In Stewart Machine Co. v. Davis the principal was a corporation, an artifical person created for the purpose of generating money. I would say that anything that a corporation does is a privilege, even its creation.
If that ruling expands to a living person working for a living then the ruling in the welfare case of Goldberg v Kelly (297 US 254), requiring an administrative agency to grant a hearing with all the elements of due process before property is taken, can be applied to the IRS.
Knowlton v. Moore and Tyler v. U.S. was about the inheritance tax, nothing to do with taxing labor, neither does U.S. v. Constantine, where it is not clear what the court means by "occupations" except that it means a corporation or business distributing liquor.
Do you have a SC ruling directed at a regular person, working for a living instead of an entity which its very existance depends on a federal or state charter?
It's my understand that even SC cases are limited in their aim and effect to the persons involved and the members of their class. Do you have anything about that?
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Do you have a SC ruling directed at a regular person, working for a living instead of an entity which its very existance depends on a federal or state charter?
On excises in general, case is specific to federal annual tax on personal carriages,(a federal vehicle tax nowdays):
Hylton v. United States(1796), 3 U.S. 171
"A general power is given to Congress, to lay and collect taxes, of every kind or nature, without any restraint, except only on exports; but two rules are prescribed for their government, namely, uniformity and apportionment: Three kinds of taxes, to wit, duties, imposts, and excises by the first rule, and capitation, or other direct taxes, by the second rule. "
"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,"
First Individual Income tax case:
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."
Modified by Pollock as regards taxes laid on income from personal or real property:
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.
Lucas v. Earl(1930), 281 U.S. 111:
- "The Revenue Act of 1918 approved February 24, 1919, c. 18, 210, 211, 212(a), 213(a), 40 Stat. 1057, 1062, 1064, 1065, imposes a tax upon the net income of every individual including 'income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service ... of whatever kind and in whatever form paid,' 213(a). The provisions of the Revenue Act of 1921, c. 136, 42 Stat. 227, 233, 237, 238, in sections bearing the same numbers are similar to those of the above."
- "There is no doubt that the statute could tax salaries to those who earned them "
Yet another as regards an excise on gifts made by an individual to another and the nature of an indirect tax as opposed to direct (i.e. property related) taxes:
BROMLEY v. MCCAUGHN, 280 U.S. 124,136 (1929)
- "Whatever may be the precise line which sets off direct taxes from others, we need not now determine. While taxes levied upon or collected from persons because of their general ownership of property may be taken as direct, this Court has consistently held, almost from the foundation of our government, that a tax imposed upon a particular use of property or the exercise of a single power over property incidental to ownership, is an excise which need not be apportioned, and it is enough for present purposes that this tax is of the latter class.
It is a tax laid only upon the exercise of a single one of those powers incident to ownership, the power to give the property owned to another. . . . The persistence of this distinction and the justification for it rest upon the historic fact that taxes of this type were not understood to be direct taxes when the Constitution was adopted and, as well, upon the reluctance of this Court to enlarge by construction, limitations upon the sovereign power of taxation by Article 1, sec. 8, so vital to the maintenance of the National Government.
280 U.S. at 136; see The Federalist No. 12 (Hamilton) (distinguishing between "direct taxes" and "taxes on consumption")."
Bottomline, whether you are an individual or a corportation (which is an association of individuals) you are subject to enactments of Congress (i.e. federal law) regarding excises both before and after the 16th amendment.
The law regarding the authority of Congress to lay excises and duties on the individual goes back to the very beginning of under the Constituton and they don't even have to involve the conduct of a business.
James Madison, Federalist #39:
- "The difference between a federal and national government, as it relates to the OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, is supposed to consist in this, that in the former the powers operate on the political bodies composing the Confederacy, in their political capacities; in the latter, on the individual citizens composing the nation, in their individual capacities. On trying the Constitution by this criterion, it falls under the NATIONAL, not the FEDERAL character;"
James Madison, Federalist #45:
- "The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present [Continental] sic Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future [Constitutional] Congress will have to require them of individual citizens;
There were folk who had their properties sold out from under them over simple excises, such as the still tax levied on farmers which led to a rebellion over such, squashed by President Washington leading federal troops in to put the insurrection down. The action was upheld by the courts of the time.
At that time alcohol was money for these folks, cash was unheard of thus property was at risk without the benefit of apportionment to put the state between the Feds and the individuals at risk.
George Washington's Proclamation Whiskey Rebellion August 7, 1794:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/proclamations/gwproc03.htm
George Washington's address on October 20 1794
to General Lee at Bedford, PA
Washington LED Federal troops into Western Pennsylvania enforcing the Federal tax on UNUSED AND OUT OF PRODUCTION private stills owned by individual citizens and farmers as appliances of the land(i.e. private non-commercial Real Property) in Pennsylvania.
United States Statutes at Large, 1st Congress, 3rd Session Ch 15, 1791,
page 202, 204 Sec 21-24;
Sec. 21. And be it further enacted, That upon stills which after the last day of June Next, shall be employed in distilling spirits from materials of the growth or production of the United States, in any other place than a city, taown or village, there shall be paid for the use of the United States, the yearly duty of sixty cents for every gallon, English wine-measure, of the capacity or content of each and every such still, including the head thereof.
Sec. 22. And be it further encted, That the evidence of the employment of the said stills shall be, their being erected in stone, brick or some other manner whereby they shall be in a condition to be worked.
Sec. 23. And be it futher enacted, That the said duties o stills shall be collected under the management of the supervisor in each district, who shall appoint and assing proper officers for the surveys of the said stills and the admeasurement thereof, and the collectio of the duties thereupon; and the said duties shall be paid half yearly wihtin the firest fifteen days of January and July, upon demand of the proprietor or proprietors of each still, at his, her or their dwelling, by the proper officer charged with the survey thereof: And in case of refusal or neglect, to pay , the amount of the duties so refused or neglected to be paid may either be recovered with costs of suit in an actoin of debt in the name of the supervisor of the district, within which such refusal shall happen, for the use of the United States, or may be levied by distress and sale of goods of the person or persons refusing or neglecting to pay, rendering the overplus(if any there be after payment of the said amount and the charges of distress and sale) the the said person or persons.
To believe that "corporations" are subject to tax law under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution and not the individual is a formula for disaster.
It's my understand that even SC cases are limited in their aim and effect to the persons involved and the members of their class.
Depends on the scope as indicated by the specific ruling, some are quite broad others are so specific as to be useless. SC rulings hold the dominant weight in the lower court rulings.
If you can convince a judge the SC ruling does apply over the opponents argument in your incident case you get to fight it out with the other guy in an appeal.
Ultimately, if fought all the way, the SC decides or lets the lower court ruling stand by not taking the appeal as it sees fit.
The difference to the individual case is irrelavent as to which happens. How much time and resource are you willing to expend to get a probable cert. denied. after the appellate courts have had their whack at it. Overturn of a circuit court's rulings in law are the exception not the rule, especially in federal tax cases.