politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
there's literally a constitutional amendment saying congress can issue taxes however they want. The supreme court is so full of its own shit they think they can rewrite every law they don't like.
Which amendment is that? Because the sixteenth amendment very specifically mentions taxes on income, not wealth.
Article 1, section 8:
Given that the 16th Amendment exists expressly in order to establish a federal income tax, it's probably safe to say that this has not been understood as an unlimited power of taxation.
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company is the relevant SCOTUS case, if you're curious. The tl;dr is that Article I, Section 9:
states that revenues raised by a "direct tax", which includes income taxes, from a given state must be proportional to that state's population relative to the rest of the country. Income isn't evenly distributed among the states, so income taxes violate this provision. That's why the 16th amendment specifically exempts income taxes from that requirement:
The basic idea was that, if Congress needed to raise a bunch of money for some large project, they can't go targeting specific states for it.
The Sixteenth Amendment exists not because of the limitations imposed by Pollock v. Farmers, but because Congress was concerned that the Supreme Court might strike down further income tax laws even though they were within the powers conferred by Article 1. Congress thought the Supreme Court had gone too far (and they likely did) and wasn't sure how far they would go so they took it out of the Supreme Court's hands.
Funnily enough you're talking about circular logic. One is saying congress has the expressed right to tax and cannot be limited by the Supreme Court. Now you're saying the Supreme Court has already limited congresses power to tax..
Er, no?
I'm saying that the Constitution, Article I Section 9, imposes a limit on Congress's ability to issue taxes. The Sixteenth Amendment was passed to specifically exempt income taxes from that limit, which is what authorized the federal income tax. There is a very real legal argument that a wealth tax, which is a fundamentally different kind of tax, does not fall under the Sixteenth Amendment exemption and thus is constitutionally restricted.
I might not have explained that super clearly, so genuinely, feel free to ask if I was confusing at all.
Not an amendment.