Re: US Income Tax - Unconstitutional
Yeah, after posting I considered the problem of context. Even the original clause doesn't prohibit the 'capitation' taxes, it just says they have to be proportioned according to the census. Implicitly, then, they are already allowed under that condition. So you can see how the SC would say 'the 16th Amendment didn't grant any new powers of taxation' (it just removed a restriction on how they are applied) and the angry people who thought it did wouldn't understand that it meant 'you don't have a case' rather than 'we agree with you'.
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