligations inherent in citizenship. Yet at the practical level, what is an income tax if not a direct appropriation of the fruits of one’s labor? The distinction is not material—it is interpretive. Interpretation can evolve, just as it has in the expansion of takings doctrine to encompass regulatory overreach and intangible assets.
By bringing taxation under the umbrella of the Takings Clause, we would not destroy the power to tax. We would discipline it. Just compensation would not mean returning the money dollar for dollar, but ensuring that the value taken is justified, documented, and delivered back to the people in the only form that makes taxation legitimate: transparency. Citizens would no longer be blind contributors to a vast, unaccountable treasury. They would be informed stakeholders in a constitutional compact, guaranteed not only the right to earn, but the right to see.
This is not a fantasy. It is a kind of constitutional long game: flipping the default assumption from “government earns the right to seize” to “government must earn that right, every time, through accountability.” We don’t eliminate taxes; we transform them into a pact of transparency. This transformation finds resonance in the Clean Slate Doctrine—a call for resetting our collective financial future in a moment when every dollar, every transfer, and every tax obligation is tracked, verified, and enforced instantly through systems like the Fedwire’s shift to ISO 20022 and AI-driven enforcement (aACS). That technological infrastructure, designed to streamline, holds the potential to either digitize oppression or underpin a new era of sovereign clarity.
The juxtaposition is stark: does the government use real-time tracking to punish citizens for past debts, or does it utilize that system to cleanse the slate and begin anew? The answer to that shapes whether automation becomes a digital shackle—or a scaffold toward transparency. By invoking the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, we demand that what the government takes must be clear, justifiable, and delivered visibly—and that makes waste, secrecy, and misuse constitutionally untenable.
To apply the Takings Clause to taxation is not to insist that the state cut refund checks for every dollar collected. That would be impossible and absurd. Instead, “just compensation” must be understood in the currency of democracy itself: transparency. The government, therefore, owes an explanation. This explanation must be more than perfunctory reports or occasional audits. It must be a living, constitutional obligation. Every appropriation, every program, every expenditure of public money would be tied back to its origin in the earnings of citizens.
Such a framework would require systemic mechanisms. Budgets would no longer be opaque ledgers of insider negotiation, but open records visible to every taxpayer. Real-time spending databases would show where money flows and how it is used. Independent citizen oversight boards—armed with audit authority and constitutional standing—would ensure that no appropriation escapes accountability. Annual “taxpayer statements,” delivered as a right, would provide every contributor with a ledger: what was taken, where it went, and what measurable outcomes resulted. The government would be constitutionally compelled to prove that each dollar served a public purpose, or else admit that it failed the standard of just compensation.
In this way, transparency itself becomes the compensation owed for the taking. Citizens are not reimbursed in cash, but in sight, clarity, and enforceable accountability. The government, for its part, retains the ability to tax—but under conditions that transform it from master to steward. And unlike short-lived initiatives or temporary watchdog agencies, this principle, once enshrined in constitutional doctrine, would outlast administrations and political cycles. It would become part of the structure of governance, as permanent and binding as the Takings Clause itself.
Of course, overturning precedent will not be easy. Cases such as Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. (1916) firmly excluded taxation from the scope of the Takings Clause, cementing the doctrine that taxes are obligations of citizenship rather than constitutional takings. Yet precedent is not an immovable stone—it is a living interpretation. Just as the Court once struck down the income tax in Pollock only for the Sixteenth Amendment to rewrite the rules, so too can future shifts occur when law and necessity align. A strategic approach—whether through carefully crafted test cases brought before a taxpayer-friendly Court, or even through the bold clarity of a constitutional amendment—offers a path forward. History shows us that property rights have steadily expanded when citizens insisted on them; there is no reason taxpayers cannot claim the same evolution for their earnings.
What brings us to the table here is precisely that possibility of transformation. If we can frame taxation not as a monologue but as a dialogue—with the citizen at the heart of accountability—and if we can marry that dialogue to the very structure of our constitutional rights, then we’ve given everyone a reason to lean in: the taxpayer, the reformer, the law‑maker, and yes, even the court. This is the lever that turns institutional inertia into sustained, structural change.
DOGE IMPERATIVE PLAYER IN THIS
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was created to streamline operations and expose the hidden arteries of waste that run through our system. However, as it stands, DOGE is merely an initiative, contingent upon funding, policy, and political will. Reframing taxation under the Takings Clause would give DOGE a permanent constitutional role: the living instrument of “just compensation.” It would no longer operate as an optional layer of oversight, but as the very framework through which government proves its legitimacy to the taxpayer.
Under this model, DOGE becomes the citizens’ agency as much as the government’s. Its mandate would be constitutionally defined: to audit, to report, to trace, to publish. Every dollar taken in taxes would pass through DOGE’s prism of transparency before it could be spent. Its reports would not be advisory—they would be constitutional disclosures, enforceable by the same courts that currently decide eminent domain cases. This would mean that wasteful spending, hidden budgets, or untraceable expenditures could be challenged not as political controversies, but as violations of the Fifth Amendment.
