Talk:Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.

Much needed overhaul of this article by a student of Constitutional Law
I am a third year law student with a case currently on appeal in the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th District in which I argue, among several other things, that many of the amendments to the Constitution after the first ten amendments (including Amendment 16) are unconstitutional due to a misuse and abuse of the amendment process. The gist of the argument is that the Constitution is a contract between the People and the Government and that the amendment process was never meant as a tool to change essential terms of the contract and throw a wrench into the well-oiled, well-thought out balancing of powers in the Constitution. The amendment process was especially never meant as a veto power granted to the legislative branch to overrule the decisions of the judicial branch and undermine the power of the Supreme Court. In fact, the Framers most likely intended the opposite of this so that any result of the amendment process, which by any definition is necessarily a law under the Constitution of the United States, must come under review for constitutionality by the judicial branch and by the Supreme Court of the United States in particular. Otherwise what is to stop legislators from removing essential terms of the Constitutional contract, such as specific restrictions placed on state and federal legislators in their power to tax citizens (e.g., Amendment 16 removes an important restriction placed on federal legislators alone that all direct taxes by the federal government must be apportioned - a restriction that was purposely not placed on state legislators when the terms of the Constitutional contract were originally agreed upon and a restriction that was deliberately shielded from being modified or removed in Article V of the Constitution) or why not even remove the entire judicial branch of the government altogether? Are the reasoning and logic of voters who are not charged with guarding the Constitution and who cannot possibly possess all the relevant facts of an issue supposed to keep legislators in check? I don't think so. Reason and logic (and access to all of the relevant facts of an issue) are tools of the judicial branch that are to be used in its charge to protect the Constitution. In fact reason, logic, relevant facts, and the charge of being the final say on the Constitution are really all the judicial branch has by way of power (the legislative branch is backed by the power of money and the executive branch is backed by the power of the police and the military). Nevertheless, I believe reason, logic, and facts will prevail over all else in the end when the Supreme Court eventually strikes down Amendment 16 as unconstitutional, as it has the complete power to do and as it should do because Amendment 16 is repugnant to the terms of Constitutional contract as originally stipulated to by the Framers. Most of the filings supporting these arguments are available at http://rights4families.wordpress.com

My personal views on the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions in Pollock
I recently read Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust for the first time. I found the majority opinion by Justice Fuller to be one of the best argued, best reasoned opinions I have ever read. Unfortunately, this Wikipedia article in its original form did not reflect this at all. I learned so much about the taxing schemes in the Constitution from his writing -- like the fact that the Constitution (as written and fully intended by the Framers before the 16th Amendment) had required only the federal government to levy direct taxes in accordance to the rules of apportionment, not the state governments. In addition, only the federal government was required to levy indirect taxes in accordance to the rules of uniformity. The state governments had neither of these restrictions on taxation. However, the state governments were instead banned from levying most duties on imports (indirect taxes) as this power was left exclusively for the federal government with few narrowly defined exceptions. This was a tough power for the states to give up to the federal government because levying duties on imports is something they had always done prior to adopting the Constitution. The intent of the Framers was to strike a compromise and achieve a natural balance of taxing power where direct taxation (e.g., capitation taxes and income taxes) was a power the state governments possessed to a greater extent than the federal government, and indirect taxation (e.g., duties, excises, imposts) was a power the federal government possessed to a greater extent than the state governments. The unfortunate effect of the 16th Amendment was that the federal government was given far too much power to impose unrestricted, unapportioned direct taxes on citizens thereby encroaching on the states' territory with regard to direct taxation so that now, a hundred years after Amendment 16, a vast majority of the federal government's revenue is from unrestricted direct taxation. Not good, imho! Not to mention one of the biggest fears of the Framers of the Constitution seems to have come to pass since they believed "the power to tax is the power to destroy" and were very particular about this power being carefully balanced and restricted for both the federal and the state governments. By the way, I did not read any of information about the history of taxation in a text book or in a law book. All this information was from Fuller's well-cited and documented opinion for this case.

In contrast to the majority opinion, I found the dissenting opinions to be a hot mess of irrelevant case listings, unsubstantiated facts or opinions, and untestable hypotheses. Apparently, the dissenters were following a (seemingly favored and accepted?) practice among some editors here at Wikipedia that says that the information with the greatest number of citations from respectable sources is to be considered the most important, most factual, and most relevant information presented. This method was accepted for a time in the American justice system as a way for judges unfamiliar with the scientific evidence being presented in their courtroom to determine what evidence would be allowed during trial [it is actually called the Frye general acceptance test, named after the case expounding this method - Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923)]. However, this method has since been superseded in the federal court system and most state systems by the Daubert scientific validity test [from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993)], where a majority opinion by experts is considered only one of many factors that may be used in determining the quality of scientific evidence, some other factors being the testability of the evidence and whether the evidence has been subjected to peer review. Under Daubert, one peer reviewed paper expounding a testable opinion or fact would be far more acceptable than an untestable opinion supported by 300 experts in textbooks and magazine articles. I only mention this because I anticipate I may meet some resistance from some Wikipedia editors in trying to improve this article, and I only hope the Wikipedia editors on appeal will follow acceptable modern methods of presenting reliable information about a subject and not automatically favor the practice of going out and listing as many irrelevant citations from reputable journals as possible to make the article look good on paper.

Arguing about how to argue
I can tell the dissenters in this case were relying mostly on the above method of argument (i.e., whoever has the most citations wins regardless of relevancy) and were banking on non-lawyers reading the dissenting opinions and being impressed with the seemingly long lists of cases and professional opinions cited purportedly in favor of the dissenters' arguments. It frustrated me seeing this in contrast with Fuller's well argued opinion. Fuller cited fewer cases than the dissenters, but his citations were highly relevant so that he focused on reasoning and quality of argument rather than quantity of citations, as a Supreme Court justice should. In fact it can be said that the biggest issue in this case was not that "income taxes were considered direct taxes", which was a well-established fact by 1894 anyway and really not the revolutionary holding that the dissenters made it out to be. The biggest issue was in the way the dissenters were presenting their arguments. Fuller was following standard Supreme Court protocol for making rulings deciding Constitutional issues: First look to see what other cases had similar facts to the case in question and see what justices have decided before (i.e., invoking the legal principle of stare decises), and if stare decisis proves insufficient because the facts do not match up well or because the reasoning used by the justices is flawed, look to the words of the Constitution and especially what the Framers' intentions were in writing the part of the Constitution in question. The dissenters rejected this method entirely (probably because it proved to be fatal to their arguments) and instead chose to stay stuck in the stare decises mode of arguing despite there not being a single case cited (neither in centuries of cases in Great Britain nor a hundred years' worth of cases since the adoption of the Constitution) that said that income taxes were to be considered anything other than direct taxes. In answer to Fuller's well cited, well reasoned arguments that the Framers of the Constitution fully intended the federal government to focus only on specific kinds of indirect taxes like excises, duties, and imports and stay out of the business of levying income taxes altogether, the dissenters basically replied: "This is not true because we have a laundry list of irrelevant cases that have nothing to do with our arguments but we nevertheless say they prove the federal government can tax incomes without any restrictions." This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. By the end of his opinion on the re-hearing of the case, Fuller seemed weary of the unreasonable methods of arguing employed by his dissenters and their persistence in throwing up laundry lists of irrelevant cases that he was repeatedly forced to address. Fuller writes:

Differences have often occurred in this court -- differences exist now -- but there has never been a time in its history when there has been a difference of opinion as to its duty to announce its deliberate conclusions unaffected by considerations not pertaining to the case in hand.

