H. Nicole Young

Nomination of Tobacco references in music for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Tobacco references in music is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tobacco references in music until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Kolbasz (talk) 13:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

H. Nicole Young, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi H. Nicole Young! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Rosiestep (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:03, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

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Speedy deletion nomination of Tobacco references in music

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A tag has been placed on Tobacco references in music, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G4 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted following a deletion debate, such as at articles for deletion. Under the specified criteria, where a page has substantially identical content to that of a page deleted after debate, and any changes in the content do not address the reasons for which the material was previously deleted, it may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:46, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Your latest additions to Talk:Baby, It's Cold Outside

I have moved the comments you made to the Date Rape Controversy section to its own section at the bottom of the page. You can find them at Date Rape Controversy 2. Where you placed them was very confusing. You placed them at the beginning of a section that was 5 years old and made it look like the 5 year old comments were responding to your new comments. Your comments really had nothing to do with the section you placed them in. You should always place the comments below what you are responding to or if this is about something new at the bottom of the talk page in its own section. -- GB fan 16:33, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Much needed overhaul of this article by a student of Constitutional Law

I am a third year law student with a case currently on appeal in the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th District in which I argue, among several other things, that many of the amendments to the Constitution after the first ten amendments (including Amendment 16) are unconstitutional due to a misuse and abuse of the amendment process. The gist of the argument is that the Constitution is a contract between the People and the Government and that the amendment process was never meant as a tool to change essential terms of the contract and throw a wrench into the well-oiled, well-thought out balancing of powers in the Constitution. The amendment process was especially never meant as a veto power granted to the legislative branch to overrule the decisions of the judicial branch and undermine the power of the Supreme Court. In fact, the Framers most likely intended the opposite of this so that any result of the amendment process, which by any definition is necessarily a law under the Constitution of the United States, must come under review for constitutionality by the judicial branch and by the Supreme Court of the United States in particular. Otherwise what is to stop legislators from removing essential terms of the Constitutional contract, such as specific restrictions placed on state and federal legislators in their power to tax citizens (e.g., Amendment 16 removes an important restriction placed on federal legislators alone that all direct taxes by the federal government must be apportioned - a restriction that was purposely not placed on state legislators when the terms of the Constitutional contract were originally agreed upon and a restriction that was deliberately shielded from being modified or removed in Article V of the Constitution) or why not even remove the entire judicial branch of the government altogether? Are the reasoning and logic of voters who are not charged with guarding the Constitution and who cannot possibly possess all the relevant facts of an issue supposed to keep legislators in check? I don't think so. Reason and logic (and access to all of the relevant facts of an issue) are tools of the judicial branch that are to be used in its charge to protect the Constitution. In fact reason, logic, relevant facts, and the charge of being the final say on the Constitution are really all the judicial branch has by way of power (the legislative branch is backed by the power of money and the executive branch is backed by the power of the police and the military). Nevertheless, I believe reason, logic, and facts will prevail over all else in the end when the Supreme Court eventually strikes down Amendment 16 as unconstitutional, as it has the complete power to do and as it should do because Amendment 16 is repugnant to the terms of Constitutional contract as originally stipulated to by the Framers. Most of the filings supporting these arguments are available at http://rights4families.wordpress.com

My personal views on the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions in Pollock

I recently read Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust for the first time. I found the majority opinion by Justice Fuller to be one of the best argued, best reasoned opinions I have ever read. Unfortunately, this Wikipedia article in its original form did not reflect this at all. I learned so much about the taxing schemes in the Constitution from his writing -- like the fact that the Constitution (as written and fully intended by the Framers before the 16th Amendment) had required only the federal government to levy direct taxes in accordance to the rules of apportionment, not the state governments. In addition, only the federal government was required to levy indirect taxes in accordance to the rules of uniformity. The state governments had neither of these restrictions on taxation. However, the state governments were instead banned from levying most duties on imports (indirect taxes) as this power was left exclusively for the federal government with few narrowly defined exceptions. This was a tough power for the states to give up to the federal government because levying duties on imports is something they had always done prior to adopting the Constitution. The intent of the Framers was to strike a compromise and achieve a natural balance of taxing power where direct taxation (e.g., capitation taxes and income taxes) was a power the state governments possessed to a greater extent than the federal government, and indirect taxation (e.g., duties, excises, imposts) was a power the federal government possessed to a greater extent than the state governments. The unfortunate effect of the 16th Amendment was that the federal government was given far too much power to impose unrestricted, unapportioned direct taxes on citizens thereby encroaching on the states' territory with regard to direct taxation so that now, a hundred years after Amendment 16, a vast majority of the federal government's revenue is from unrestricted direct taxation. Not good, imho! Not to mention one of the biggest fears of the Framers of the Constitution seems to have come to pass since they believed "the power to tax is the power to destroy" and were very particular about this power being carefully balanced and restricted for both the federal and the state governments. By the way, I did not read any of information about the history of taxation in a text book or in a law book. All this information was from Fuller's well-cited and documented opinion for this case.

In contrast to the majority opinion, I found the dissenting opinions to be a hot mess of irrelevant case listings, unsubstantiated facts or opinions, and untestable hypotheses. Apparently, the dissenters were following a (seemingly favored and accepted?) practice among some editors here at Wikipedia that says that the information with the greatest number of citations from respectable sources is to be considered the most important, most factual, and most relevant information presented. This method was accepted for a time in the American justice system as a way for judges unfamiliar with the scientific evidence being presented in their courtroom to determine what evidence would be allowed during trial [it is actually called the Frye general acceptance test, named after the case expounding this method - Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923)]. However, this method has since been superseded in the federal court system and most state systems by the Daubert scientific validity test [from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993)], where a majority opinion by experts is considered only one of many factors that may be used in determining the quality of scientific evidence, some other factors being the testability of the evidence and whether the evidence has been subjected to peer review. Under Daubert, one peer reviewed paper expounding a testable opinion or fact would be far more acceptable than an untestable opinion supported by 300 experts in textbooks and magazine articles. I only mention this because I anticipate I may meet some resistance from some Wikipedia editors in trying to improve this article, and I only hope the Wikipedia editors on appeal will follow acceptable modern methods of presenting reliable information about a subject and not automatically favor the practice of going out and listing as many irrelevant citations from reputable journals as possible to make the article look good on paper.

Arguing about how to argue

I can tell the dissenters in this case were relying mostly on the above method of argument (i.e., whoever has the most citations wins regardless of relevancy) and were banking on non-lawyers reading the dissenting opinions and being impressed with the seemingly long lists of cases and professional opinions cited purportedly in favor of the dissenters' arguments. It frustrated me seeing this in contrast with Fuller's well argued opinion. Fuller cited fewer cases than the dissenters, but his citations were highly relevant so that he focused on reasoning and quality of argument rather than quantity of citations, as a Supreme Court justice should. In fact it can be said that the biggest issue in this case was not that "income taxes were considered direct taxes", which was a well-established fact by 1894 anyway and really not the revolutionary holding that the dissenters made it out to be. The biggest issue was in the way the dissenters were presenting their arguments. Fuller was following standard Supreme Court protocol for making rulings deciding Constitutional issues: First look to see what other cases had similar facts to the case in question and see what justices have decided before (i.e., invoking the legal principle of stare decises), and if stare decisis proves insufficient because the facts do not match up well or because the reasoning used by the justices is flawed, look to the words of the Constitution and especially what the Framers' intentions were in writing the part of the Constitution in question. The dissenters rejected this method entirely (probably because it proved to be fatal to their arguments) and instead chose to stay stuck in the stare decises mode of arguing despite there not being a single case cited (neither in centuries of cases in Great Britain nor a hundred years' worth of cases since the adoption of the Constitution) that said that income taxes were to be considered anything other than direct taxes. In answer to Fuller's well cited, well reasoned arguments that the Framers of the Constitution fully intended the federal government to focus only on specific kinds of indirect taxes like excises, duties, and imports and stay out of the business of levying income taxes altogether, the dissenters basically replied: "This is not true because we have a laundry list of irrelevant cases that have nothing to do with our arguments but we nevertheless say they prove the federal government can tax incomes without any restrictions." This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. By the end of his opinion on the re-hearing of the case, Fuller seemed weary of the unreasonable methods of arguing employed by his dissenters and their persistence in throwing up laundry lists of irrelevant cases that he was repeatedly forced to address. Fuller writes:

Differences have often occurred in this court -- differences exist now -- but there has never been a time in its history when there has been a difference of opinion as to its duty to announce its deliberate conclusions unaffected by considerations not pertaining to the case in hand.

