Irrespective, the amendment proposed makes the taxation of income unconstitutional, which obviously handles the problem.
Your objection that this should be done first is valid IMO.
What I'm told is that no lawmaker will eliminate the mechanism for government revenues without first having an acceptable replacement. IMO it would be nice to have HR 25 concurrently become law at the passage of the proposed amendment to repeal 16th and make income taxing unconstituional.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
No need to have a decades long debate, the text of the 16th is quite clear that it grants power to collect an income tax. If this power existed previously, then why the 16th?
Also, from Article I of the Constitution:
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
There really is no debate. Prior to the 16th, any taxes had to be apportioned to the states relative to their populations. Congress could tax a state but not an individual.
You'll note that the 16th passed almost concurrently with the 17th requiring direct election of senators. This two amendments removed the most powerful blocks on the accumulation of federal power.
Since Congress could only tax the states, one of the most important functions of a senator was to ensure that a congressional apportionment did not arrive at the door of his state legislature. It was quite common for the state legislatures to appoint the state's senators. If such an apportionment were to arrive, then that state legislature would be responsible for raising the necessary revenue to pay the apportionment with rather easily imagined consequences. Now the state could have an income tax or any form of taxation it desired but any federal tax apportionment was guaranteed to inflame the citizenry. Hence, one of the jobs of a senator was to make sure such a tax bill never made it out of congress and to keep a cap on spending.
BTW, plot federal spending both before and after the passage of the 16 and 17th amendments.