Apparently, Fuller had never before seen an instance where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was forced to argue so much about how to argue.

Justice Field and Justice Fuller's arguments establishing income taxes are direct taxes
The unprofessional method of arguing by the dissenters apparently frustrated concurring justice Stephen J. Field as well. He seemed miffed that he had to go out and play the dissenters' game of listing citations ad nauseam to establish an already well-established fact for something that was really only a side issue in the case anyway and possibly meant to be a distraction by the dissenters. At least Field did his job very well since unlike the dissenters, Field's citations were relevant to the argument he was charged with supporting, which is that real estate values had always included real estate incomes (e.g., rents, etc) when being taxed and had always been considered direct taxes, both in Great Britain and in the US [mostly with state governments since the Constitution purposely made income taxes (direct taxes) inconvenient for the federal government], at least up until the United States Congress, for the first time in documented history, levied unapportioned income taxes in 1861 to support Civil War efforts. Justice Field was so miffed he didn't even concede to the "let's agree to disagree" dictum and pretty much openly accused the dissenters of politicking and game playing. Field writes:

"As stated, the rents and income of real property are included in the designation of direct taxes as part of the real property. Such has been the law in England for centuries, and in this country from the early settlement of the colonies, and it is strange that any member of the legal profession should, at this day, question a doctrine which has always been thus accepted by common law lawyers. It is so declared in approved treatises upon real property and in accepted authorities on particular branches of real estate law, and has been so announced in decisions in the English courts and our own courts without number…

''One may have the reports of the English courts examined for several centuries without finding a single decision or even a dictum of their judges in conflict with them. And what answer do we receive to these adjudications? Those rejecting them furnish no proof that the framers of the Constitution did not follow them, as the great body of the people of the country then did. An incident which occurred in this court and room twenty years ago may have become a precedent. To a powerful argument then being made by a distinguished counsel on a public question, one of the judges exclaimed that there was a conclusive answer to his position, and that was that the court was of a different opinion. Those who decline to recognize the adjudications cited may likewise consider that they have a conclusive answer to them in the fact that they also are of a different opinion. I do not think so. The law as expounded for centuries cannot be set aside or disregarded because some of the judges are now of a different opinion from those who, a century ago, followed it in framing our Constitution. Hamilton, speaking on the subject, asks: "What, in fact, is property but a fiction without the beneficial use of it?" And adds: "In many cases, indeed, the income or annuity is the property itself." 3 Hamilton's Works, Putnam's ed. 34."''

Fuller also did his part in supporting the argument that income taxes were always considered direct taxes by dispelling erroneous claims by dissenters that during arguments for Hylton v. United States, 3 Dall. 171 (1796) Alexander Hamilton had claimed that a tax on personal property (carriages) was both an income tax and an excise (indirect) tax, proving that Alexander Hamilton considered income taxes as indirect taxes. In fact, the important point of the final ruling by the Supreme Court in the Hylton case was that the carriage tax was considered a usage tax (an excise tax) on carriages and specifically not an income tax. Alexander Hamilton agreed with this ruling mostly because he relied on what the laws of Great Britain had defined a similar carriage tax to be -- an excise tax. Fuller pointed out that by the same token (i.e., by looking to the laws of Great Britain for definitions), an income tax is a direct tax. Fuller writes (of Hamilton's arguments in the Hylton case):

"Mr. Hamilton also argued: 'If the meaning of the word 'excise' is to be sought in a British statute, it will be found to include the duty on carriages, which is there considered as an 'excise.' . . . Where so important a distinction in the Constitution is to be realized, it is fair to seek the meaning of terms in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived.' If the question had related to an income tax, the reference would have been fatal, as such taxes have been always classed by the law of Great Britain as direct taxes."

Fuller added more references to the fact that income taxes had always been considered direct taxes in England in his opinion in the re-hearing as follows:

"In England, we do not understand that an income tax has ever been regarded as other than a direct tax. In Dowell's History of Taxation and Taxes in England, admitted to be the leading authority, the evolution of taxation in that country is given, and an income tax is invariably classified as a direct tax. 3 Dowell (1884) 103, 126. The author refers to the grant of a fifteenth and tenth and a graduated income tax in 1435, and to many subsequent comparatively ancient statutes as income tax laws. 1 Dowell, 121. I t is objected that the taxes imposed by these acts were not, scientifically speaking, income taxes at all, and that, although there was a partial income tax in 1758, there was no general income tax until Pitt's of 1799. Nevertheless, the income taxes levied by these modern acts, Pitt's, Addington's, Petty's, Peel's, and by existing laws are all classified as direct taxes; and, so far as the income tax we are considering is concerned, that view is concurred in by the cyolopaedists, the lexicographers, and the political economists, and generally by the classification of European governments wherever an income tax obtains."

How Justice Fuller and the majority viewed taxes on employment income
Although the categorization of income taxes as direct or indirect proved to be irrelevant when Fuller ruled in the re-hearing that the Income Tax Law of 1894 in its current form with so many exemptions was unconstitutional either way (described below), it may be useful to note here what Fuller thought about a specific type of income tax -- taxes on employment income -- since in modern times (and as a result of the passage of the 16th Amendment) this is now an inescapable, involuntary tax for all U.S. citizens (which is the very definition of what the Framers thought a tax should not be) and now makes up a vast majority of federal revenues. At times Fuller implied that income taxes on employment are to be considered direct taxes...

At the time the Constitution was framed and adopted, under the systems of direct taxation of many of the States, taxes were laid on incomes from professions, business, or employments, as well as from "offices and places of profit...

and later... ''They were, of course, familiar with the modes of taxation pursued in the several States. From the report of Oliver Wolcott, when Secretary of the Treasury, on direct taxes, to the House of Representatives, December 14, 1796, his most important state paper, (Am.State Papers, 1 Finance 431) and the various state laws then existing, it appears that, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, nearly all the States imposed a poll tax, taxes on land, on cattle of all kinds, and various kinds of personal property, and that, in addition, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia, and South Carolina assessed their citizens upon their profits from professions, trades, and employments.''

while other times Fuller indicated that employment income taxes might be considered excise taxes and therefore indirect taxes, as when Fuller cited the opinion of the Court by Justice Swayne in Springer v. United States, 102 U. S. 586, 102 U. S. 602 (1881)...

''The opinion thus concludes: "Our conclusions are that direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that instrument, and taxes on real estate, and that the tax of which the plaintiff in error complains is within the category of an excise or duty." While this language is broad enough to cover the interest as well as the professional earnings, the case would have been more significant as a precedent if the distinction had been brought out in the report and commented on in arriving at judgment, for a tax on professional receipts might be treated as an excise or duty, and therefore indirect, when a tax on the income of personalty might be held to be direct.''

