[Publius]

The Constitution had a similar provision for tax levies in Article I, Section 2: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers..."

I recall in a colloquoy with a fellow FReeper some years ago that the federal government levied taxes against the states, but there was no enforcement mechanism. I think someone mentioned that a 19th Century Supreme Court case denied the federal government the authority to physically collect from the states.

I've been combing States' Rights and the Union by Forrest McDonald for a mention of this, but I can't seem to find it.

The 16th Amendment repealed much of Article I, Section 2, to include the prose I quoted.

[Bigun]

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #21:

Those [taxes] of the direct kind, which principally relate to land and buildings, may admit of a rule of apportionment. Either the value of land, or the number of the people, may serve as a standard.

Hylton v. United States(1796), 3 U.S. 171

"the present Constitution was particularly intended to affect individuals, and not states, except in particular cases specified: And this is the leading distinction between the articles of Confederation and the present Constitution."

"Uniformity is an instant operation on individuals, without the intervention of assessments, or any regard to states,"

"[T]he DIRECT TAXES contemplated by the Constitution, are only two, to wit, A CAPITATION OR POLL TAX, simply, without regard to property, profession, or any other circumstance; and a tax on LAND."

Springer v. United States(1880), 102 U.S. 586

"The central and controlling question in this case is whether the tax which was levied on the income, gains, and profits of the plaintiff in error, as set forth in the record, and by pretended virtue of the acts of Congress and parts of acts therein mentioned, is a direct tax."

"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."

"[W]henever the government has imposed a tax which it recognized as a direct tax, it has never been applied to any objects but real estate and slaves."

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895)

• "The people of the United States constitute one nation, under one government, and this government, within the scope of the powers with which it is invested, is supreme."

• "Without the States in union, there could be no such political body as the United States. Both the States and the United States existed before the Constitution. The people, through that instrument[the Constitution], established a more perfect union by substituting a national government, acting, with ample power, directly upon the citizens, instead of the confederate government, which acted with powers, greatly restricted, only upon the States."

POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 U.S. 601 (1895):

• "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."

• "If that[rents from land] be stricken out, and also the income from all invested personal property, bonds, stocks, investments of all kinds, it is obvious that by a r the largest part of the anticipated 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. "

• 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.

• Mr. Justice WHITE, dissenting.

  16. The injustice of the conclusion points to the error of adopting it. It takes invested wealth, and reads it into the constitution as a favored and protected class of property, which cannot be taxed without apportionment, while it leaves the occupation of the minister, the doctor, the professor, the lawyer, the inventor, the author, the merchant, the mechanic, and all other forms of industry upon which the prosperity of a people must depend, subject to taxation without that condition.