The Constitution must be honored in every respect - or it is not honored at all
By David F. LaRocque
In the fallout from the troubling decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Obamacare challenge, it has become clear that almost nobody understands the tax clauses of the United States Constitution, nor do the various commentators seem to be aware of the watershed Supreme Court decisions in the Pollock case in 1895 ruling the income tax adopted in the Income Tax Act of 1894 to be unconstitutional (Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co.) , and the Brushaber case in 1916 regarding the effect of the 16th Amendment (Brushaber v. Union Pacific RR Co).
The decision in the Brushaber case was explicitly confirmed soon thereafter in a follow-on Supreme Court case in the same year (Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.).
(Note: Brushaber was a stockholder in the Union Pacific Railroad.)
The Supreme Court decision in the Brushaber case challenging the Income Tax Act of 1913 established three irrefutable facts:
1. The Sixteenth Amendment granted no new taxing authority to Congress which did not exist prior to the amendment.
2. The income tax, to the extent that it is applicable, is an indirect excise tax subject to the constitutional requirement of uniformity.
3. There is no third class of taxes authorized in the Constitution other than the two classes specified in Article I of the Constitution.
The two classes of constitutionally authorized taxes are direct taxes subject to the requirement of apportionment, and indirect taxes (“Duties, Imposts, and Excises”) subject to the requirement of uniformity.
Notwithstanding the widespread ignorance, disregard, and even suppression of the profound importance of the Supreme Court decisions in the Pollock and Brushaber cases relating to the constitutional status of the income tax, it is incontrovertible that these decisions affirmed the intent of the Founders in establishing two classes of taxing authority under Article I of the Constitution, ruling out any possible inference that some third class of taxing authority was create by the Sixteenth Amendment. There is no third class of tax. Therefore, any taxing authority resulting from the Sixteenth Amendment (assuming the Sixteenth Amendment was legally ratified and is in full force and effect) must be in full compliance with the limitations of Article I of the Constitution.
The parallel with the widespread conscious disregard of the Supreme Court’s definition of “natural born citizen” in the Minor v. Happersett case in 1875 is striking.
(In his landmark book “Cracking the Code” Peter Hendrickson explains the extremely limited applicability of the Sixteenth Amendment, while demonstrating in rigorous detail how the forces driving the income tax, acting through the Internal Revenue Service, have obfuscated the tax code and twisted the language using the legal concept of “term of art” to alter the meanings of commonly used words in order to create the perception that most American citizens have a tax liability when no such liability exists.)
It appears that when we are dealing with “inconvenient truths”, relevant Supreme Court decisions interpreting basic constitutional provisions may just be ignored. This is the mark of the end of the rule of law and the beginning of tyranny.
Does anybody care about the Constitution any longer?
From what we can observe, it would appear that, indeed, almost nobody cares.
A friend posted a message recently on a state Tea Party web site referring to three classes of taxes under the Constitution, including the income tax as the third class of taxes. Mark Levin made a similar statement in his June 28 broadcast following the release of the Roberts decision in the Obamacare case. And of course, our old friends at Fox News, including Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly with their demonstrated ignorance of the Constitution, have repeatedly discussed the income tax as if it were a legitimate third class of taxing authority under the Constitution, free of the tax provisions of Article I.
Brushaber says:
"...the Amendment contains nothing repudiating or challenging the ruling in the Pollock Case (an 1895 Supreme Court decision, Pollock v. Farmer's Loan and Trust Co., ruling that the income tax is unconstitutional)…the purpose (of the Sixteenth Amendment) was not to change the existing interpretation except to the extent necessary to accomplish the result intended... (the purpose was not) to take an income tax out of the class of excises, duties, and imposts, and place it in the class of direct taxes."
[Brushaber v. Union Pacific RR. Co. - 240 U.S. 1 (1916)]
Stanton says:
"...by the previous ruling (Brushaber) it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation subject to apportionment...".
[Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103 (1916)]
Thus the Supreme Court is saying that the income tax is an indirect tax (excise) authorized under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. The 16th amendment “conferred no new power of taxation”.
As such its applicability must be very limited since it must be uniform, and its application must result from the voluntary conduct of taxable actions or activities. The federal gasoline tax is the common example.
The federal income tax as we know it clearly and simply does not qualify as an excise tax under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. It is certainly not uniform, and it is not voluntary despite all the IRS bleating about “voluntary compliance”.
It is also not collected by a third party, which is another significant characteristic of an excise tax.
(In “Cracking the Code”, author Peter Hendrickson identifies certain federally-connected activities involving the exercise of a federal privilege which may create a federal tax liability under the 16th Amendment.)