In the end the Court never made a ruling on this issue. This may have been partly because the specific issue of employment income was not presented in the case before the Court (and the Court frowns on making rulings on hypothetical cases and facts) or partly because, at the time, employment income taxes made up such a small fraction of total income tax revenue relative to taxes on property rents, stock dividends, and bond interest, which were the main subject of the ruling. However, the Court lists as its main reason for not making a decision is that there were sufficient examples of employment income taxes being considered direct taxes in some cases and indirect taxes in others to bar a definitive ruling, so the Court left the issue open for future debate. Fuller writes:

We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such.

Justice White in later cases cited the Court's decision not to make a decision as evidence that the Court considered all income taxes on employment as indirect excise taxes, though this was an erroneous conclusion.

The most important issues according to Justice Fuller
Fuller rejected the dissenting argument by Justice White that income taxes, which are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, do not fall into either category of direct taxes or indirect taxes and that the federal government was therefore free to tax incomes without any restrictions (neither the restriction of uniformity for indirect taxes nor the restriction of apportionment for direct taxes). In addition to extensive arguments that there was no evidence for this, neither in the intentions of the Framers found in the Federalist Papers during the writing of the Constitution nor in the text of the Constitution itself, Fuller noted White had not given any supporting arguments or examples to support this claim, despite governments continuously looking for new ways to raise revenue. Fuller writes:

"And although there have been from time to time intimations that there might be some tax which was not a direct tax nor included under the words "duties, imposts and excises," such a tax, for more than one hundred years of national existence, has as yet remained undiscovered, notwithstanding the stress of particular circumstances has invited thorough investigation into sources of revenue."

The majority opinion therefore agreed that there are only two types of taxes allowed in the Constitution, direct taxes and indirect taxes (specifically -- duties, excises, and imposts), and that income taxes fell under the category of direct taxes. As it turns out (as described below), only the first part of this decision was of real consequence since it was ruled in the rehearing that the act in question was unconstitutional regardless of whether income taxes were categorized as direct taxes or indirect taxes. The Court argued that the intended result of the taxing restrictions placed on the federal government by the Framers of the Constitution for both direct and indirect taxes was to put up barriers discouraging the federal government from levying any kind of income tax and to encourage the federal government to stick with duties, excises (including consumption taxes) and imposts for its revenues.

In answer to arguments by dissenters that income taxes had been levied by the federal government over thirty years before in 1861 without complaint, the Court was quick to point out that this was the first time since the Constitution was ratified that income taxes had been levied by the federal government and only the fourth time that direct taxes (i.e., something other than duties, excises, and imposts) had been levied. In all four instances the direct taxes were levied by the federal government in an emergency situation to raise revenue quickly for war efforts (the tax in 1861 being levied to raise money for the Civil War), and in all four instances a time limit was placed on the tax making it clear that it was only a temporary tax that was to end when the war ended. By contrast the Income Tax Act of 1894 marked the first time since the ratification of the Constitution that a direct tax (including an income tax) was attempted by the federal government during peace time. This is what brought on the current complaint and what concerned the Court the most since it appeared the federal government had gotten a taste of how easy it was to raise revenue quickly through unconstitutional income taxes under a special "emergency situation" in 1861, and the Court wanted to prevent the federal government from becoming addicted to a cash cow of revenue that the federal government was purposely restricted from tapping into because of the danger of violating fundamental financial rights of citizens and of the state governments.

Fuller succinctly summarized what he considered the most important preliminary findings and conclusions of the Court prior to making its final decisions on key issues of the case, rounding off his list with probably his most important finding, which is that the Framers of the Constitution intended for the federal government to stay out of the business of taxing incomes except as a last resort in emergency situations (such as war), and the Framers purposely made it impracticable for the federal government to levy income taxes as a main source of revenue during peace time. Fuller writes:

''From the foregoing, it is apparent: 1. That the distinction between direct and indirect taxation was well understood by the framers of the Constitution and those who adopted it. 2. That, under the state systems of taxation, all taxes on real estate or personal property or the rents or income thereof were regarded as direct taxes. 3. That the rules of apportionment and of uniformity were adopted in view of that distinction and those systems. 4. That whether the tax on carriages was direct or indirect was disputed, but the tax was sustained as a tax on the use and an excise. 5. That the original expectation was that the power of direct taxation would be exercised only in extraordinary exigencies, and down to August 1894, this expectation has been realized. The act of that date was passed in a time of profound peace, and if we assume that no special exigency called for unusual legislation, and that resort to this mode of taxation is to become an ordinary and usual means of supply, that fact furnishes an additional reason for circumspection and care in disposing of the case." ''

What was decided in the re-hearing of the case: The majority now agrees that exemptions break the rules of uniformity
The original ruling was very narrow in that it only addressed income taxes on real property and did not address income taxes on personal property like stocks and bonds. Some issues, such as whether the entire act would be deemed unconstitutional, remained undecided by an equally divided court. Also, because the ruling specifically treated income taxes as direct taxes, the Court did not address the issue of whether the income taxes in the Act, if they had been deemed indirect taxes, would have met the Constitutional requirement of uniformity. This is despite Justice Field giving an extensive argument in his concurring opinion that exemptions to indirect taxes render these taxes non-uniform and in violation of the Constitution (the majority finally adopted this view on the rehearing as described below). The appellants requested a rehearing to address some unaddressed issues from the original hearing, namely (as written in the opening statements of the opinion for the rehearing):

"(1) Whether the void provisions invalidate the whole act."

"(2) Whether, as to the income from personal property as such, the act is unconstitutional as laying direct taxes."

"(3) Whether any part of the tax, if not considered as a direct tax, is invalid for want of uniformity."

Upon re-hearing the case the court ruled the entire act was invalidated (issue 1) because the parts of the law that had been invalidated removed such a large part of the total revenues sought by Congress and had been so intertwined with the rest of the Act that what was left could not accurately reflect the original intent of Congress. The Court also ruled that personal property was like real property and the income taxes on both were considered direct taxes (issue 2). As for the third issue, the Supreme Court usually restricts itself from answering hypothetical questions because a full accounting of all the relevant facts of a real case, not a hypothetical, is needed to make a reasonably informed decision. However, the Court found enough ground to venture carefully into a hypothetical in this case to answer the third question of whether the Income Tax Law of 1894 would, hypothetically, violate the Constitutional requirement for uniformity if income taxes were considered indirect taxes. Fuller writes:

''Figures drawn from the census are given showing that enormous assets of mutual insurance companies, of building associations, of mutual savings banks, large productive property of ecclesiastical organizations are exempted, and it is claimed that the exemptions reach so many hundred millions that the rate of taxation would perhaps have been reduced one-half if they had not been made. We are not dealing with the act from that point of view; but, assuming the data to be substantially reliable, if the sum desired to be raised had been apportioned, it may be doubted whether any State which paid its quota and collected the amount by its own methods would, or could under its constitution, have allowed a large part of the property alluded to to escape taxation.''

