Of course, government employees were taxed as a condition of employment ... The 16th just changed the definition of taxation of state's citizens (individuals) by government from "indirect" to "direct." In effect it is sophistry, merely an attempt to misdirect the meaning of the Founding Father's intent in forming the process in the first place: to prevent the tyranny of government to force individuals to pay taxes DIRECTLY under duress and which was the very basis of tyranny!
Even with the 16th Amendment fiction, the Fed was prevented from tyranny until Roosevelt and the "Voluntary Individual Income Tax and Withholding"
The ignorance is often purposeful as in this Wikipedia article. For instance from the article: "In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. The amendment gave Congress legal authority to tax income and resulted in a revenue law that taxed incomes of both individuals and corporations.
(And which the Supreme Court determined at the time was only a change in definition and did not change the constitutionally determined method of collecting individual income taxes)
In fiscal year 1918, annual internal revenue collections for the first time passed the billion-dollar mark, rising to $5.4 billion by 1920.
(Through growth of business and governmental employment)
With the advent of World War II, employment increased, as did tax collections—to $7.3 billion.
(Again, business growth and government employment)
The withholding tax on wages was introduced in 1943 and was instrumental in increasing the number of taxpayers to 60 million and tax collections to $43 billion by 1945.[3]"
Only the supposedly *temporary* voluntary income tax was never stopped when the emergency was no longer present. Or, the "Big Lie" of the Cold War allowed the imposition of continued repression of freedom and liberty and which has led to the present effort of socialists to destroy the economy of the US and institute a "Progressive" move to the perfection of that socialism.
Who is still so stupid they don't know what the perfection of redistribution of wealth (socialism) is ...?
With continuing education and the subsequent realization of how the "Progressives" have attempted to undermine the constitution to force redistribution of wealth our future freedom will depend on a national tax on goods and services, or otherwise called the "National Sales Tax" and which would be a legal form of indirect taxation on all individuals and by census according to the states' population.
This tax could be collected as it already is by business and governmental processes. Indeed, it could be started instantly and on a daily basis with our business computer culture, government and banking networks ...
There is no excuse for government to continue "progressing" down the road of tyranny by taxing individuals using distraint ...