The Essentials of American Constitutional LawThorpe, Francis Newton
History
The Essentials of American Constitutional Law
Thorpe, Francis Newton
Constitutional law -- United States
Does this amendment increase the taxing power of Congress beyond that
power as possessed prior to 1913 and as limited by the Supreme Court
in its decision in the case of The Collector _v._ Day? If any officer
of a State, executive, legislative, judicial, or administrative,
receives a salary, large or small, (and it forms part of his income) is
it beyond the jurisdiction of the United States as a taxable estate,
despite the explicit power of Congress, in this Sixteenth Amendment “to
lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived?” Does
the amendment overrule the decision in The Collector _v._ Day?[118]
Evidently the amendment empowers Congress to levy an income tax wholly
in disregard of the effect of the tax in impairing the “necessary
means and instrumentalities of a State.” Here too the issue is one
of jurisdiction. The person taxed being within the jurisdiction of
the United States has no redress against that jurisdiction more than
has a person, taxed and being within the jurisdiction of a State,
redress against the State. But can the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
or any other State, imposing an income tax, lay and collect it from
whatever source derived, and that source be the treasury of the United
States,—that income be salary received by a citizen of the State who
also is a federal official, say a federal Judge, or a Collector of
the Revenue, or a United States Marshal, or a Senator of the United
States, or a Congressman, or the President of the United States?[119]
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