Fuller "doubted" that the states who had restrictions written in their own constitutions that income taxes had to be levied according to the rules of uniformity could have been able to sustain a tax that had so many exemptions (and he even doubted that states without such restrictions would pass such a tax even if they could -- probably for political reasons). The strong implication is that an income tax with exemptions is not uniform, and if the exemptions reach the levels of exemptions found in the Income Tax Act of 1894, the law would be struck down as a violation of Constitution in its requirement that indirect federal taxes be levied with uniformity. The tentative answer to the third issue is therefore, yes, if the federal income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 were categorized as indirect taxes, the Act would still be struck down because so many exemption would put the law in violation of the requirement that federal indirect taxes be levied uniformly.

Although it was not counted as a majority opinion, Justice Field's concurring opinion in the original ruling had the most extensive discussion about the requirement of uniformity for indirect taxes, a subject which he considered of equal importance as the requirement for apportionment on direct taxes. While it was generally accepted that uniformity included the requirement that the tax had to be applied equally in all the states, Field expanded the definition of uniformity to mean there were no exemptions or special treatments for certain classes of people, including exemptions for poverty. Field writes:

''Cooley, in his treatise on Taxation (2d ed. 215), justly observes that: "It is difficult to conceive of a justifiable exemption law which should select single individuals or corporations, or single articles of property, and, taking them out of the class to which they belong, make them the subject of capricious legislative favor. Such favoritism could make no pretence to equality; it would lack the semblance of legitimate tax legislation." The income tax law under consideration is marked by discriminating features which affect the whole law. It discriminates between those who receive an income of four thousand dollars and those who do not. It thus vitiates, in my judgment, by this arbitrary discrimination, the whole legislation.''

These arguments were never mentioned by Justice White in his subsequent opinions in which he concluded that only geographic uniformity was required for indirect taxes without consideration for the number or types of exemptions in the tax. The first such case was Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41 (1900) and because the ruling that exemptions violated the rules of uniformity was officially a majority opinion in Pollock, I have listed Knowlton v. Moore as as overruling Pollock, in part.

One final point is that there was a separate holding, upheld in the re-hearing, concerning taxes on interest income from government bonds that has nothing to do with categorizing taxes as direct or indirect. The Income Tax of 1894 allowed the federal government to levy a tax on interest income from state bonds. It was pretty well settled in the Court's earlier arguments that taxes on income from any property (real or personal, including bonds) have always been considered for centuries as a tax on the underlying property itself and that taxes on incomes from state bonds is no different -- these taxes would be viewed as a tax on the state bond itself. From here it was straightforward for the Court to use the principle of stare decises to rule that federal taxes on incomes from state bonds (i.e., taxes on state bonds) violate the Constitution because earlier case law and arguments having to do with state and federal sovereignty had established that state and local government bonds cannot be taxed by the federal government (and likewise federal government bonds cannot be taxed by state governments). Apparently these arguments were overruled in a 1988 Supreme Court decision for reasons I have yet to investigate and include in the discussion here.

Changes to the article
The most critical misstatement I came across in the article and here in the talk section (and it is even included to some extent on the case summary template on the side of the article) is as follows:

"The Court held that although generally income taxes are indirect taxes (excises) authorized by the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, taxes on interest, dividends and rents in the 1894 Act had a profound effect on the underlying assets. The Court ruled that the tax on dividends, interest and rent should be viewed as a direct tax, as they fell on the property itself, rather than as an indirect tax."

There are several problems with this statement. First, the Court ruled the exact opposite -- that income taxes have always been thought of as direct taxes, as Justice Field writes and as Fuller also writes in several places for both the original opinion and the opinion on the re-hearing. Second, direct taxes (not just indirect taxes) are authorized by the United States Constitution, though the statement implies they are not, and the important point is not that these taxes are authorized anyway, but that restrictions are placed on the federal government for levying both types of taxes. Third, no distinction is made between federal income taxes and state income taxes even though this distinction lies at the very heart of the issue in this case (the categorization of income taxes as direct or indirect is only important for the federal government and makes no difference for the states as there are no restrictions on the state governments with regard to either type of tax). Fourth (and perhaps the most critical), the court ruled in the re-hearing that even if the federal income taxes in this act were to be categorized as indirect taxes, they would most likely be ruled unconstitutional because there are so many exemptions granted to certain businesses and churches that the federal income taxes as applied in this act, when including all the exemptions, would likely not pass the requirement of "uniformity" placed on the federal government for indirect taxes.

I have rewritten the problematic sentence above to address all of the listed issues as follows:

The Court ruled that all federal taxes under the Constitution fall into one of two categories: Direct taxes that are to be apportioned according to Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 or indirect taxes that are to be levied uniformly according to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. The Income Tax Act of 1894 violated both of these provisions because direct taxes were not apportioned and indirect taxes were not applied uniformly.

The method I relied on in improving the rest of the article is roughly based on the case briefing method where important facts relevant to the case are listed out (usually as outlined by the writer of the majority opinion), important issues are delineated and listed in the form of a single sentenced yes or no questions, yes or no answers (i.e., the holding) for each issue is given, then arguments in support of or in dissent of the ruling are given. Concurring opinions agree for the most part with the majority but expand on some points or list out important distinctions and disagreements with either the facts or the reasoning. Dissenting opinions disagree with the majority opinion and usually attack both the facts presented and the reasoning, though I did not observe either of these things being attacked by the dissenters in this case in any significant way, making a bulk of the dissenting opinions irrelevant. However, this is a conclusion that is left up the readers of the Article to decide. Such conclusions only become evident when the above method is employed in presenting the facts, issues, and arguments of a case, where the dissenting arguments are presented alongside the majority arguments for easy comparison for each issue. I understand a case brief is not a Wikipedia article and the article has to be written more in lay terms. The brief outline is simply a good starting point for understanding the important aspects of the case and in outlining the article for presentation.

What was removed
The section entitled "Before Pollock" was removed as confusing and irrelevant in light of the fact that it not only mentioned some things that occurred after Pollock, but in selectively mentioned the Revenue Act of 1861 without any context as to how this was significant to the current case.

The section entitled Decision was replaced by a section entitled Facts, issues, and holdings that more accurately delineates the facts, issues, and holdings in the case as outlined in the majority opinions from both the original hearing and the re-hearing. It was decided not to make a major issue of the fact that some of the issues were decided in the re-hearing since the re-hearing did not change any previous rulings, but simply expanded on them and resolved previously unresolved issues in the first hearing. The most significant difference in the new version from the old version of this section is that it is clearer in the new version that the issue of whether income taxes were to be categorized as direct taxes was only one of several important rulings in the case.

The first part of the section entitled Subsequent history was removed as more opinion than fact and somewhat irrelevant (e.g., "the ruling was unpopular" is always a red flag for biased information because it does not answer the question: Unpopular according to whom?) and the subsection entitled "Subsequent court treatments of Pollock and the Sixteenth Amendment" starts this section now and actually replaces the main heading. I have not reviewed this area in depth though I suspect just from a cursory look at Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad that this section will probably need some updating as well, possibly focusing more on the aspect of the Constitution that was not changed by Amendment 16 -- the requirement that indirect federal taxes be uniform.