Apparently, Fuller had never before seen an instance where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was forced to argue so much about how to argue.

Justice Field and Justice Fuller's arguments establishing income taxes are direct taxes

The unprofessional method of arguing by the dissenters apparently frustrated concurring justice Stephen J. Field as well. He seemed miffed that he had to go out and play the dissenters' game of listing citations ad nauseam to establish an already well-established fact for something that was really only a side issue in the case anyway and possibly meant to be a distraction by the dissenters. At least Field did his job very well since unlike the dissenters, Field's citations were relevant to the argument he was charged with supporting, which is that real estate values had always included real estate incomes (e.g., rents, etc) when being taxed and had always been considered direct taxes, both in Great Britain and in the US [mostly with state governments since the Constitution purposely made income taxes (direct taxes) inconvenient for the federal government], at least up until the United States Congress, for the first time in documented history, levied unapportioned income taxes in 1861 to support Civil War efforts. Justice Field was so miffed he didn't even concede to the "let's agree to disagree" dictum and pretty much openly accused the dissenters of politicking and game playing. Field writes:

"As stated, the rents and income of real property are included in the designation of direct taxes as part of the real property. Such has been the law in England for centuries, and in this country from the early settlement of the colonies, and it is strange that any member of the legal profession should, at this day, question a doctrine which has always been thus accepted by common law lawyers. It is so declared in approved treatises upon real property and in accepted authorities on particular branches of real estate law, and has been so announced in decisions in the English courts and our own courts without number…

One may have the reports of the English courts examined for several centuries without finding a single decision or even a dictum of their judges in conflict with them. And what answer do we receive to these adjudications? Those rejecting them furnish no proof that the framers of the Constitution did not follow them, as the great body of the people of the country then did. An incident which occurred in this court and room twenty years ago may have become a precedent. To a powerful argument then being made by a distinguished counsel on a public question, one of the judges exclaimed that there was a conclusive answer to his position, and that was that the court was of a different opinion. Those who decline to recognize the adjudications cited may likewise consider that they have a conclusive answer to them in the fact that they also are of a different opinion. I do not think so. The law as expounded for centuries cannot be set aside or disregarded because some of the judges are now of a different opinion from those who, a century ago, followed it in framing our Constitution. Hamilton, speaking on the subject, asks: "What, in fact, is property but a fiction without the beneficial use of it?" And adds: "In many cases, indeed, the income or annuity is the property itself." 3 Hamilton's Works, Putnam's ed. 34."

Fuller also did his part in supporting the argument that income taxes were always considered direct taxes by dispelling erroneous claims by dissenters that during arguments for Hylton v. United States, 3 Dall. 171 (1796) Alexander Hamilton had claimed that a tax on personal property (carriages) was both an income tax and an excise (indirect) tax, proving that Alexander Hamilton considered income taxes as indirect taxes. In fact, the important point of the final ruling by the Supreme Court in the Hylton case was that the carriage tax was considered a usage tax (an excise tax) on carriages and specifically not an income tax. Alexander Hamilton agreed with this ruling mostly because he relied on what the laws of Great Britain had defined a similar carriage tax to be -- an excise tax. Fuller pointed out that by the same token (i.e., by looking to the laws of Great Britain for definitions), an income tax is a direct tax. Fuller writes (of Hamilton's arguments in the Hylton case):

"Mr. Hamilton also argued: 'If the meaning of the word 'excise' is to be sought in a British statute, it will be found to include the duty on carriages, which is there considered as an 'excise.' . . . Where so important a distinction in the Constitution is to be realized, it is fair to seek the meaning of terms in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived.' If the question had related to an income tax, the reference would have been fatal, as such taxes have been always classed by the law of Great Britain as direct taxes."

Fuller added more references to the fact that income taxes had always been considered direct taxes in England in his opinion in the re-hearing as follows:

"In England, we do not understand that an income tax has ever been regarded as other than a direct tax. In Dowell's History of Taxation and Taxes in England, admitted to be the leading authority, the evolution of taxation in that country is given, and an income tax is invariably classified as a direct tax. 3 Dowell (1884) 103, 126. The author refers to the grant of a fifteenth and tenth and a graduated income tax in 1435, and to many subsequent comparatively ancient statutes as income tax laws. 1 Dowell, 121. I t is objected that the taxes imposed by these acts were not, scientifically speaking, income taxes at all, and that, although there was a partial income tax in 1758, there was no general income tax until Pitt's of 1799. Nevertheless, the income taxes levied by these modern acts, Pitt's, Addington's, Petty's, Peel's, and by existing laws are all classified as direct taxes; and, so far as the income tax we are considering is concerned, that view is concurred in by the cyolopaedists, the lexicographers, and the political economists, and generally by the classification of European governments wherever an income tax obtains."

How Justice Fuller and the majority viewed taxes on employment income

Although the categorization of income taxes as direct or indirect proved to be irrelevant when Fuller ruled in the re-hearing that the Income Tax Law of 1894 in its current form with so many exemptions was unconstitutional either way (described below), it may be useful to note here what Fuller thought about a specific type of income tax -- taxes on employment income -- since in modern times (and as a result of the passage of the 16th Amendment) this is now an inescapable, involuntary tax for all U.S. citizens (which is the very definition of what the Framers thought a tax should not be) and now makes up a vast majority of federal revenues. At times Fuller implied that income taxes on employment are to be considered direct taxes...

At the time the Constitution was framed and adopted, under the systems of direct taxation of many of the States, taxes were laid on incomes from professions, business, or employments, as well as from "offices and places of profit...

and later... They were, of course, familiar with the modes of taxation pursued in the several States. From the report of Oliver Wolcott, when Secretary of the Treasury, on direct taxes, to the House of Representatives, December 14, 1796, his most important state paper, (Am.State Papers, 1 Finance 431) and the various state laws then existing, it appears that, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, nearly all the States imposed a poll tax, taxes on land, on cattle of all kinds, and various kinds of personal property, and that, in addition, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia, and South Carolina assessed their citizens upon their profits from professions, trades, and employments.

while other times Fuller indicated that employment income taxes might be considered excise taxes and therefore indirect taxes, as when Fuller cited the opinion of the Court by Justice Swayne in Springer v. United States, 102 U. S. 586, 102 U. S. 602 (1881)...

The opinion thus concludes: "Our conclusions are that direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that instrument, and taxes on real estate, and that the tax of which the plaintiff in error complains is within the category of an excise or duty." While this language is broad enough to cover the interest as well as the professional earnings, the case would have been more significant as a precedent if the distinction had been brought out in the report and commented on in arriving at judgment, for a tax on professional receipts might be treated as an excise or duty, and therefore indirect, when a tax on the income of personalty might be held to be direct.

In the end the Court never made a ruling on this issue. This may have been partly because the specific issue of employment income was not presented in the case before the Court (and the Court frowns on making rulings on hypothetical cases and facts) or partly because, at the time, employment income taxes made up such a small fraction of total income tax revenue relative to taxes on property rents, stock dividends, and bond interest, which were the main subject of the ruling. However, the Court lists as its main reason for not making a decision is that there were sufficient examples of employment income taxes being considered direct taxes in some cases and indirect taxes in others to bar a definitive ruling, so the Court left the issue open for future debate. Fuller writes:

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.

Justice White in later cases cited the Court's decision not to make a decision as evidence that the Court considered all income taxes on employment as indirect excise taxes, though this was an erroneous conclusion.

