Excellent point -- highlighting another legal point. The same word can be used in different ways in different places.jg wrote:Perhaps the confusion or misinterpretation is based on the fact that "excise tax" is used to refer to both a specific type of tax and to a class of taxes.
I do hope this helps.
In one place in the U.S. Constitution, the word "law" itself is used more than once within the same sentence - with two related but nevertheless distinct technical meanings. But that's another discussion.
Back to the term "excise". In federal court cases involving the term "excise" as used in the U.S. Constitution, the term "excise" is general used as shorthand for "duties, imposts and excises," which are also collectively referred to as "indirect taxes." ("Direct taxes" in the Constitution are sometimes referred to as simply "taxes").
By contrast, the term is used in the Internal Revenue Code itself, generally, only to refer to a "miscellaneous excise tax" (in other words, the Subtitle D taxes). Those are the particular kinds of excises that actually do relate to the exercise of a privilege. This is where the confusion sets in for tax protesters who read cases that refer to the "privilege" and then incorrectly assume that the courts are ruling that income taxes (which are excises in the more general constitutional law sense, but not in the statutory, Internal Revenue Code, sense) must somehow involve a "privilege". The federal income tax is a Subtitle A tax. Likewise, gift taxes, which are also "excises" in the constitutional sense, are not Subtitle D excises. The gift taxes are imposed under Subtitle B, not Subtitle D. You don't generally see the Subtitle B gift tax being referred to as an "excise" in the Code itself (even though it's an excise in the constitutional sense).
Maybe this is not easy to understand if you don't live and breathe this stuff.
EDIT: I went back and looked, and the "statutory" excises would also include the Subtitle E taxes.