my feeble memory sparks a little and reminds me too that the 16th NEVER received ALL the necessary ratifications by the various states ergo it is not a legal Ammendment according to the Constitution.
Anyone feel free to chime in here but I believe this is a true, or close to true, statement.
Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.
To undo it requires a beachhead in a special zone or willing jurisdiction to try a new form of taxation such as a uniform consumption tax with a uniform exempt floor, one that would be fully constitutional under the original provisions without the 16th.
If successful, the rest would follow suit automatically.
The key is to not allow the 16th to exist, even if all its code were abolished, at the same time as a better tax form because there would be a danger of having the income tax come back to life and then two forms of taxation would be imposed, a consumption tax and an income tax.
So an amendment is needed to give a time for the 16th to go away, in effect telling the country for example “you’ve got five years”. It has to be an amendment and not a law because future Congresses can start to chew at a law around its edge until the law is effectively defunct after a time.
“But we are only proposing just a 1% tax on the rich! That’s not asking too much, they can certainly afford that!”
And so it would begin all over again. The 1% goes to 3% to 7% to 12% etc. In 20 years time the tax creep would look like what exists today.
So it has to be an amendment.