Taft v. Bowers, N.Y. 1929, 49 S.Ct. 199, 278 U.S. 470, 73 L.Ed. 460.

[Famspear]

As I understand it, many such chapters or sections of the IRC were passed to clarify who was/wasn't supposed to pay taxes. In the early days of the current income tax, I believe a dispute arose as to whether Federal employees, who are paid from the US treasury were required to pay taxes INTO the treasury. The same is true for elected officials. Some elected official claimed, in essence, "surely the Federal income tax doesn't apply to me, an elected official". Congress promptly passed new bills clarifying that, indeed, Federal employees and elected officials ARE subject to the income tax. [ . . . ]

Yes. Another argument by tax protesters is that they are not subject to the Internal Revenue Code provisions on administrative levy for taxes -- based on a similar "federal worker" argument. The following is adapted from something I wrote in this forum some years ago:

Tax protesters sometimes incorrectly argue that section 6331(a), empowering the Internal Revenue Service to administratively levy (to seize or distrain) the assets of a taxpayer, applies only to the assets of "federal workers." The genesis of all this argument about the "federal worker" language in section 6331(a) is a case that had nothing to do with taxation.

Back in 1912, Congress enacted a law providing for a U.S. District Court in what was then the U.S. territory of the Canal Zone (the Panama Canal Zone). The law provided for a federal judge -- and a salary for that federal judge.

At some point, the judge was provided with living quarters owned by the U.S. government. An officer called the Auditor of the Canal Zone came up with the idea -- apparently on his own, as it turns out -- that he had the legal duty or right to withhold, from the judge’s pay checks, an amount to cover the rent for the government-owned living quarters provided to the judge.

The Auditor's action raised some eyebrows. In 1915, the Secretary of War (now, we would say the Secretary of Defense) asked for a legal opinion from the Attorney General as to whether the Auditor was legally entitled to do this.

The Attorney General rendered a legal opinion that the Auditor was not authorized to withhold from the judge’s pay unless a law allowed the withholding. Essentially, the Auditor was engaging in a “setoff” (or “offset”) – offsetting the amount the Auditor claimed was due by the judge to the U.S. government for rent against the salary due by the government to the judge. The Attorney General found no law allowing that offset.

The Auditor was not satisfied with the Attorney General’s opinion, and apparently continued to make the offsets for the rent.

The judge filed a lawsuit to compel the Auditor to stop withholding the rent from the judge’s paychecks.

The Auditor lost the lawsuit -- both at the trial court, and on appeal at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Finally, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In April 1918, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the judge and against the Auditor. In the absence of a law allowing the Auditor to make the offset, the Auditor would not be allowed to make the offset. The case is Smith v. Jackson, 246 U.S. 388 (1918).

As noted in the United States Supreme Court decision in Sims v. United States, 359 U.S. 108 (1959), the language of what is now Internal Revenue Code section 6331 regarding an officer, employee, or elected official, of the United States, etc., etc., (I’ll abbreviate this to the “federal worker language”) was added to the tax statutes many years ago because of the decision in Smith v. Jackson. This is another example of emphatic redundancy (or intensive redundancy) on the part of Congress –- purposefully adding what might be considered redundant language to a statute in response to prior court decisions, to make absolutely crystal clear that it is the intent of Congress that the law allow an administrative levy against federal workers, etc. Had the Auditor in the Canal Zone never withheld the pay of that judge, the case of Smith v. Jackson would have never been brought, and it is entirely possible that the “federal worker language” of section 6331 would not be there today.

Congress was concerned because the Supreme Court, back in 1918, had ruled that an offset against a judge's pay was invalid -- in a case where the word “tax” is not even mentioned -- that an administrative levy for a federal tax on the income of a federal worker might be deemed to be an invalid offset covered by the doctrine of Smith v. Jackson.

Now, in the absence of the "federal worker" language in 6331, maybe some court or another might view a tax levy as being covered by Smith v. Jackson, or maybe that court might not view it that way. Either way, the Congress simply wanted to avoid the problem -- and to make clear that federal administrative tax levies are not impaired by the Smith v. Jackson doctrine. Hence, the arguably redundant (i.e., partially redundant) language of what is now section 6331(a).

Many tax protesters tend to take unfamiliar language in a legal text and go wild with conjectures and phony, pseudo-legal theories, straining for an argument against the validity of the tax law, without actually sitting down and doing cold, unemotional formal legal research needed to determine why the language is there in the first place and how the language has been interpreted in actual court decisions.