The brilliance of embedding DOGE into the Takings Clause is that it shifts the debate from temporary politics to an enduring principle. Instead of watchdogs that come and go, the watchdog becomes law. Instead of temporary efficiencies, we gain permanent accountability. Just as eminent domain requires due process before land can be seized, so too would taxation require visible proof before citizens’ labor can be spent. In this way, DOGE would cease to be a fleeting acronym and become the lasting covenant between government and the governed.
Why the T.O.R.E. proposal is key
What I am proposing is not a revolution, but a recalibration. Courts have long insisted that taxation sits outside the reach of the Takings Clause, yet history shows that such exclusions are not immutable. In Pollock, income tax was struck down as unconstitutional—until the Sixteenth Amendment rewrote the rule. In Brushaber, the Court reinforced that taxation was not a taking in the eminent-domain sense, but that ruling was a matter of interpretation, not inevitability. Doctrine evolves when reasoned pressure demands it. The Clean Slate Doctrine proves this truth: systems can reset, and law can adapt. In India, once a resolution plan is approved under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, all prior claims are wiped away, granting a genuine fresh start. That is not speculation—it is precedent. Suppose courts can extinguish debts and obligations in one sphere. Why should taxpayers be denied the exact reset, the same visibility, the same chance to begin again under rules of clarity?
Currently, technology provides us with that tool. The move to ISO 20022 and AI-enabled enforcement means that every penny is already traceable. What stands between surveillance for control and surveillance for accountability isn’t the tech—it’s the legal principle we attach to it.
To imagine this recalibration is to imagine a country where the taxpayer no longer stands outside the locked gates of government, guessing what happens inside. Instead, every contribution becomes part of a constitutional covenant: if the government takes, it must also reveal. The veil of secrecy that has long cloaked budgets and hidden expenditures would be torn away, replaced with ledgers visible to all. Waste would not simply be poor management—it would be unconstitutional. Hidden spending would not merely be scandal—it would be a violation of the people’s rights.
In such a system, DOGE would be more than an agency. It would be the citizen’s mirror held up to the state, ensuring that every dollar extracted from labor is traced, justified, and explained. The act of paying taxes would no longer feel like surrender to a faceless authority but like participation in a binding agreement where accountability is guaranteed. The citizen, for the first time, would stand on equal footing with the state—not begging for transparency, but possessing it as a right.
What is “Just compensation”?
“Just compensation” in the context of taxation does not mean the government hands citizens their money back—it means citizens are compensated with transparency, clarity, and demonstrable benefit. When the government takes property through eminent domain, it must demonstrate that the taking serves a legitimate public purpose and provide fair compensation in return. The same principle must apply to taxation. Just compensation for income tax is the democratic right to know, in detail, how the money you surrender serves the public good.
It forces the government to answer three questions with every expenditure: What do I get for the money you take? Do I want that? Does it benefit me and my community? Take a controversial example: if Ohio taxpayers see millions of their dollars directed to foreign aid for the state of Israel, they deserve more than a vague justification. They deserve to know how that spending compensates Ohio residents, whether it secures their safety, strengthens their economy, or supports their public services. If no clear compensation can be demonstrated, then the expenditure fails the constitutional test. Transparency, in this sense, is not symbolic—it is the very mechanism by which legitimacy is measured, and without it, taxation becomes nothing more than compelled confiscation.
That is how real resets occur, not through rhetoric about cutting waste or promises of temporary reforms, but by embedding transparency into the very logic of the Constitution. This is the fresh start that the Clean Slate Doctrine gestures toward. It is not fantasy. It is the next evolution of democracy itself—where government does not merely take, but must forever account, and where the people, finally, can see.
This reframing doesn’t erect barriers; it opens a path toward trust. The concept of “just compensation” for transparency invites bipartisan participation. The government is no longer an opaque monolith, but a convening of explanations—critics who fear litigation and paralysis—fine. Let transparency be the cure. Litigious, yes—but accountability itself is a constitutional good. And yes, policymakers will balk—but here’s the optics: taxpayers, transformed into stakeholders, will support reforms that guarantee sight, not sightlessness.
In the end, codifying transparency as “just compensation” not only affirms rights but also changes the nature of government. It is written into the Constitution that citizens have the right to know. Through public ledgers, annual citizen accounts, real-time traceability, institutional audits, and mandatory disclosures, “spend wisely or explain clearly” becomes a binding precept, not a policy. Waste becomes a violation. Hidden spending becomes unconstitutional.
Occam’s Razor teaches us that the simplest explanation, or the solution requiring the fewest assumptions, is often the most accurate. When applied to taxation and constitutional reform, this principle favors clarity over complexity. Instead of inventing new bureaucracies or layering endless regulations to chase accountability, the most effective path is to recognize taxation for what it truly is—a taking of property—and apply the existing Fifth Amendment framework to it. This requires no elaborate legal gymnastics, only the acknowledgment that the simplest reading of fairness demands transparency as just compensation. By cutting through centuries of interpretive detours and doctrinal exclusions, Occam’s Razor guides us back to the core: government takes, therefore it must account.
That is how you bring everyone to the table: not by promising chaos, but by offering clarity, not by dismantling systems, but by infusing them with accountability. In that square of daylight—where taxes are no longer blind, and government is no longer faceless—a democratic republic isn’t just preserved, it’s reinforced.
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