Technically, they're legal, but only if apportioned.
Roberts probably doesn’t even know the difference between unconstitutional direct taxes and ever other kind of tax. That’s because he and other judges live in the world of precedent and the post-New Deal Constitution, and have never bothered to read for its own sake the actual Constitution.
Roberts' opinion does discuss all of the case law (there isn't much of it) about what is a "direct tax," including Hylton v. United States (1796), and concludes that this isn't a "direct" tax.
“Technically, they’re legal, but only if apportioned.”
Among the states, yes. But they won’t be, so they’re illegal.
“Roberts’ opinion does discuss all of the case law (there isn’t much of it) about what is a ‘direct tax,’ including Hylton v. United States (1796), and concludes that this isn’t a ‘direct’ tax.”
I was being glib, of course. I don’t mean to denigrate Roberts’ legal knowledge. It’s just that he and everyone else in the profession go by post-New Deal precedent instead of real law. So that if he has heard the term poll tax and does from time to time inquire as to whether something is one, that doen’t mean he doesn’t ignore what is and isn’t a poll tax in the interest of what expands federal power at the expense of everything but what lawyers have arbitrarily decided are worthy causes.
It is a head tax. Actually, it’s not a tax at all; Roberts merely unilaterally interpreted it that way. But if it is a tax it’s a head tax, and I don’t care what Roberts says.
“Roberts’ opinion does discuss all of the case law (there isn’t much of it) about what is a ‘direct tax,’ including Hylton v. United States (1796)”
I don’t see how that’d be very enlightening, as it was about taxes on carriages and ruled to be an excise tax. The mandadte penalty couldn’t possibly be an excise tax. Perhaps a better case would be the one in the 1890s case, I forget what it’s called, striking down the income tax, which necessitated the 16th amendment. But that was from the bad old Lochner days, and the judging industry—liberal and conservative—routinely regards those decisions as evil.