The significance of the ruling that the Income Tax Act of 1894, at least in its original form with so many exemptions, would be deemed unconstitutional even if income taxes were considered indirect excise taxes becomes evident once it is realized that the 16th Amendment does not remove the restriction that federal indirect taxes be levied uniformly. The 16th Amendment only removes the restriction that federal direct taxes be levied according to apportionment. Therefore, if federal income taxes are to be considered indirect taxes, the hundreds of exemptions and deductions granted in current federal income tax laws, including differing tax rates according to income, may render the entire federal income tax system unconstitutional regardless of the 16th Amendment because such an unequal application of the tax puts the tax in violation of the uniformity requirements in the Constitution. Only state governments are allowed to apply both direct and indirect taxes so unevenly. I believe attempts to overturn this important conclusion -- or render it moot -- were carried out by Justice White when he replaced Justice Fuller (after Fuller's death in 2010) as chief justice of the Supreme Court, but a cursory glance at subsequent rulings by White suggest he may have repeated the same unreasonable, irrelevant arguments during his tenure as chief justice from 2010-2024 as he presented here in his dissenting arguments to this ruling. I am not looking forward to critiquing all those opinions. I am already more weary of White's methods of arguing than even Fuller was just from studying this one case! In fact I am now of the opinion that Justice White is one of only two men in history who together have probably done more damage to our Constitution, to our country, and probably even to the world over the last two centuries than anybody excepting Adolf Hitler, and even Hitler probably learned everything he knew about violating fundamental rights from Jackson and White. President Andrew Jackson could have schooled Hilter on how to attack fundamental personal rights in a Constitution in such a way as to allow a holocaust to take place right under everybody's noses with their complicity -- in Germany it was the Jewish Holocaust, and in the United States it is the current Black Holocaust, as described elsewhere (http://rights4families.wordpress.com). Then there is Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, Jr. (Justice White), whose similar attacks on fundamental financial rights in the Constitution resulted in so much corporate and government corruption that White's rulings probably brought on the Great Depression and continue to be the main source of corporate and government corruption to this day. White could have schooled Hitler on how to dupe citizens (through control of the media and through certain key government actions like the 16th Amendment) into agreeing to fund the violations of their own personal rights on a massive scale. So what is the source of all this hatred and destruction? I suspect the main driving force motivating the actions of all three men -- Jackson, White, and Hitler -- is that they were all three self-loathing closeted gay men who, because they had their most fundamental right to marry the person they loved stripped away from them early and often, turned their anger and resentment toward stripping others of their fundamental rights, as is usually the case when fundamental rights are being violated. While this theory may seem misplaced here, I can think of nothing more relevant (and more helpful) to the understanding of the rulings in this case and of the dissenting opinions in particular. Also, calling these statements homophobic is like calling Eratosthenes' factual reporting of the earth's circumference "flat-earth-aphobic."

Full copy of the old article
Enclosed below is a full copy of the original article before it was edited. H. Nicole Young (talk) 04:41, 29 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Dear H. Nicole Young: Again, this appears to be a massive amount of Original Research on your part. Wikipedia is not the proper place for your personal views and opinions. Famspear (talk) 12:46, 29 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment: First of all, there is no "Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th District"; there is a 9th Circuit, but no 9th District because all of the U.S. District courts are entirely contained within individual states. There is also no court formally titled as a "Federal Court of Appeals". They are each a United States Court of Appeals. Perhaps you have a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit? If so, your theory will be validated simply by winning your case. I assume that you are before the Court of Appeals because you lost in the District Court, meaning that someone with more legal knowledge than yourself has already rejected your position.  bd2412  T 12:56, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Some of the information inserted by H. Nicole Young about the holdings in Pollock is not supported by the source material and is simply incorrect -- as is some of the information she has posted on this talk page. I propose that the article be restored to its status before her edits, and that she obtain consensus here on the talk page before re-introducing the material. Famspear (talk) 17:56, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

PS: Dear H. Nicole Young: The Supreme Court will not "eventually" strike down the Sixteenth Amendment as "unconstitutional". Under our legal and political system, there is no procedure for a court to strike down part of the U.S. Constitution as being "unconstitutional." Indeed, the courts have uniformly ruled that once a proposed amendment is certified by the Executive Branch as having been ratified by the requisite number of states, that's the end of the matter. Indeed, the idea that the Sixteenth Amendment could itself be "unconstitutional" is pseudo-legal nonsense. Your argument, that the courts should strike down the Sixteenth Amendment because, in your view, the Amendment "is repugnant to the terms of Constitutional contract as originally stipulated to by the Framers" is nonsensical. Again, under our legal and political system, there is no requirement that an amendment to the Constitution somehow conform to what you call the "Constitutional contract" as "stipulated to" by the Framers.

This talk page is not the proper place for you to expound on your personal feelings about this sort of thing. Indeed, you have referred to your commentary with phrases such as "My personal views on...." etc. Your commentary above is riddled with what you obviously characterize as your own beliefs. Instead, let's stick to what reliable, previously published third party sources say about the subjects of this and other Wikipedia articles -- and let's summarize accurately what those sources are saying. Famspear (talk) 18:23, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I have reverted the article text accordingly, pending consensus to restore. bd2412  T 19:02, 29 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Another point about the materials by H. Nicole Young, above: Contrary to what she seems to imply, there was no holding by the Court in Pollock that "expanded the definition of uniformity" to mean that the Uniformity Clause of the Constitution effectively prohibits any "exemptions" with respect to the U.S. federal income tax. The state of the law, as interpreted by the courts, is basically as follows: The Uniformity Clause means geographical uniformity. Essentially, that means that the Congress cannot impose the income tax on, say, just people in Montana. Geographical uniformity does not mean that Congress may not provide for certain exemptions from Federal income tax. Indeed, the Internal Revenue Code is replete with many, many sections that exempt certain kinds of income -- and the courts are not going to strike such provisions as "unconstitutional" under the Uniformity Clause. Famspear (talk) 20:02, 29 July 2016 (UTC)


 * No, Ms. Young, the Court in Pollock did not adopt the view, in the rehearing, that the Federal income tax of 1894 violated the Uniformity Clause. The relevant holdings in in Pollock were tied to the apportionment requirement, not to the uniformity requirement. Famspear (talk) 20:02, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The inability of this editor to properly identify the name of the court in the first instance is sufficient to raise my doubts as to everything that follows. bd2412  T 20:05, 29 July 2016 (UTC)


 * PS: Contrary to what Ms. Young had put in her edit to the article, the Court in Knowlton v. Moore did not "overrule" a Pollock decision with respect to the Uniformity Clause -- for the simple reason that there was no such decision to "overrule". The Pollock court did not hold that an income tax that contained "exemptions" would violate the Uniformity Clause (in either the original opinion or the opinion on rehearing). This kind of error is an example of precisely why Wikipedia has a rule prohibiting the inclusion of a Wikipedia editor's Original Research. Famspear (talk) 20:25, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Here is yet another error in the material that Ms. Young inserted in the article. She stated that the Pollock Court "ruled that all taxes under the Constitution necessarily fell into one of two categories, direct or indirect." The error is in the use of the word "ruled."

