Unconstitutionality Of The Federal Income Tax

The founders of this great nation were some of the greatest visionaries of all time. These men envisioned a country that would be free of the tyranny of the British Empire and knew that a new structure of government was needed to accomplish this task. Freedom was their number one concern and they created a backbone of government, the Constitution of the United States, which would keep this goal in mind. They laid out their plan to fund their new government by collecting taxes in Article 1, Sections 2 and 8 of the Constitution. As with most articles of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has interpreted them for us. Through such interpretation, we can now see that the federal tax on personal income was not the plan of the founding fathers and it is in direct contradiction with the Constitution.

Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution states “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States…” This is one of the most overlooked sections of our Constitution. Direct taxes are to be apportioned among the states, the exact same way we decide how many representatives each state has in the House of Representatives. Furthermore, this clause wa

The tax structure of our nation is based on two types of taxes, direct and indirect. Article 1, Section 2 deals with the direct taxes that are to be apportioned among the states. Indirect taxes are dealt with in Article 1, Section 8. It states “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” In Flint v. Stone Tracy we are told that excise tax is “a tax being laid upon the manufacture, sale, and consumption of commodities within the country, upon licenses to pursue certain occupations and upon corporate privileges” and the U.S. Supreme Court stated that the income tax is an excise tax (Simms v. Arehns). In the case of Lloyd Long, the defense brought to light a previous court ruling that “the individual, unlike the corporation, cannot be taxed for the mere privilege of existing but that the individual’s right to live and own property were natural rights upon which an excise could not be imposed (Tennessee Man Freed on Tax Charges).” This is also apparent in the Tennessee Supreme Court case of Jack Cole v. Commissioner. In this case it was determined that “Citizens are entitled by right to i

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