The most important issues according to Justice Fuller

Fuller rejected the dissenting argument by Justice White that income taxes, which are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, do not fall into either category of direct taxes or indirect taxes and that the federal government was therefore free to tax incomes without any restrictions (neither the restriction of uniformity for indirect taxes nor the restriction of apportionment for direct taxes). In addition to extensive arguments that there was no evidence for this, neither in the intentions of the Framers found in the Federalist Papers during the writing of the Constitution nor in the text of the Constitution itself, Fuller noted White had not given any supporting arguments or examples to support this claim, despite governments continuously looking for new ways to raise revenue. Fuller writes:

"And although there have been from time to time intimations that there might be some tax which was not a direct tax nor included under the words "duties, imposts and excises," such a tax, for more than one hundred years of national existence, has as yet remained undiscovered, notwithstanding the stress of particular circumstances has invited thorough investigation into sources of revenue."

The majority opinion therefore agreed that there are only two types of taxes allowed in the Constitution, direct taxes and indirect taxes (specifically -- duties, excises, and imposts), and that income taxes fell under the category of direct taxes. As it turns out (as described below), only the first part of this decision was of real consequence since it was ruled in the rehearing that the act in question was unconstitutional regardless of whether income taxes were categorized as direct taxes or indirect taxes. The Court argued that the intended result of the taxing restrictions placed on the federal government by the Framers of the Constitution for both direct and indirect taxes was to put up barriers discouraging the federal government from levying any kind of income tax and to encourage the federal government to stick with duties, excises (including consumption taxes) and imposts for its revenues.

In answer to arguments by dissenters that income taxes had been levied by the federal government over thirty years before in 1861 without complaint, the Court was quick to point out that this was the first time since the Constitution was ratified that income taxes had been levied by the federal government and only the fourth time that direct taxes (i.e., something other than duties, excises, and imposts) had been levied. In all four instances the direct taxes were levied by the federal government in an emergency situation to raise revenue quickly for war efforts (the tax in 1861 being levied to raise money for the Civil War), and in all four instances a time limit was placed on the tax making it clear that it was only a temporary tax that was to end when the war ended. By contrast the Income Tax Act of 1894 marked the first time since the ratification of the Constitution that a direct tax (including an income tax) was attempted by the federal government during peace time. This is what brought on the current complaint and what concerned the Court the most since it appeared the federal government had gotten a taste of how easy it was to raise revenue quickly through unconstitutional income taxes under a special "emergency situation" in 1861, and the Court wanted to prevent the federal government from becoming addicted to a cash cow of revenue that the federal government was purposely restricted from tapping into because of the danger of violating fundamental financial rights of citizens and of the state governments.

Fuller succinctly summarized what he considered the most important preliminary findings and conclusions of the Court prior to making its final decisions on key issues of the case, rounding off his list with probably his most important finding, which is that the Framers of the Constitution intended for the federal government to stay out of the business of taxing incomes except as a last resort in emergency situations (such as war), and the Framers purposely made it impracticable for the federal government to levy income taxes as a main source of revenue during peace time. Fuller writes:

From the foregoing, it is apparent: 1. That the distinction between direct and indirect taxation was well understood by the framers of the Constitution and those who adopted it. 2. That, under the state systems of taxation, all taxes on real estate or personal property or the rents or income thereof were regarded as direct taxes. 3. That the rules of apportionment and of uniformity were adopted in view of that distinction and those systems. 4. That whether the tax on carriages was direct or indirect was disputed, but the tax was sustained as a tax on the use and an excise. 5. That the original expectation was that the power of direct taxation would be exercised only in extraordinary exigencies, and down to August 1894, this expectation has been realized. The act of that date was passed in a time of profound peace, and if we assume that no special exigency called for unusual legislation, and that resort to this mode of taxation is to become an ordinary and usual means of supply, that fact furnishes an additional reason for circumspection and care in disposing of the case."

What was decided in the re-hearing of the case: The majority now agrees that exemptions break the rules of uniformity

The original ruling was very narrow in that it only addressed income taxes on real property and did not address income taxes on personal property like stocks and bonds. Some issues, such as whether the entire act would be deemed unconstitutional, remained undecided by an equally divided court. Also, because the ruling specifically treated income taxes as direct taxes, the Court did not address the issue of whether the income taxes in the Act, if they had been deemed indirect taxes, would have met the Constitutional requirement of uniformity. This is despite Justice Field giving an extensive argument in his concurring opinion that exemptions to indirect taxes render these taxes non-uniform and in violation of the Constitution (the majority finally adopted this view on the rehearing as described below). The appellants requested a rehearing to address some unaddressed issues from the original hearing, namely (as written in the opening statements of the opinion for the rehearing):

"(1) Whether the void provisions invalidate the whole act."

"(2) Whether, as to the income from personal property as such, the act is unconstitutional as laying direct taxes."

"(3) Whether any part of the tax, if not considered as a direct tax, is invalid for want of uniformity."

Upon re-hearing the case the court ruled the entire act was invalidated (issue 1) because the parts of the law that had been invalidated removed such a large part of the total revenues sought by Congress and had been so intertwined with the rest of the Act that what was left could not accurately reflect the original intent of Congress. The Court also ruled that personal property was like real property and the income taxes on both were considered direct taxes (issue 2). As for the third issue, the Supreme Court usually restricts itself from answering hypothetical questions because a full accounting of all the relevant facts of a real case, not a hypothetical, is needed to make a reasonably informed decision. However, the Court found enough ground to venture carefully into a hypothetical in this case to answer the third question of whether the Income Tax Law of 1894 would, hypothetically, violate the Constitutional requirement for uniformity if income taxes were considered indirect taxes. Fuller writes:

Figures drawn from the census are given showing that enormous assets of mutual insurance companies, of building associations, of mutual savings banks, large productive property of ecclesiastical organizations are exempted, and it is claimed that the exemptions reach so many hundred millions that the rate of taxation would perhaps have been reduced one-half if they had not been made. We are not dealing with the act from that point of view; but, assuming the data to be substantially reliable, if the sum desired to be raised had been apportioned, it may be doubted whether any State which paid its quota and collected the amount by its own methods would, or could under its constitution, have allowed a large part of the property alluded to to escape taxation.

Fuller "doubted" that the states who had restrictions written in their own constitutions that income taxes had to be levied according to the rules of uniformity could have been able to sustain a tax that had so many exemptions (and he even doubted that states without such restrictions would pass such a tax even if they could -- probably for political reasons). The strong implication is that an income tax with exemptions is not uniform, and if the exemptions reach the levels of exemptions found in the Income Tax Act of 1894, the law would be struck down as a violation of Constitution in its requirement that indirect federal taxes be levied with uniformity. The tentative answer to the third issue is therefore, yes, if the federal income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 were categorized as indirect taxes, the Act would still be struck down because so many exemption would put the law in violation of the requirement that federal indirect taxes be levied uniformly.

Although it was not counted as a majority opinion, Justice Field's concurring opinion in the original ruling had the most extensive discussion about the requirement of uniformity for indirect taxes, a subject which he considered of equal importance as the requirement for apportionment on direct taxes. While it was generally accepted that uniformity included the requirement that the tax had to be applied equally in all the states, Field expanded the definition of uniformity to mean there were no exemptions or special treatments for certain classes of people, including exemptions for poverty. Field writes:

Cooley, in his treatise on Taxation (2d ed. 215), justly observes that: "It is difficult to conceive of a justifiable exemption law which should select single individuals or corporations, or single articles of property, and, taking them out of the class to which they belong, make them the subject of capricious legislative favor. Such favoritism could make no pretence to equality; it would lack the semblance of legitimate tax legislation." The income tax law under consideration is marked by discriminating features which affect the whole law. It discriminates between those who receive an income of four thousand dollars and those who do not. It thus vitiates, in my judgment, by this arbitrary discrimination, the whole legislation.

These arguments were never mentioned by Justice White in his subsequent opinions in which he concluded that only geographic uniformity was required for indirect taxes without consideration for the number or types of exemptions in the tax. The first such case was Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41 (1900) and because the ruling that exemptions violated the rules of uniformity was officially a majority opinion in Pollock, I have listed Knowlton v. Moore as as overruling Pollock, in part.

