Sunday, January 19, 2014

The rights of the government to collect taxes

Article I of the US Constitution, Section 8, Clause 1:

The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the United States Census. This amendment exempted income taxes from the constitutional requirements regarding direct taxes, after income taxes on rents, dividends, and interest were ruled to be direct taxes in the court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895). The amendment was adopted on February 3, 1913.

And then in 1930 Congress passed the "Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act"

Every industry, especially agriculture, got on board and later decided it was protectionism.  A few years later Congress passed the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act.

...The Smoot-Hawley (click here) tariff represents the high-water mark of U.S. protectionism in the 20th century. Thereafter, beginning with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, American commercial policy generally emphasized trade liberalization over protectionism. The United States generally assumed the mantle of champion of freer international trade, as evidenced by its support for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the World Trade Organization (WTO)....

That rounds out the income to the federal government, except, for corporate tax and capital gains. That sort of thing. A Republican favorite, "The Death Tax."