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Tax
April 1997
Repeal the 16th amendment	Some tax-control advocates are proposing to repeal the 16th Amendment. That's the one that authorizes the federal income tax. They claim that it undermines the Constitution's arrangements for limiting government. The federal government was originally prohibited from collecting taxes from individuals, they point out, citing Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution. The language of that section permits the federal government to collect revenue from the states according to their population -- but leaves the method of collection to them. The federal government was to collect revenue in other, less intrusive ways -- tariffs, excise taxes, consumption taxes -- so as to limit the amount of money it could raise by its own authority. While we briefly had a federal income tax during the Civil War which was soon repealed, the second attempt to impose one during the 1890s was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895. But that ruling was later nullified by the 16th Amendment in 1913, and a very limited income tax was instituted which applied to just 2 percent of the labor force -- with a highest rate of just 7 percent. Unfortunately, all it took was that crack in the Constitutional dam. Today's tax reformers say the resulting torrent has inundated us all. Source: Larry Arnn (Claremont Institute) and Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform), "Repeal the 16th Amendment," Wall Street Journal, April 15, 1997.