And we should point out to everyone that the protection against unapportioned direct taxes is VERY IMPORTANT.
The framers did not want the federal government to have the power to single out groups from within the population that they didn’t like and then lay direct taxes on that group.
Like laying a direct tax on everyone who is not an Episcopalian.
Or laying a direct tax on everyone who lives in a red state and not a blue state.
Or laying a direct tax on everyone who hasn’t happened to have entered into a certain insurance contract the government likes.
Many people scratch their heads because indirect taxes are not taxes on property, but taxes on activities and consumption. Indirect taxes are voluntary in the sense that a person can avoid paying the tax by avoiding the activity or commodity. Direct taxes are paid directly by the taxpayer with no intermediary. Direct taxes cannot be avoided and are compulsory. Direct taxes are taxes on property, revenues and production. Historically incomes have been considered personal property, regardless of the source that generated the income. With an indirect tax, income cannot be the subject of the tax, but can only serve as a yardstick to determine the tax owed for having participated in a taxable activity.
At this point many people might conclude that if the rule of apportionment no longer applied that through the process of elimination the rule of uniformity must apply and that the tax is an indirect tax. However, because the Amendment states nothing about moving the property class of incomes into the class of indirect taxation, the Amendment allowed taxes on income to be collected without the rule of uniformity.[13] In other words, with respect to the specific property of income only, taxes could be collected without any rules or restraints at all. Thus, the 16th Amendment truly emphasized the adage that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Under the 16th Amendment wealth redistribution would be as easy as cutting butter with a hot knife. That legislators immediately taxed anything that could arguably be labeled as income is evident in the 1913 revenue act. Legislators tried to tax “excess” wages and salaries. Such a tax was a direct tax regardless of the method used to collect the tax.