Furthermore there is no third class of taxes beyond what is authorized in Article I. The analysis of the Sixteenth Amendment in Brushaber is conducted entirely within the context of the Article I taxing authority granted to Congress. The Sixteenth Amendment did not amend or change Article I, just as the Fourteenth Amendment did not amend or change Article II.
The Supreme Court never says, in these cases or in any other case, that a third class of taxes was created by the Sixteenth Amendment. Furthermore, the strange behavior of the IRS and its officials when confronted by these facts indicates that they well know that they are operating outside the bounds of the Constitution. I shudder to think about what new outrages from the IRS may be in our future once the thousands of new IRS agents authorized in the Obamacare legislation get to work harassing the American people.
The parallel to the “natural born citizen” issue, if one exists, is that Article I stands on its own unchanged by the Sixteenth Amendment, just as Article II stands on its own unchanged by the Fourteenth Amendment . Neither of these original articles were changed or modified by the respective amendments. If they had been modified, a specific reference to the related language of the articles in the original Constitution which were being changed would have been required.
Beyond the issue raised by these facts is the whole issue of the fraudulent ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, carried out in a shameless act of fraud against the American people. Bill Benson documented this thoroughly with certified documents from the National Archive and from the archives of each of the state capitals. Many of the states which were listed as having ratified never did so, or even rejected the amendment, while many states altered the language of the proposed amendment which nullified any purported ratification.
In the end it was determined that not ONE single state legitimately and properly ratified the Sixteenth Amendment. As to my own state, there is no record in Sacramento that the State of California ever ratified the Sixteenth Amendment, yet California is listed as one of the ratifying states:
“These four states are among the thirty-eight from which (Secretary of State) Philander Knox claimed ratification:
- California: The legislature never recorded any vote on any proposal to adopt the amendment proposed by Congress.
- Kentucky: The Senate voted on the resolution, but rejected it by a vote of nine in favor and twenty-two opposed.
- Minnesota: The State sent nothing to the Secretary of State in Washington.
- Oklahoma: The Senate amended the language of the 16th Amendment to have a precisely opposite meaning.”
(Bill Benson,”The Law That Never Was”)
Here is a link to a legal brief in the Benson case:
You might want to take the time to view the following video produced by the Freedom Law School:
Video of Conference in Washington D.C. hosted by Bob Schulz / We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education
(to which the IRS was invited and declined to participate):
Bill Benson’s presentation is covered in the first 34 minutes, followed by former IRS CID Special Agent Joe Banister for an additional 25 minutes.
Joe Banister is a CPA who devoted several years to investigating the claims he encountered from Devvy Kidd about the illegal status of the income tax while still an employee of the IRS. He submitted a report to his superiors outlining his devastating conclusions. Instead of responding to his charges of illegal conduct by the agency, his superiors forced him to resign.
The third portion of the video (starting at 1:00:00) contains a presentation by Bill Conklin, author of “Why No One is Required to File Tax Returns”.
The final portion of the conference (starting at 1:26:00) contains an excellent presentation by Attorney Lowell Becraft concerning his representation of Bill Benson in the fraudulent ratification issue. He also discusses the fact that the confusion surrounding the constitutionality of the income tax has created a due process problem for the American people which the courts have refused to address.
Does this sound familiar?
Attorney Becraft has been at the forefront of the tax freedom movement. He worked closely with Attorney Tom Cryer until Tom’s death last month, and has been interviewed numerous times by Joe Banister as listed at the link above.
Note: There is another excellent video series at Tommy Cryer’s web site:
Bob Schulz concludes (at 1:55:00) by saying that “there is no statute - Congress has passed no law compelling people to file income tax returns and pay income taxes”.
He then reviews the powers of taxation incorporated in the Constitution in Article I by the Founders, and a brief history of the key Supreme Court income tax cases.
A perception seems to be well-established that the income tax is legitimate as a third class of constitutionally-based taxing authority created by the Sixteenth Amendment. This is the IRS line, but it is not correct. If this erroneous belief is accepted as truth, undoing the income tax will be immeasurably more difficult.
This belief also leads commentators who should know better (like Bill O'Reilly in his July 2 broadcast) to say that the government can do whatever it wants with taxes, as if Article I of the Constitution does not exist. I can't believe what I am hearing from these so-called conservative commentators.
It is crucial that we get rid of the income tax and the Federal Reserve System as soon as possible in order to force a major restructuring and slimming down of the federal government. Otherwise we will never be able to turn this thing around to get our country back, and to restore constitutional government.
