In 1984, William J. Benson began a research project, never before performed, to investigate the process of ratification of the 16th Amendment. After traveling to the capitols of the New England states, and reviewing the journals of the state legislative bodies, he saw that many states had not ratified the Amendment. Continuing his research at the National Archives in Washington, DC, Bill Benson discovered his Golden Key. This damning piece of evidence is a 16 page memorandum from the Solicitor of the Department of State, whose duty is the provision of legal opinions for the use of the Secretary of State. In this memorandum sent to the Secretary of State, the Solicitor of the Department of State lists the many errors he found in the ratification process!
The 4 states listed below are among the 38 states that Philander Knox claimed ratification from.
The Kentucky Senate voted upon the resolution, but rejected it by a vote of 9 in favor and 22 opposed.
The Oklahoma Senate amended the language of the 16th Amendment to have a precisely opposite meaning.
The California legislative assembly never recorded any vote upon any proposal to adopt the amendment proposed by Congress.
The State of Minnesota sent nothing to the Secretary of State in Washington.
When his year long project was finished at the end of 1984, Bill had visited every state capitol and knew that not a single state had actually and legally ratified the proposal to amend the Constitution. 33 states engaged in the unauthorized activity of amending the language of the amendment proposed by congress, a power the states do not possess. Since 36 states were needed for ratification, the failure of 13 to ratify would be fatal to the amendment, and this occurs within the major (first three) defects tabulated in Defects in Ratification of the 16th Amendment. Even if we were to ignore defects of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, we would still have only 2 states which successfully ratified.
Hmmm - William J. Benson, wasn't he the guy who was collecting SS disability while working (fraud) and was prosecuted for not filing income tax returns?
The 16th amendment was passed in direct response to the SCOTUS decision in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., that overturned 100 years of precedence and redefined direct taxes. Whether or not the 16th amendment was passed, it is likely the SCOTUS decision would have been overturned. But never mind - have another glass of Kool-aid.