The parties in Pollock did not litigate the precise issue of whether taxes fell into one of two categories (direct or indirect). Therefore, the Court's statements to that effect in Pollock were what we call obiter dicta, or just dicta. They were statement about the law, but they were not actual rulings or holding by the Court in that particular case. They were correct statements about the law -- but they were not rulings by the Court in that particular case.

The texts of many court opinions contain dicta. Not only that, but courts in subsequent cases often refer to (or even quote from) such dicta without even clearly identifying such items as dicta. The effect of this is that although dicta are usually correct statement about the law, both lawyers and non-lawyers should be especially careful when reading the texts of court opinions. Famspear (talk) 20:38, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Removed enigmatic language
An anonymous user inserted the following into the article:


 * It should be noted that since the Brushaber case decided that taxes on incomes are excise taxes, that the rule of apportionment does not apply, but the rule of uniformity does. Enforcement of the federal income tax is therefore illegal when applied outside of federal jurisdiction.

First, the courts have indeed indicated that income taxes as a general rule are in the category of excises (as opposed to direct taxes). Under the Sixteenth Amendment, the rule of apportionment does not apply to income taxes. It is also correct to say that the rule of uniformity does apply to excises and therefore, presumably, to income taxes as a general proposition. All this is pretty much already covered in the articles on Pollock and Brushaber and the Sixteenth Amendment, in one form or another. It's unclear why this repetitive material was inserted.

The statement that "Enforcement of the federal income tax is therefore illegal when applied outside of federal jurisdiction" is both ambiguous and from a legal standpoint a non sequitur. The main thrust of the Pollock and Brushaber cases had little to do with "federal jurisdiction," and neither case including any ruling about enforcement of the federal income tax being "illegal" when applied "outside of federal jurisdiction." Unverifiable, and original research (incorrect at that) -- removed. Yours, Famspear 02:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Stop claiming that the 16th Amendment is law and that everything else is void. It is not. Congress passes laws. Amendments are not laws. Shocking isn't it. Enjoy being a sheep, you clearly have no idea about what your talking about. Yours, Anonymous — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.77.101 (talk) on May 4, 2011.


 * Dear "Anonymous": Yes, the Sixteenth Amendment is law. And, no one said that "everything else is void." Get a clue: The term "law" has more than one legal meaning. Congress passes statutes -- which are one kind of law. Yes, amendments to the U.S. Constitution are another kind of law. A bit of advice: don't tell other people that they have no idea what they're talking about, especially where it is obvious that you are wrong and they are correct. That is a symptom of arrogance on your part. Leave the teaching of legal concepts to those people who are qualified to teach law. Famspear (talk) 20:46, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Phony "quote" from Brushaber
Dear fellow editors: An anonymous user inserted the following:


 * There are three important cases in more recent times, all pertaining to the 16th Ammendment, which some say was never properly ratified. That point is moot however. In the Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad case, the court said: "The 16th Amendment as correctly interpreted, is limited to indirect taxes and for that reason is constitutional ... "

I have searched the text of the Brushaber decision and I cannot find the "quotation."

The references to Stanton v. Baltic Mining and Eisner v. Macomber that were inserted into the article are simply not on point. I believe that both of these cases are already covered at Tax protester constitutional arguments. The effect of the Pollock holding -- that taxes on income from property were to be required to be apportioned after 1895 -- was negated by the Sixteenth Amendment. Yours, Famspear 18:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Stop claiming that the 16th Amendment is law and that everything else is void. It is not. Congress passes laws. Amendments are not laws. Shocking isn't it. Enjoy being a sheep, you clearly have no idea about what your talking about. Yours, Anonymous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.77.101 (talk) 22:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The "Brushaber" article states the ruling found that income taxes were not in violation of the 5th Amendment "Takings Clause", particularly the phrase regarding the deprivation of property without compensation. The court makes only a brief reference to the "compensation" clause, but makes no argument as to why income tax is not a violation of that clause. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.234.180.26 (talk) 21:19, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Note for possible expansion
This article can be expanded in the future to clearly summarize this case by separating the holdings in the original opinion from those in the rehearing opinion (both rendered in 1895). Especially, we can go into more depth on the separate holding on the interest income from state & municipal bonds, and how that holding has been affected in subsequent court cases. Famspear 17:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * After speding some time reading the wiki article on the Pollock case, and reading the actual decision here: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=157&invol=429#f1 I noticed also that a major aspect of the decision in the Pollock case was with regards to Federal taxes imposed on State governments (in the Pollack case, this was with regard to state and municipal bonds). There seems to be no mention of this aspect of the decision in the wiki article whatsoever.


 * After looking at this aspect of the Pollock case, some questions arose for me with regards to the taxing power of the Federal government:

-Does the Constitution prior to the sixteenth amendment give the power to the Federal Government to tax State Governments? -Does the sixteenth amendment give the power to the Federal Government to tax state governments (all incomes, from whatever source derived)? -Why does the Federal Government's (Congress') power to impose direct taxes not supercede the power of State Government's power to impose direct taxes? (Do State Governments have all the powers that the Federal Government has?)Rag-time4 21:09, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Close, but not quite
For the reasons stated below, the following language is incorrect, and is being modified:


 * "The Court in Brushaber also noted that before Pollock, taxes on income from professions, trades, employments or vocations were excises, even if direct in substance, as they were indirect in form [ . . . ]"

Yes, that type of income is indirect in form. However, the Brushaber court did not note that taxes excises on income from professions, trades, employments, or vocations were "direct in substance." The "direct in substance" treatment applied to income from property -- and that was in the Pollock case, not the Brushaber case (although the Brushaber case of course discussed what the court had decided in Pollock). The term "direct" as used in these cases refers to direct taxes in the constitutional sense -- meaning taxes on property by reason of its ownership, and taxes in the form of capitations. Both the Pollock court and the Brushaber court considered income from professions, etc., to be an excise (an indirect tax) in both form and substance, not merely in form.

Again, the "in substance" treatment applies to the Pollock court's treatment of taxes on income from property. Taxes on income from property (such as taxes on interest, dividends, and rent) were considered indirect in form -- but direct in substance -- by the Pollock court. The Sixteenth Amendment simply removed the requirement -- with respect to any income tax on any income from any source -- that we even consider the direct-indirect issue. After the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can impose any income tax without any apportionment requirement -- even if that tax would have been considered "direct" by the Pollock court. Yours, Famspear 20:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Post-script: Here is the exact language from Brushaber:


 * [ . . . ] the conclusion reached in the Pollock Case did not in any degree involve holding that income taxes generically and necessarily came within the class of direct taxes on property, but, on the contrary, recognized the fact that taxation on income was[,] in its nature[,] an excise entitled to be enforced as such [i.e., entitled to be enforced as an excise, and thus not subject to the apportionment rule,] unless and until it was concluded that to enforce it [to enforce a particular kind of income tax] would amount to accomplishing the result which the requirement as to apportionment of direct taxation was adopted to prevent, in which case the duty would arise to disregard form and consider substance alone, and hence subject the tax to the regulation as to apportionment which otherwise[,] as an excise[,] would not apply to it. [bolding and bracketed language added by Famspear]

