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To: nerdgirl
Having now studied the Roberts opinion, I will say this:

He correctly applied existing precedent where it existed. He fudged on the one issue where there was no precedent—and failed to discuss that at all, actually. On that, see below.

Existing precedent is wrong. Very wrong, in several different ways. But most fundamentally and importantly, it's wrong with respect to the original intent of the requirement that indirect taxes must be "uniform."

That requirement was originally intended to make the requirement of the principle of the rule of law that the laws must apply to everyone equally apply very explicitly to indirect taxes. And the dodge now used to get around that—writing different rules into the civil and criminal laws and non-uniform rates or duties into tax laws, so that "the same" law applies different rules to people in different situations—is invalid on its face. Doing that makes the uniformity and "apply equally to all" principles effectively powerless and meaningless.

Roberts didn't say what type of tax Congress had unintentionally passed. What he did say is that it wasn't a direct tax that had to be apportioned among the States. That only leaves two possibilities: excise tax or income tax, since the tax clearly is not an impost or duty.

So pleadings that might work would be the following:

  1. It can't Constitutionally be an excise tax, because those can only be imposed on events that occur, not on ones that don't, based on the late 18th century definition of excise. I have found no case law that contradicts that definition, and Roberts cited none.
  2. An income tax, by definition, has to be imposed on income. Not having bought something is not reasonably classifiable as income.
  3. If it's not a new income tax, but a modification to the existing one, then what combination of tax credits and deductions would produce the same tax owed in all cases? How complex do the changes to the income tax code (that produce the same tax owed in all cases) have to be before the level of ridiculousness embodied in the assumption that this is what Congress intended becomes so high that it "shocks the conscience" and so requires that the Roberts' decision must be reversed? (assuming the rules don't turn out to be simple--I haven't looked at that yet)

30 posted on 07/01/2012 6:02:59 PM PDT by sourcery (If true=false, then there would be no constraints on what is possible. Hence, the world exists.)
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To: sourcery

Thanks for your post, very interesting!


93 posted on 07/02/2012 9:20:03 AM PDT by nerdgirl
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