One final point is that there was a separate holding, upheld in the re-hearing, concerning taxes on interest income from government bonds that has nothing to do with categorizing taxes as direct or indirect. The Income Tax of 1894 allowed the federal government to levy a tax on interest income from state bonds. It was pretty well settled in the Court's earlier arguments that taxes on income from any property (real or personal, including bonds) have always been considered for centuries as a tax on the underlying property itself and that taxes on incomes from state bonds is no different -- these taxes would be viewed as a tax on the state bond itself. From here it was straightforward for the Court to use the principle of stare decises to rule that federal taxes on incomes from state bonds (i.e., taxes on state bonds) violate the Constitution because earlier case law and arguments having to do with state and federal sovereignty had established that state and local government bonds cannot be taxed by the federal government (and likewise federal government bonds cannot be taxed by state governments). Apparently these arguments were overruled in a 1988 Supreme Court decision for reasons I have yet to investigate and include in the discussion here.

Changes to the article

The most critical misstatement I came across in the article and here in the talk section (and it is even included to some extent on the case summary template on the side of the article) is as follows:

"The Court held that although generally income taxes are indirect taxes (excises) authorized by the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, taxes on interest, dividends and rents in the 1894 Act had a profound effect on the underlying assets. The Court ruled that the tax on dividends, interest and rent should be viewed as a direct tax, as they fell on the property itself, rather than as an indirect tax."

There are several problems with this statement. First, the Court ruled the exact opposite -- that income taxes have always been thought of as direct taxes, as Justice Field writes and as Fuller also writes in several places for both the original opinion and the opinion on the re-hearing. Second, direct taxes (not just indirect taxes) are authorized by the United States Constitution, though the statement implies they are not, and the important point is not that these taxes are authorized anyway, but that restrictions are placed on the federal government for levying both types of taxes. Third, no distinction is made between federal income taxes and state income taxes even though this distinction lies at the very heart of the issue in this case (the categorization of income taxes as direct or indirect is only important for the federal government and makes no difference for the states as there are no restrictions on the state governments with regard to either type of tax). Fourth (and perhaps the most critical), the court ruled in the re-hearing that even if the federal income taxes in this act were to be categorized as indirect taxes, they would most likely be ruled unconstitutional because there are so many exemptions granted to certain businesses and churches that the federal income taxes as applied in this act, when including all the exemptions, would likely not pass the requirement of "uniformity" placed on the federal government for indirect taxes.

I have rewritten the problematic sentence above to address all of the listed issues as follows:

The Court ruled that all federal taxes under the Constitution fall into one of two categories: Direct taxes that are to be apportioned according to Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 or indirect taxes that are to be levied uniformly according to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. The Income Tax Act of 1894 violated both of these provisions because direct taxes were not apportioned and indirect taxes were not applied uniformly.

The method I relied on in improving the rest of the article is roughly based on the case briefing method where important facts relevant to the case are listed out (usually as outlined by the writer of the majority opinion), important issues are delineated and listed in the form of a single sentenced yes or no questions, yes or no answers (i.e., the holding) for each issue is given, then arguments in support of or in dissent of the ruling are given. Concurring opinions agree for the most part with the majority but expand on some points or list out important distinctions and disagreements with either the facts or the reasoning. Dissenting opinions disagree with the majority opinion and usually attack both the facts presented and the reasoning, though I did not observe either of these things being attacked by the dissenters in this case in any significant way, making a bulk of the dissenting opinions irrelevant. However, this is a conclusion that is left up the readers of the Article to decide. Such conclusions only become evident when the above method is employed in presenting the facts, issues, and arguments of a case, where the dissenting arguments are presented alongside the majority arguments for easy comparison for each issue. I understand a case brief is not a Wikipedia article and the article has to be written more in lay terms. The brief outline is simply a good starting point for understanding the important aspects of the case and in outlining the article for presentation.

What was removed

The section entitled "Before Pollock" was removed as confusing and irrelevant in light of the fact that it not only mentioned some things that occurred after Pollock, but in selectively mentioned the Revenue Act of 1861 without any context as to how this was significant to the current case.

The section entitled Decision was replaced by a section entitled Facts, issues, and holdings that more accurately delineates the facts, issues, and holdings in the case as outlined in the majority opinions from both the original hearing and the re-hearing. It was decided not to make a major issue of the fact that some of the issues were decided in the re-hearing since the re-hearing did not change any previous rulings, but simply expanded on them and resolved previously unresolved issues in the first hearing. The most significant difference in the new version from the old version of this section is that it is clearer in the new version that the issue of whether income taxes were to be categorized as direct taxes was only one of several important rulings in the case.

The first part of the section entitled Subsequent history was removed as more opinion than fact and somewhat irrelevant (e.g., "the ruling was unpopular" is always a red flag for biased information because it does not answer the question: Unpopular according to whom?) and the subsection entitled "Subsequent court treatments of Pollock and the Sixteenth Amendment" starts this section now and actually replaces the main heading. I have not reviewed this area in depth though I suspect just from a cursory look at Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad that this section will probably need some updating as well, possibly focusing more on the aspect of the Constitution that was not changed by Amendment 16 -- the requirement that indirect federal taxes be uniform.

The significance of the ruling that the Income Tax Act of 1894, at least in its original form with so many exemptions, would be deemed unconstitutional even if income taxes were considered indirect excise taxes becomes evident once it is realized that the 16th Amendment does not remove the restriction that federal indirect taxes be levied uniformly. The 16th Amendment only removes the restriction that federal direct taxes be levied according to apportionment. Therefore, if federal income taxes are to be considered indirect taxes, the hundreds of exemptions and deductions granted in current federal income tax laws, including differing tax rates according to income, may render the entire federal income tax system unconstitutional regardless of the 16th Amendment because such an unequal application of the tax puts the tax in violation of the uniformity requirements in the Constitution. Only state governments are allowed to apply both direct and indirect taxes so unevenly. I believe attempts to overturn this important conclusion -- or render it moot -- were carried out by Justice White when he replaced Justice Fuller (after Fuller's death in 2010) as chief justice of the Supreme Court, but a cursory glance at subsequent rulings by White suggest he may have repeated the same unreasonable, irrelevant arguments during his tenure as chief justice from 2010-2024 as he presented here in his dissenting arguments to this ruling. I am not looking forward to critiquing all those opinions. I am already more weary of White's methods of arguing than even Fuller was just from studying this one case! In fact I am now of the opinion that Justice White is one of only two men in history who together have probably done more damage to our Constitution, to our country, and probably even to the world over the last two centuries than anybody excepting Adolf Hitler, and even Hitler probably learned everything he knew about violating fundamental rights from Jackson and White. President Andrew Jackson could have schooled Hilter on how to attack fundamental personal rights in a Constitution in such a way as to allow a holocaust to take place right under everybody's noses with their complicity -- in Germany it was the Jewish Holocaust, and in the United States it is the current Black Holocaust, as described elsewhere (http://rights4families.wordpress.com). Then there is Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, Jr. (Justice White), whose similar attacks on fundamental financial rights in the Constitution resulted in so much corporate and government corruption that White's rulings probably brought on the Great Depression and continue to be the main source of corporate and government corruption to this day. White could have schooled Hitler on how to dupe citizens (through control of the media and through certain key government actions like the 16th Amendment) into agreeing to fund the violations of their own personal rights on a massive scale. So what is the source of all this hatred and destruction? I suspect the main driving force motivating the actions of all three men -- Jackson, White, and Hitler -- is that they were all three self-loathing closeted gay men who, because they had their most fundamental right to marry the person they loved stripped away from them early and often, turned their anger and resentment toward stripping others of their fundamental rights, as is usually the case when fundamental rights are being violated. While this theory may seem misplaced here, I can think of nothing more relevant (and more helpful) to the understanding of the rulings in this case and of the dissenting opinions in particular. Also, calling these statements homophobic is like calling Eratosthenes' factual reporting of the earth's circumference "flat-earth-aphobic."