Nothing in the quoted language says that the Pollock court -- or the Brushaber court or any other court -- ever treated taxes on income from professions, employment, etc., as "direct in substance." Read the following Brushaber language:


 * Nothing could serve to make this clearer than to recall that in the Pollock Case, in so far as the law taxed incomes from other classes of property than real estate and invested personal property, that is, income from 'professions, trades, employments, or vocations', its validity was recognized; indeed, it was expressly declared [in Pollock] that no dispute was made upon that subject, and attention was called to the fact that taxes on such income [from employment, etc.] had been sustained as excise taxes in the past. Id. p. 635. The whole law was, however, declared unconstitutional on the ground that to permit it [the law] to thus operate would relieve real estate and invested personal property from taxation and 'would leave the burden of the tax to be borne by professions, trades, employments, or vacations; and in that way what was intended as a tax on capital would remain, in substance, a tax on occupations and labor' ( id. p. 637),-a result which, it was held, could not have been contemplated by Congress. [bolding and bracketed language added by Famspear]

In other words, the Brushaber court is pointing out that in Pollock, the reason the entire 1894 statute was thrown out by the Pollock court was NOT that the Pollock court considered taxes on income from employment to be "direct in substance" (the direct in substance holding applied in Pollock to taxes on income from property, not on income from employment). The reason the Pollock court threw out the entire statute was that the court saw that Congress had not intended to write a statute that would tax incomes from employment, labor, occupations, etc., without also taxing incomes from property.

Again, Pollock and Brushaber are complex cases with complex, archaic, convoluted legal language -- another reason why the Wikipedia policy against original research by Wikipedia editors may be a good idea. Yours, Famspear 20:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

"...complex, archaic, convoluted legal language." Haha. Will you ever stop making excuses. If you want complex, archaic, convoluted try reading the constantly updated usc. 861. As for making those remarks about Supreme Court cases you are out of line. Wouldn't it be great if wikipedia didn't have biased editors like yourself trying to silence every factual comment. Imagine how great Wikipedia could be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.77.101 (talk) 22:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Kermit Hall - Oxford Guide: Did Hall claim that the Pollock court ruled an income tax on wages to be a direct tax?
I have reverted an anonymous user's additions to the effect that the Pollock court somehow determined that a tax on wages was a direct tax. I stated that there was no sourcing for this, but I now notice that the user cited Kermit Hall's Oxford Guide. However, the citation appears to be incomplete. We would need a page number, etc. Also, if Kermit Hall actually said that the Pollock court ruled that a tax on wages was a direct tax on property, that would indeed be an astounding statement that could be added to the article. It would be an incorrect statement -- but it could be noted in the article if Hall actually said it.

At any rate, I took the general reference to Kermit Hall as an incomplete citation and I therefore treated the material as unsourced. I apologize if I acted to hastily (i.e., if it turns out that Hall's material actually supports the statement).

Does anyone have ready access to this work? Famspear 16:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is an excerpt from the text of the second Pollock decision (the decision on the rehearing):


 * We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax[,] and been sustained as such.


 * Being of opinion that so much of the sections of this law as lays a tax on income from real and personal property is invalid, we are brought to the question of the effect of that conclusion upon these sections as a whole.


 * It is elementary that the same statute may be in part constitutional and in part unconstitutional, and, if the parts are wholly independent of each other, that which is constitutional may stand, while that which is unconstitutional will be rejected. And in the case before us there is no question as to the validity of this act, except sections 27 to 37, inclusive, which relate to the subject which has been under discussion; and, as to them, we think the rule laid down by Chief Justice Shaw in Warren v. Charlestown, 2 Gray, 84, is applicable,-that if the different parts 'are so mutually connected with and dependent on each other, as conditions, considerations, or compensations for each other, as to warrant a belief that the legislature intended them as a whole, and that if all could not be carried into effect the legislature would not pass the residue independently, and some parts are unconstitutional, all the provisions which are thus dependent, conditional, or connected must fall with them.' [ . . . ]


 * [ . . . ] it is obvious that [ the . . . ] largest part of the anticipated [tax] revenue would be eliminated, and this would leave the burden of the tax to be borne by professions, trades, employments, or vocations; and in that way what was intended as a tax on capital would remain, in substance, a tax on occupations and labor. We cannot believe that such was the intention of congress. We do not mean to say that an act laying by apportionment a direct tax on all real estate and personal property, or the income thereof, might not also lay excise taxes on business, privileges, employments, and vocations. But this is not such an act, and the scheme must be considered as a whole. [ . . . ]


 * Our conclusions may therefore be summed up as follows:


 * First. We adhere to the opinion already announced,-that, taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally direct taxes.


 * Second. We are of opinion that taxes on personal property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.


 * Third. The tax imposed by sections 27 to 37, inclusive, of the act of 1894, so far as it falls on the income of real estate, and of personal property, being a direct tax, within the meaning of the constitution, and therefore unconstitutional and void, because not apportioned according to representation, all those sections, constituting one entire scheme of taxation, are necessarily invalid.

--Pollock, 157 US. 429 (1895) (bolding added by Famspear).

Notice that the Court said nothing about taxes on incomes from "business, privileges, employments, and vocations" being direct taxes. The Court referred to those as excises (indirect taxes), but struck down the entire law -- for the reason given in the text: that when Congress passed this particular Act (the 1894 Act), the Congress had not intended to tax only incomes from employments and professions while exempting incomes from real estate and personal property. Yours, Famspear 17:11, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Famspear, if taxes on wages are excises, then they were not required to be apportioned, right? Thus, the last sentence of the introduction seems to be in need of revision, since it states that the sixteenth amendment removed the apportionment requirement from the taxation of incomes. Rag-time4 03:20, 20 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Dear Rag-time4: No, forget about wages for a minute. Remember what the Pollock case is talking about: taxes on interest, dividends, and rents (not taxes on wages). Remember, the Pollock decision was about a new policy, in the year 1895, of treating taxes on interest, dividends and rent (which, like taxes on wages, had always previously been considered excises, or indirect taxes) as direct taxes.


 * As a general statement (which is what it is), the statement that Sixteenth Amendment removed the apportionment requirement for income taxes is a correct statement. It's just that the apportionment requirement (the one imposed beginning in 1895 by the Pollock court) applied ONLY to CERTAIN income taxes -- namely taxes on interest, dividends and rent.


 * Think of it this way.


 * Suppose Country X allows people to sell any Toyota automobile in Country X. Then, one day in the year 1995, the Supreme Court in Country X rules that Toyota Camry automobiles can be sold in Country X only if the Camry is colored red. There's no restriction of any kind for Toyota Corolla (or for any other kind of Toyota) - just a restriction that says a Camry has to be red.


 * A few years later in the year 2007, Country X ratifies a constitutional amendment that says: "Any Toyota can be sold in Country X, regardless of color." The 2007 law REMOVED THE COLOR RESTRICTION FOR TOYOTAS. It's just that the color restriction applied only to Camrys, and only for the years from 1995 to 2007. The restriction never applied to Corollas - either before 1995, or between 1995 and 2007, or after 2007. It just never applied to Corollas, ever.


