Or, phrased differently, what part of "from any source derived" don't you understand?
The Supreme Court said the 16th didn't eliminate direct taxes or move something from one category to another. It simply clarified what always existed. If it was direct before its still direct. A tax on the profits of a corporation, regardless if the source was from land, is an excise tax and always has been. A general income tax regardless of whom it reaches is still a direct tax. Pollock found that a tax on a corporation's profits derived from the leasing or renting of land was a direct tax due to the source of the income (land).
It's amazing how quickly this group adopts a static linear approach to wording in the constitution when it fits one argument, regardless of what the Supreme Court has said, but then quickly does a 180 when it fits another.
In the debates in the house of representatives preceding the passage of the act of congress to lay 'duties upon carriages for the conveyance of persons,' approved June 5, 1794 (1 Stat. 373, c. 45), Mr. Sedgwick said that 'a capitation tax, and taxes on land and on property and income generally, were direct charges, as well in the immediate as ultimate sources of contribution. He had considered those, and those only, as direct taxes in their operation and effects.
...
But Albert Gallatin, in his Sketch of the Finances of the United States, published in November, 1796, said: 'The most generally received opinion, however, is that, by direct taxes in the constitution, those are meant which are raised on the capital or revenue of the peopel; by indirect, such as are raised on their expense.
- Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust
I already see some of you trying desperately to try and claim Pollock sustained income taxes on the average employee.
We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such.
Second Case - Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company (emphasis added)
Taxation ON employments is generally a license tax. The income tax under discussion is set around the earnings of employees not ON employment. The court says quite clearly they have not made an opinion concerning the taxation of gains or profits from employment. In fact the Supreme Court states very clearly what excises are in the previous Pollock case. There is no mention of it including a tax on wages or earnings in general or anything even remotely close.
Excises are a species of tax consisting generally of duties laid upon the manufacture, sale, or consumption of commodities within the country, or upon certain callings or occupations, often taking the form of exactions for licenses to pursue them.