Full copy of the overhauled article

US Constitutional Tax Law

DEFAULTSORT:Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. Category:United States Supreme Court cases Category:Taxing and Spending Clause case law Category:1895 in United States case law Category:Overruled United States Supreme Court decisions Category:Abrogated United States Supreme Court decisions Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Fuller Court Infobox SCOTUS case Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), affirmed on rehearing, 158 U.S. 601 (1895), with a ruling of 5–4, was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that all taxes under the Constitution necessarily fell into one of two categories, direct or indirect. While the states were not restricted in how these two types of taxes were to be levied, the federal government was restricted in its manner of levying both types of taxes. Direct federal taxes were to be apportioned according to the provisions in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 (as reiterated in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4), and indirect federal taxes were to be levied uniformly according the provisions in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. The Income Tax Act of 1894 violated both of these provisions: Direct taxes, which included all income taxes on rents, interest, and dividends, were not apportioned, and indirect taxes, because of all the exemptions applied, were not levied uniformly. Despite a shield being put in place by the Framers of the Constitution in Article V preventing Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 from being modified or changed during the amendment and ratification process, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1913) struck down the requirement in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 that all direct federal taxes be apportioned, rendering the part of the decision in this case concerning direct taxes moot. The ruling that exemptions to indirect taxes violate the requirement of uniformity was later overruled by Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41, where it was ruled that purely geographic considerations were enough to meet the requirement of uniformity. A separate holding regarding the taxation of interest income on government bonds was overruled by the Supreme Court in 1988 in the case of South Carolina v. Baker.

Background

The provisions of the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act of 1894 (also known as the Income Tax Act of 1894) required that for a five-year period, any "gains, profits and incomes" in excess of $4,000 would be taxed at 2%. The Act represented the first time in over a hundred years since the ratification of the Constitution that an income tax had been levied by the federal government during peace time.

In compliance with the Act, the New York-based Farmers' Loan & Trust Company announced to its shareholders that it would not only pay the tax but also provide, to the collector of internal revenue in the Department of the Treasury, the names of all people for whom the company was acting and thus were liable for being taxed under the Act.

Charles Pollock was a Massachusetts citizen who owned only ten shares of stock in the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company. He sued the company on behalf of himself and all other shareholders in the company to prevent the company from paying the tax. He lost in the lower courts but finally appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

Arguing for Pollock was Joseph Hodges Choate, one of the most eminent Wall Street lawyers of his day.

The Court handed down its decision on April 8, 1895, with Chief Justice Melville Fuller delivering the opinion of the Court.

Facts, issues, and holdings

Facts

At the time of the Income Tax Act of 1894 (prior to the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913) the United States Constitution placed two major restrictions on the federal government in levying taxes -- apportionment and uniformity. These restrictions were not placed on taxes levied by the state governments. The applicable restriction depended on whether the federal tax was categorized as a direct tax or as an indirect tax, respectively.

There are two provisions in the Constitution as originally ratified that require direct federal taxes to be levied according to the rules of apportionment: Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 provides, "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers..." and Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 reiterates this provision with, "No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken." Furthermore, a provision in Article V shielded Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 from being modified during the amendment and ratification process as follows: "Provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article."

For indirect taxes, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 requires indirect federal taxes to be applied according to the rules of uniformity: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

According to Pollock many of the income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 were direct taxes subject to the rules of apportionment, and because the rules of apportionment were not applied, the direct taxes in the Act violated Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. Furthermore, Pollock claimed that the income taxes in the Act that were not categorized as direct taxes were necessarily categorized as indirect taxes and were subject to the rules of uniformity, but because the rules of uniformity were also not applied, the remaining indirect taxes in the Act violated Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. The ultimate claim by Pollock was that it was irrelevant how the income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 were categorized, the entire Act was in violation of the Constitution because the federal income taxes were neither apportioned nor applied uniformly.

According to the opposition, because income taxes are not mentioned by name anywhere in the Constitution and because the provision in Article 1 Section 8 Clause 1 does not specify the term "direct taxes" (i.e., only the general term "taxes" and three well-established indirect taxes -- duties, imposts, and excises -- are mentioned) there is a third category of general taxes in the Constitution into which income taxes fall and which is subject neither to the restriction of apportionment nor to uniformity. Therefore, like the state governments, the federal government was free to tax incomes at will. Furthermore, if the restrictions in the Constitution were applied to income taxes, it would make it practically impossible for the federal government to levy any income tax at all, and it was doubted the Framers of the Constitution intended this. Even if income taxes had to be categorized as one the other (direct or indirect), the early Court and Framers of the Constitution like Alexander Hamilton had categorized income taxes on carriages as indirect taxes, not direct taxes, in the landmark case of Hylton v. United States, 3 Dall. 171 (1796). Finally, the federal government had previously levied income taxes in the Revenue Act of 1861 without issue despite the income taxes in that Act being neither apportioned nor applied uniformly.

Issues

Given these facts the Court set out to address the main issues of the case by answering the following questions:

1. Is there a third category of taxes in the Constitution other than direct or indirect that income taxes fall under?
2. If there are only two categories of taxes in the Constitution -- direct or indirect -- were the income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894, including taxes on rents, interest and dividends, considered direct taxes or indirect taxes?
3. Did the Framers of the Constitution intentionally hinder the federal government from levying income taxes, regardless of whether they were categorized as direct or indirect?
4. Were there any direct taxes the Income Tax Act of 1894 in violation of the requirement that direct federal taxes be levied in accordance with the rules of apportionment?
5. Were there any indirect taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 in violation of the requirement that indirect federal taxes be levied in accordance with the rules of uniformity?

Before making a final ruling on the issues, the Court made some preliminary determinations based on what had been decided in previous cases with similar facts (i.e., invoking the principle of stare decises) and based on what the Framers of the Constitution had intended when writing the clauses concerning taxation. Justice Fuller, writing for the majority, states:

"From the foregoing, it is apparent: 1. That the distinction between direct and indirect taxation was well understood by the framers of the Constitution and those who adopted it. 2. That, under the state systems of taxation, all taxes on real estate or personal property or the rents or income thereof were regarded as direct taxes. 3. That the rules of apportionment and of uniformity were adopted in view of that distinction and those systems. 4. That whether the tax on carriages (in regard to the Hylton case) was direct or indirect was disputed, but the tax was sustained as a tax on the use and an excise. 5. That the original expectation was that the power of direct taxation would be exercised only in extraordinary exigencies, and down to August 1894, this expectation has been realized. The act of that date was passed in a time of profound peace, and if we assume that no special exigency called for unusual legislation, and that resort to this mode of taxation is to become an ordinary and usual means of supply, that fact furnishes an additional reason for circumspection and care in disposing of the case."

Holdings

Based on case law, the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution, and application of the provisions of the Constitution regarding taxation to the facts of the case, the majority concluded with the following holdings on the issues:

1. Is there a third category of taxes in the Constitution other than direct or indirect that income taxes fall under? Answer: No, taxes in the Constitution fall under only one of two categories -- direct or indirect.
2. If there are only two categories of taxes in the Constitution -- direct or indirect -- were the income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894, including taxes on rents, interest and dividends, considered direct taxes or indirect taxes? Answer: Direct taxes. Income taxes had been considered direct taxes for centuries by the common law in Great Britain, by the colonist before the Constitution, and also by the Framers of the Constitution.
3. Did the Framers of the Constitution intentionally hinder the federal government from levying income taxes, regardless of whether they were categorized as direct or indirect? Answer: Yes, in consideration for the states giving up most of their power to impose indirect taxes (e.g., duties, excises, and imposts), the federal government had to give up most of its power to impose direct taxes (e.g., capitation taxes and income taxes), striking a compromise in the formation of a new government under the laws of the Constitution and leaving a majority of the power to impose income taxes to the states.
4. Were there any direct taxes the Income Tax Act of 1894 in violation of the requirement that direct federal taxes be levied in accordance with the rules of apportionment? Yes, none of the taxes in the Act were levied according to the rules of apportionment, so every direct tax in the Act was in violation of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3.
5. Were there any indirect taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 in violation of the requirement that indirect federal taxes be levied in accordance with the rules of uniformity? Yes, because of so many exemptions, none of the taxes in the Act were levied according to the rules of uniformity, so every indirect tax in the Act was in violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1.

Arguments

Issue 1: Is there a third category of taxes other than direct or indirect in the Constitution?

The Constitution only mentions direct taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. There is no mention of indirect taxes. However, it was long established and conceded by both sides that duties, imposts, and excises fall exclusively under the major category of taxes known as indirect taxes.

