Amendments to the Constitution 11-27
Amendment XVI · Ratified February 3, 1913
Authorizes Congress to levy a federal income tax without apportioning it among the states.
Amendment XVI · Ratified February 3, 1913
Court decisions citing this, by year.The marker is when it took effect. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.
Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by amendment 16.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Ratified in 1913 to override Pollock: the Sixteenth Amendment authorizes a federal income tax without apportionment among the states.
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), affirmed on rehearing, 158 U.S. 601 (1895), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the income tax imposed by the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act for being an unapportioned direct tax.
Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the validity of a tax statute called the Revenue Act of 1913, also known as the Tariff Act, Ch. 16, 38 Stat. 166 (October 3, 1913), enacted pursuant to Article I, section 8, clause 1 of, and the Sixteenth Amendment to, the United States Constitution, allowing a federal income tax.
Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U.S. 107 (1911), was a United States Supreme Court case in which a taxpayer challenged the validity of a federal income tax on corporations. The privilege of incorporation is a state function, and the challengers argued that only the states should tax corporations.
Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 171 (1796), is an early United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a yearly tax on carriages did not violate the Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 requirements for the apportioning of direct taxes.
Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co., 271 U.S. 170 (1926), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that no taxable income arose from the repayment in German marks of loans that had originally been made in U.S. dollars, despite the fact that the marks had gone down in value relative to the dollar since the loan had been made.[1] This decision was narrowed by the court six years later in United States v. Kirby Lumber Co..
Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U.S. 426 (1955), was an important income tax case before the United States Supreme Court. The Court held as follows: Congress, in enacting income taxation statutes that comprehend "gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever," intended to tax all gain except that which was specifically exempted.