 * Now, think of the category of "Toyota" as the same as the category "income tax."


 * In the same way, as far as "income taxes" were concerned, the "apportionment restriction" applied only to income taxes on interest, dividends and rents (the Camrys, if you will). The apportionment restriction never applied to any other kind of income taxes (never applied to income taxes on wages -- the Corollas, so to speak). But it is still technically grammatically and legally correct to say that the new law removed the color requirement for "Toyotas" -- just as the Sixteenth Amendment removed the apportionment requirement for "income taxes." Look at the language of the Amendment again.


 * Saying that the the Amendment removed the apportionment requirement for "income taxes" is not the same as saying -- and does not imply -- that the apportionment requirement had previously applied to "income taxes on wages." Yours, Famspear 05:13, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I am the formerly anonymous user that thought the Supreme Court invalidated all income taxes due to wage income being personal property. Here is a link to answers.com that has word for word the same article that I found in the oxford guide. Kermit Hall did not write it but he did edit the book. The summary of the case I read was written by a Loren P. Beth and is the first article at the top of the page of this link: http://www.answers.com/topic/pollock-v-farmers-loan-trust-co?cat=biz-fin Stamos1981 (talk) 01:58, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, and as you can see, the material at answers.com says nothing about wage income being "personal property"; nor does the material say anything about the Supreme Court having invalidated income taxes because of anything to do with wage income. Indeed, neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any other federal court has ever invalidated any federal income tax on the ground that a wage is "personal property." Not even once.


 * From a U.S constitutional law standpoint, the idea that a federal income tax on wages could be unconstitutional merely because wages are "personal property" is nonsensical -- regardless of whether wages are "personal property" or not. There is simply no rule of Constitutional law that would invalidate such an income tax on that ground.


 * The Supreme Court in Pollock specifically confirmed that a tax on income from employments, etc., is an indirect tax (an excise) in the constitutional law sense. The material at answers.com material is consistent with that as well. Based on what's been presented, I see no evidence that Kermit Hall said that the Court said the tax on wages would be a "direct" tax. (And if Kermit Hall did make such a claim, he would have been not only blatantly incorrect, but blatantly careless in his research). Famspear (talk) 02:47, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I understand this and have conceded to your point. I was merely trying to show why I thought that the court invalidated all income especially if anyone tries to use what I cited as a source for my older position again. The part were it talks about the rehearing and striking down of general income taxes was lacking detail. For instance I do think that the wording of these paragraphs that I will paste below can make people think that it struck down all income taxes as direct taxes. Here is the part of the article I had in mind:

"First, the Court held unanimously that a tax on income from state and municipal bonds was essentially a tax on the state itself, violating the principle of state sovereignty. Next, the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, ruled that a tax on income from real property was a direct tax. The Court split 6 to 2, with Justices Edward D. White and John Marshall Harlan dissenting. Third, the Court divided equally, with Justice Howell Jackson being absent, on the question of whether the general tax on private and corporate incomes was also a direct tax. Evidence suggests that Justices Henry B. Brown and George Shiras joined White and Harlan in believing the tax constitutional. Thus, a major part of the tax law was left standing.

This situation pleased no one, and the Court immediately agreed to a rehearing on the issue of taxing general income. The terminally ill Jackson struggled to Washington, undoubtedly hoping that his vote would settle the question in favor of the tax's validity. But though Jackson voted to support the tax, another justice (probably Shiras) changed his position, producing a 5‐to‐4 vote invalidating the entire tax law because it was a direct tax that had to be apportioned among the states according to their populations."Stamos1981 (talk) 16:42, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Dear Stamos1981: Yes, and I would also point out that the last sentence in the quote ("Thus, a major part of the tax law was left standing") is almost surely incorrect or at least misleading. To the best of my knowledge, all the income tax provisions of the law were indeed struck down by the Court in Pollock. More generally, answers.com (the web site in question) may or may not be considered a reliable source for purposes of Wikipedia. Yours, Famspear (talk) 14:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * PS: Some of the articles on taxation at answers.com are actually copied and pasted from taxation articles here in Wikipedia. Famspear (talk) 19:59, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Still needs work
I have made some corrections to material that had been introduced by an anonymous user. This article still needs work as we might want to distinguish more clearly between the two opinions rendered in Pollock (the original opinion and the opinion on rehearing). Right now it's not clear from the article which holdings go with which opinions. Stay tuned. Famspear (talk) 16:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Enigmatic material
A contributor inserted the following material near the top of the article, which I have moved to here:


 * The income tax has been openly declared by high public officials to be incredibly vague, and suggested to be revised. However, none of these officials state what parts of the tax law need to be changed. Congress is authorized to impose two types of taxes, direct and indirect. Via Art. 1, Sect. 8, cl. 1, of the Constitution, indirect taxes (excises, duties and imposts) must be uniformly imposed throughout the country. Direct taxes are required via Art. 1, Sect. 2, cl. 3, and Art. 1, Sect. 9, cl. 4, to be imposed pursuant to the regulation of apportionment. These tax categories are mutually exclusive and any given tax must squarely fit within one category or the other. The issue underlies in different interpretations in different court cases (United States v. Critzer, 498 F.2d 1160 in contrast to United States v. Mallas, 762 F.2d 361) and trying to understand which category the federal income tax fits under. Becraft, Larry. "Uncertainties of the Income Tax." Constitution. YAML, n.d. Web. 30 Mar 2012.

The material is fairly tangential to the Pollock case. Also, the citation is problematic. Larry Becraft is Lowell ("Larry") Becraft, an attorney who has a history of espousing frivolous tax protester arguments. It's unclear why the word "Constitution" is in the citation, as the Constitution is not the source of the commentary. And we don't know what "YAML" stands for.

If the material can be properly sourced, it might go in a separate article on U.S. federal income tax, but perhaps only in a section on critiques of the tax. Famspear (talk) 01:51, 14 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I've removed the article text (with category tags, templates etc) that had been added here. It might be appropriate in a user's sandbox (with category tags commented out). DexDor(talk) 05:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Original research by user H. Nicole Young
User H. Nicole Young has inserted original research into this article. Her description of her rationale, which consists of an enormous amount of original research and personal opinion, has been moved from this talk page to her own talk page. I moved the material because I don't see how, considering the sheer volume, it could be meaningfully analyzed here. I propose that her proposed changes be discussed on this talk page first. Famspear (talk) 02:22, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

PS: It appears that H. Nicole Young has re-introduced material without any discussion on this talk page. Famspear (talk) 02:23, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

First amendment/meaning behind it without all the fancy wording.
First amendment/meaning behind it without all the fancy wording. And how many other amendments have been amended to change so that they benefit the government and not the people? L.W.B.-8405 (talk) 19:29, 22 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Dear L.W.B.-8405: The purpose of this talk page is to discuss ways to improve the article. The article has nothing to do with the First Amendment, and does not even mention the First Amendment. This article also is not about "amending amendments". Please review Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Famspear (talk) 21:21, 22 October 2017 (UTC)