The term income tax is also not mentioned, and one of the issues to be decided by the Court for this case (below) was whether income taxes were to be categorized as direct taxes or as one of the indirect taxes (a duty, an impost or an excise). However, dissenters to the majority opinion argued that there may be a third category of general taxes in the Constitution that were not categorized as either direct or indirect where income taxes fell. The significance of such a category is that taxes in this category would not be subjected to either of the two major restrictions placed on the federal government of apportionment for direct taxes or of uniformity for indirect taxes. Dissenters claimed evidence for this was found in the wording of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 stating, "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." Dissenters pointed out that the the phrase "direct taxes" was not used in this provision, only the general term "taxes," thereby creating three categories of taxes: direct taxes, indirect taxes (duties, imposts, and excises) and general taxes.

The majority rejected this view arguing that the subject and focus of this clause were the indirect taxes (duties, imposts, and exercises) and the restriction placed on the federal government for applying these indirect taxes uniformly. The restriction of apportionment for direct taxes had already been set out in an earlier clause and there was no need to be so specific in terminology here for direct taxes. The Court also cited references to earlier writings of the Framers and scholars where it was implied that all taxes that were not categorized as indirect taxes were to be deemed direct taxes. The majority writes:

"And although there have been from time to time intimations that there might be some tax which was not a direct tax nor included under the words "duties, imposts and excises," such a tax, for more than one hundred years of national existence, has as yet remained undiscovered, notwithstanding the stress of particular circumstances has invited thorough investigation into sources of revenue."

Issue 2: Are income taxes to be categorized as direct or indirect?

Justice Fuller's majority opinion and Justice Field's concurring opinion offered strong evidence that income taxes (particularly taxes on rents, dividends, and interest) had always been considered direct taxes. Justice Fuller writes:

"In England, we do not understand that an income tax has ever been regarded as other than a direct tax. In Dowell's History of Taxation and Taxes in England, admitted to be the leading authority, the evolution of taxation in that country is given, and an income tax is invariably classified as a direct tax. 3 Dowell (1884) 103, 126."

Justice Field writes:

"As stated, the rents and income of real property are included in the designation of direct taxes as part of the real property. Such has been the law in England for centuries, and in this country from the early settlement of the colonies, and it is strange that any member of the legal profession should, at this day, question a doctrine which has always been thus accepted by common law lawyers. It is so declared in approved treatises upon real property and in accepted authorities on particular branches of real estate law, and has been so announced in decisions in the English courts and our own courts without number…"

Dissenters claimed that in arguments for Hylton v. United States, Alexander Hamilton had determined that income taxes on personal property (carriages) were considered indirect taxes. The majority pointed out that in the opinion for Hylton the Court had actually concluded that the carriage tax was a usage tax (i.e., another type of indirect tax) and specifically not an income tax. In fact, Hamilton had only looked to the laws of Great Britain for guidance on the issue and had determined that in Great Britain, carriage taxes were considered excise taxes (an indirect tax) without making any determination as to whether this tax was also an income tax. Fuller writes:

"Mr. Hamilton also argued: 'If the meaning of the word 'excise' is to be sought in a British statute, it will be found to include the duty on carriages, which is there considered as an 'excise.' . . . Where so important a distinction in the Constitution is to be realized, it is fair to seek the meaning of terms in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived.' If the question had related to an income tax, the reference would have been fatal, as such taxes have been always classed by the law of Great Britain as direct taxes."

On the subject of a specific kind of income tax that was not very common in the 19th Century but which has become the primary source of revenue for the federal government in the 21st Century -- the tax on employment income -- the majority offered many examples where employment income taxes had been regarded as direct taxes, especially with the state governments because state governments had no restrictions on applying these kinds of direct taxes. However, the majority also conceded to finding a few examples of employment income taxes that had been considered excise taxes (indirect taxes). In light of this the Court declined to take up the issue and make a ruling, deferring the case to a possible future case in which this issue would be the main focus. Fuller writes:

"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."

Finally, in answer to claims that income taxes had been levied before by the federal government without complaint in the Revenue Act of 1861, the majority was quick to point out that the Revenue Act of 1861 was the first time since the Constitution was ratified that income taxes had been levied by the federal government and only the fourth time that direct taxes (i.e., something other than duties, excises, and imposts) had been levied. In all four instances the direct taxes were levied by the federal government in an emergency situation to raise revenue quickly for war efforts (the tax in 1861 being levied to raise money for the Civil War), and in all four instances a time limit was placed on the tax making it clear that it was only a temporary tax that was to end when the war ended. By contrast the Income Tax Act of 1894 marked the first time since the ratification of the Constitution that a direct tax (including an income tax) was attempted by the federal government during peace time. The majority considered the fact that the federal government was attempting to levy income taxes during a time of peace as a red flag that, as Justice Fuller writes...

"furnishes an additional reason for circumspection and care in disposing of the case" (supra).

Issue 3: Did the Framers intentionally restrict the federal government from levying income taxes?

It was conceded that if either the restriction of apportionment or of uniformity were applied to an income tax, it would place such a burden on the tax as to make it impracticable to levy at all. The dissenters used this as a basis for an argument that neither of these restrictions were meant to be applied to income taxes because the Framers of the Constitution would not purposely "cripple" the federal government in this manner. The majority argued that this was precisely the purpose of the restrictions -- to discourage and prevent the federal government from levying income taxes except as a last resort and only in extenuating circumstances such as a war. The thought that these restrictions would "cripple" the federal government was dismissed by the majority as an exaggeration because the federal government had managed to operate without income taxes prior to 1861 and because the federal government had several other avenues at its disposal to raise revenue, including levying indirect taxes like duties, imposts, and excises (which includes a very broad category of consumption taxes and usage taxes).

In presenting evidence of the Framers' intent when writing the restrictions on federal taxation in the Constitution, Fuller noted that as least five of the states were balking at ratification of the Constitution until the section on federal taxation had been amended to provide that the federal government would not be allowed to levy direct taxes at all until after all indirect sources of revenue were shown to be insufficient, and even then only after a state failed to raise and pay, using its own desired methods, its apportioned amount to the federal government. Fuller writes:

"We repeat that the right of the Federal government to directly assess and collect its own taxes, at least until after requisitions upon the States had been made and failed, was one of the chief points of conflict, and Massachusetts, in ratifying, recommended the adoption of an amendment in these words:

"That Congress do not lay direct taxes but when the moneys arising from the impost and excise are insufficient for the public exigencies, nor then until Congress shall have first made a requisition upon the States to assess, levy, and pay, their respective proportions of such requisition, agreeably to the census fixed in the said Constitution, in such way and manner as the legislatures of the States shall think best." 1 Elliot 322. And in this South Carolina, New York, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island concurred. Id. 325, 326, 329, 336."

The states were especially concerned the federal government had too much power to tax since the Constitution also provided that the states would no longer be able to collect duties on imports, an important source of revenue for the states, all of which were seaboard (Article 1, Section 10, Clause 2 provides, "No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws"). The Framers therefore struck a compromise where in exchange for the states giving up much of their power to tax imports and other indirect taxes the federal government would in turn give up much of its power to levy direct taxes, including income taxes, leaving this method of tax collection and source of revenue mostly to the states. The result was the apportionment and uniformity restrictions on federal taxes in the Constitution. In fact, as Fuller notes, the apportionment restriction in particular was so important it was mentioned in two different clauses and was further shielded from modification or removal during the amendment and ratification process in Article V. This restriction was the direct target of Amendment 16.

Issue 4: Does the Income Tax Act of 1894 violate rules of apportionment?

The rules of apportionment are straightforward: An amount of money to be raised by the federal government is determined, and the total amount to be raised is divided by the total number of members in the House of Representatives to obtain a "quotient." The quotient is then multiplied by the number of members of the House of Representative from any given state to determine the amount of tax owed by that state. In 1894, all direct federal taxes were to be collected in this manner of apportionment as required by Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. None of the income taxes in the Income Tax Act of 1894 were levied in this manner. Therefore, any taxes in the Act determined to be direct taxes would necessarily violate Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and be struck down as unconstitutional. From previous rulings, all income taxes on rents, dividends, and interests were considered direct taxes and would have to be struck down.

Issue 5: Does the Income Tax Act of 1894 violate the rules of uniformity?

The rules of uniformity are not as straightforward as the rules of apportionment, but Justice Field in his concurring opinion in the first hearing of the case with Justice Fuller finally agreeing when delivering the majority opinion in the re-hearing of the case both made it clear that applying exemptions to indirect taxes violated the rules of uniformity. This is an important ruling by the majority since later arguments by the Court in Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41 (1900) overruled this decision. The Court in Knowlton, with the opinion of the Court delivered by Justice White (the major dissenter here in Pollock), determined that geographic uniformity alone (i.e., that all indirect taxes be applied the same in all the states and not necessarily the same to all people) was sufficient to meet the requirement of uniformity regardless of the number and types of exemptions applied to the tax.

In his concurring opinion, which later became the majority opinion on the re-hearing, Justice Field concludes that because of the the exemptions in the Income Tax Act of 1894, including exemptions based on income levels, the Act violates the rules of uniformity for indirect federal taxation in violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, writing:

"Cooley, in his treatise on Taxation (2d ed. 215), justly observes that: "It is difficult to conceive of a justifiable exemption law which should select single individuals or corporations, or single articles of property, and, taking them out of the class to which they belong, make them the subject of capricious legislative favor. Such favoritism could make no pretence to equality; it would lack the semblance of legitimate tax legislation." The income tax law under consideration is marked by discriminating features which affect the whole law. It discriminates between those who receive an income of four thousand dollars and those who do not. It thus vitiates, in my judgment, by this arbitrary discrimination, the whole legislation."

Subsequent court treatments of Pollock and the Sixteenth Amendment

Three years after ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in the case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad. In Brushaber, the Court reviewed the history of the dichotomy between excises (indirect taxes) and direct taxes. The Brushaber Court noted that the 1913 Income Tax Act was written as an indirect tax and did not violate the rule of uniformity and so it was not written as a direct tax and thus was not subject to the rule of apportionment. The Court summarized what it had decided in Pollock and then went on to state the effect of the Sixteenth Amendment with respect to income taxes:

"[T]he command of the amendment that all income taxes shall not be subject to the rule of apportionment by a consideration of the source from which the taxed income may be derived forbids the application to such taxes of the rule applied in the Pollock case by which alone such taxes were removed from the great class of excises, duties, and imposts subject to the rule of uniformity and were placed under the other or direct class."

The Sixteenth Amendment removed the requirement for those income taxes deemed to be direct in substance (such as taxes on income from property) to be apportioned among the states according to population. Thus, the effect of the Pollock decision has indeed been overturned by the Sixteenth Amendment.

The Court in Brushaber also noted that before Pollock, taxes on income from professions, trades, employments, or vocations were excises. They were indirect in both form and substance and therefore had never been apportioned and so they were entitled to be so enforced afterwards.

By contrast, with respect to taxes on income from property, the Pollock decision had disregarded form and considered substance alone. Justice White's decision in Brushaber shows how the Sixteenth Amendment was written to prevent consideration of the direct effects of any income tax laid by Congress.

The Supreme Court, in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., added that the "Sixteenth 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." 240 U.S. 112 (1916).

This effect was reaffirmed in Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co., 271 U.S. 170 (1926), in which the Supreme Court reviewed Pollock, the Corporation Excise Tax Act of 1909, and the Sixteenth Amendment. It concluded, "It was not the purpose or effect of that amendment to bring any new subject within the taxing power. Congress already had power to tax all incomes."

See also

• Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. 171 (1796)
• United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895)

Further reading

• Jones, Francis R. (1895). "Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company". Harvard Law Review. 9 (3): 198–211. doi:10.2307/1321669. JSTOR 1321669.

US Constitutional Tax Law

DEFAULTSORT:Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. Category:United States Supreme Court cases Category:Taxing and Spending Clause case law Category:1895 in United States case law Category:Overruled United States Supreme Court decisions Category:Abrogated United States Supreme Court decisions Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Fuller Court

Full copy of the old article

Enclosed below is a full copy of the original article before it was edited. H. Nicole Young (talk) 20:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I have removed the copy of the article. It does not belong on this page. If you want to reference the version before you edited the article, here it's the link, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pollock_v._Farmers%27_Loan_%26_Trust_Co.&oldid=718293816. -- GB fan 11:12, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Discussion of original research

Dear H. Nicole Young: This is simply way too much original research. This cannot even be meaningfully digested by other editors on the talk page for the article, so I moved it here.

The article on Pollock has been vetted by experienced editors for years. A wholesale change to the article all at once in the manner you are proposing is not practical.

I suggest that you break this down into very small portions, and propose the smaller portions one at a time.

Further, without even having had the chance to read all this, I can tell you that other editors are probably going to consider this to be your own original research, replete with your own personal opinions. Wikipedia is not the proper place for this. Famspear (talk) 01:22, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

By the way, you mention that you're a third year law student, and that you have a case on appeal at the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Since you voluntarily gave your name and a link to the information about your legal troubles, I'll give you an update: your appeal is not doing well. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied your request for a certificate of appealability, because (in the words of the Court order) your "underlying [section 2254 petition] fails to state any federal constitutional claims debatable among jurists of reason." The order, dated July 22, 2016, was entered on July 27, 2016. Famspear (talk) 02:14, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Blocked for 3RR violation

Greetings. You have been blocked for 72 hours for edit warring at Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.‎; please see Wikipedia:The three-revert rule. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:40, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

This blocked user's request to have autoblock on their IP address lifted has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request.

H. Nicole Young (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

H. Nicole Young (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

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Block message:

Autoblocked because your IP address was recently used by "H. Nicole Young". The reason given for H. Nicole Young's block is: "3RR violation".

• Blocking administrator: BD2412 (talk • blocks)

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Decline reason: See below. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

H. Nicole Young (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

Why do you believe you should be unblocked?

The rules say the blocking only occurs after 4 reversions. I have only done 2 reversions. I was not warned and I did not know the rules. I thought the person taking down the edits were breaking the rules. My material is also being targeted as "original research" when it isn't. Also, I am an excellent editor (or possible future editor) since I have a Ph.D in chemistry and I am a year away from graduating law school with a specialty is Constitutional Law and the 16th Amendment in particular. It appears from Wiki-projects that all the things I was changing in the article are wanted and even the talk section for the article I was editing requested somebody do the exact changes I was making. In addition to not following Wikipedia rules, I believe the person blocking me knows very little about reviewing legal cases and is also obviously not an attorney.

If you are unblocked, what articles to you plan to edit? I plan to edit any article that misstates the facts and/or cites references that do exist or do say what they claim to say, but my focus for now appears to be:

Pollock v. Farmer's Savings and Loan

Also, I plan to create a much needed article for Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41 (1900).

I plan to review and update (where needed) anything related to "Sixteenth Amendment" and all the references cited. I only edit things for which I have read. The person blocking me has never even read Pollock v Farmers Savings and Loan. And deleting my extensive notes in the talk section for being "too voluminous" is not a rule I am aware of at Wikipedia. Just put it at the end of the talk section if you think it is "too voluminous."

Why do you think there is a block currently affecting you? If you believe it's in error, tell us how. Every computer of mine is blocked from editing every Wikipedia article -- for what? I will be waltzing down to the courthouse, possibly before 4pm today, with a lawsuit over this issue if the damage done to me is not taken care of promptly. I have over 7000 views of my tweets at Twitter a week and I just told everybody viewing my tweets at Twitter to go see my edits at Wikipedia on Pollock v Farmers Savings and Loan. Now if they do that what they view are not my edits at all and they can't even see my notes, which I also told them to go see. (I am a 3rd year law student and live for suing over important issues like this -- did the same thing to Twitter two years ago when they kept deleting my accounts for rules that did not exist simply because a few people did not like the facts I was presenting and I am pretty sure Twitter has yet to recover).

Is there anything else you would like us to consider when reviewing your block? There is an editor called Famspear (talk) who appears to be compensated in some way to guard all Wikipedia pages related to the 16th Amendment. He will be mentioned by name in the lawsuit along with Wikipedia for allowing this kind of rampant abuse of power to go on apparently for over a decade, from what I am seeing in the notes. While Wikipedia can claim to be run by "volunteers", Wikipedia is nevertheless a household name with a lot of power and needs to put real rules and real checks in place (not fake rules and fake checks) to control abuse by editors with ulterior motives from falsely accusing others of abuse.

H. Nicole Young (talk) 21:45, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Decline reason:

You've been blocked for edit warring. While WP:3RR is a bright-line rule, any number of reversions can be edit warring when done quickly and without discussion. In general, when a good-faith editor reverts your edit, you should head to the talk page and discuss rather than reverting as per WP:BRD.

As for your legal threat, all of your edits can be seen in the page history here, and you do not own this article. As per Wikipedia's policy against legal threats, your block length has been extended to indefinite. I invite you to withdraw the legal threat in your next post. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

H. Nicole Young (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

Just want to clarify a few facts before I file this thing on Monday:

1. I am not anonymous -- my legal name is H. Nicole Young (Huguette Nicole Young) and my work is identified as such on the talk page.
2. There are some defamatory, true statements made about my work on the talk page for Pollock v. Farmers' Savings and Loan (though mostly minor stuff that can easily be fixed with a quick edit), but there are also some defamatory, untrue statements made about my work -- e.g. that I made claims that were unsupported by the source material (when in fact my version of the article is the only version with actual quotes from the majority opinion), to name at least one untrue defamatory statement.
3. I was blocked without warning based on unfounded claims by an editor for some set period (can't remember) both from fixing the minor defamatory errors and from defending my name and reputation from the false, defamatory statements.
4. Wikipedia was informed that this was damaging to me since I advertised on my Twitter account (which according to Twitter averages over 7000 views a week) that after working over a week straight I had done a much needed (and requested by editors on the talk page) overhaul of Pollock v. Farmers' Savings and Loan and that everybody should go check out both the article and my notes about the edits on the talk page.
5. In response to me pointing out to Wikipedia that my reputation was being damaged, possibly intentionally by an editor with an ulterior motive, and that I may have legal grounds to sue if this continued Wikipedia responded that I was barred from accessing the damaging material indefinitely and intimated that I may be barred from even editing this page if I continued in my line of complaint.

K. Just getting the facts straight. I know determining and reporting facts may not be a priority with Wikipedia in its current system of editing, but we'll get there, right along with the Supreme Court striking down the 16th Amendment as repugnant to the Constitution... H. Nicole Young (talk) 08:25, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Decline reason:

This does not address either of the reasons for your blocks. If you want to sue Wikipedia (or whomever), you're welcome to do that. Due to the chilling effect of legal threats of that kind, we do not permit editors who pursue legal means or threaten do do so to edit Wikipedia, though. If you want to be unblocked and edit, you will need to unequivocally retract the legal threats. Regarding the issue of "original research", Wikipedia editors should not draw their own conclusions from primary sources such as the majority opinion. Rather, we should summarize what secondary sources report. Finally, you engage in accusations without evidence against fellow editors; that's considered a personal attack and is not acceptable. Huon (talk) 11:18, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

H. Nicole Young (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

user Famspear is a troll (which is an anonymous user who is compensated by Wikipedia, Wikimedia, or a Wikimedia "donor" to guard particular articles from reporting facts or from modifying purposely false information -- Wikipedia may try to call them volunteers, but by law they are agents of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, or a Wikimedia "donor"). This may or may not come out during discovery, along with all the trolls protecting Famspear who are also compensated by the same source, but I have already supplied ample evidence, including the fact that he deleted my version of the article based on nothing but false, defamatory claims or irrelevant facts (e.g, apparently because I prefer to distinguish federal cases from state cases by calling them federal cases or state cases, this means I am not only unqualified to present legal principles to lay people, but I am lying about having a case on appeal in federal court, which is now heading for a shot at the Supreme Court for the second time). He has not revealed what law school he attended (or is attending) to qualify him to be editing any articles about cases at Wikipedia, much less cases concerning Constitutional issues. Unlike me, he has also not revealed who he is and what his interests are in this article (which is not considered an important article by Wiki-projects, so why is it so important to Famspear?) Either way his motives are clearly not to present factual information about the case. Just a few days ago the article did not even list a critical aspect of the case (Justice Field's concurring opinion) as even existing. The article he keeps reverting back to is full of inaccurate facts, irrelevant facts, and purposely misleading information. I have outlined in excruciating detail every edit I made and why I made it in my notes in the talk section (which Famspear also removed several times as being "too long" -- more evidence he is a troll). Now I am told by Huon (who is this and how do I or anybody else from the public know it's not just Famspear under a different name?) that according to Wikipedia rules only quotes from the dissenting opinions of cases are allowed, not the majority or concurring opinions because unlike quotes from dissenting opinions, quotes from majority opinions are "original research." (I am being a bit facetious -- it is very clear that this "original research" BS is just a catch-all power given to trolls at Wikipedia to be able to delete whatever their employers tell them to delete).

No offense to the non-trolls out there because I love Wikipedia and I love the whole idea of a "free encyclopedia anybody can edit", but I have also learned (from my experience in dealing with Twitter trolls who kept deleting my accounts at Twitter and purposely defaming me because a few powerful people did not like the facts I was presenting) that the easiest way to get trolls off your back at these places is to sue. The reason for this (and I hate to pop the bubbles of the good-hearted non-trolls out there, if there are any left at Wikipedia) is that Wikipedia secretly supports the trolling because it brings in a lot of revenue, if not a majority of revenue, from slimeball supporters like big tobacco, for one.

Anyway, let's try this again before I file: I have all the elements I need for several different claims all the way down to punitive damages at this point (defamation, false advertising, etc., -- maybe even complaints to whomever deems Wikipedia a non-profit since that is clearly not what it is). This is even more true now taking into account Wikipedia's threats to ban me permanently unless I give up my right to sue, which is a ridiculous promise Wikipedia is trying to force out of me anyway since the promise to give up that right would be done under duress and would not be binding anyway. It's not a "threat" to sue -- it's me protecting my right not to be defamed, falsely advertised to, etc., by Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Wikimedia donors, and their trolling, money making agents that Wikipedia likes to call volunteers because Wikipedia thinks that is going to protect them from law suits. All I want to do is edit and create articles at Wikipedia in peace (as advertised) without trolls like Famspear harassing me and being compensated for putting up unreasonable, arbitrary roadblocks to articles he is charged with protecting, roadblocks like, "you have to run any changes by me one line at a time because you obviously don't have a life." I already explained every edit one line at a time in the talk section. It is now up to Famspear, who is not qualified to make major changes anyway since he has never briefed a single case in his life, to explain to me, one line at a time, why he wants to change the accurate version of the article. For now the only change I will allow is he can change the word "ruling" to "decision" in one place that I will let him figure out, once he actually reads the case or reads some information from somebody who actually reads the case and can cite it. However, just for the record, the original article made no distinction between the two and even inaccurately called a "decision" a "ruling" in the one sentence I pointed out in my notes in the talk section as being the most troublesome sentence of the entire article. This sentence had significantly larger problems than calling a decision a ruling (four big problems that I pointed out to be exact) but okay -- since Famspear seems to think this is a huge, fatal problem with the new article requiring a reversion and banning me from editing anything at Wikipedia indefinitely, I might let him make that change after we argue it like adults with no ulterior motive other than trying to present accurate, useful, and understandable information to the public.

Last time I request this because anything after this is a waste of breath: Lift the ban and stop the trolls from damaging me and my work or I will ask a Court to do it simply because it it easier and less expensive and less time consuming in the long run for me to do things this way. H. Nicole Young (talk) 23:55, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Decline reason:

Using unblock requests to continue making legal threats and to attack other editors is not going to get you unblocked. It has, in fact, lost you the ability to edit this talk page. See WP:UTRS if you wish to make any further appeal, but be aware that you will not be unblocked while your threats of legal action are outstanding. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 00:13, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

August 2016

Your ability to edit this talk page has been revoked as an administrator has identified your talk page edits as inappropriate and/or disruptive.

(block log • active blocks • global blocks • autoblocks • contribs • deleted contribs • abuse filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you should read the guide to appealing blocks, then contact administrators by submitting a request to the Unblock Ticket Request System. If the block is a CheckUser or Oversight block, was made by the Arbitration Committee or to enforce an arbitration decision (arbitration enforcement), or is unsuitable for public discussion, you should appeal to the Arbitration Committee.
Please note that there could be appeals to the unblock ticket request system that have been declined leading to the post of this notice.

 -- GB fan 00:01, 1 August 2016 (UTC)