Famspear wrote:Our new visitor wrote (or copied and pasted, or whatever):
All the cases above are the foundation of the income tax law, not the IRS code. The IRS code is a presumption of law.
No, not exactly. The Internal Revenue Code is not a "presumption" of law. And the citation to 26 USC section 7806 is completely off base. Here's what section 7806 actually says:
(a) Cross references
The cross references in this title to other portions of the title, or other provisions of law, where the word “see” is used, are made only for convenience, and shall be given no legal effect.
(b) Arrangement and classification
No inference, implication, or presumption of legislative construction shall be drawn or made by reason of the location or grouping of any particular section or provision or portion of this title, nor shall any table of contents, table of cross references, or similar outline, analysis, or descriptive matter relating to the contents of this title be given any legal effect. The preceding sentence also applies to the sidenotes and ancillary tables contained in the various prints of this Act before its enactment into law.
All that has nothing to do with the point that the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, is positive law. Every single provision of the Code was enacted by Congress, and every single provision is published in the United States Statutes at Large.
And:
The U.S. Constitution trumps the IRS presumption of law.
That's a meaningless statement in this context. There is no such thing as an "IRS presumption of law."
The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land -- so, it's a higher law than the
Internal Revenue Code. That may be what our friend meant to say. However, that also does not mean what the tax protesters would like it to mean.
The Internal Revenue Code provisions imposing the U.S. federal tax on income -- including but not limited to the tax on ordinary compensation received by individuals -- does not violate any provision of the Constitution. Every single court that has ever ruled on this point has ruled that the income tax provisions are not unconstitutional, with a few exceptions involving the compensation of federal judges not material to this discussion.
The Supreme Court has, on a few occasions, ruled various taxes imposed under the Internal Revenue Code to be unconstitutional. However, no federal court has ever ruled any provision of the current Internal Revenue Code with respect to federal income tax to be unconstitutional as applied to the compensation of individuals, the gains on sales of assets by individuals, or the interest income, dividend income, or rent income received by individuals.
The 16th amendment is not the taxing power of Congress. The 16th amendment must be construed with Article I, Sec. 2, and Sec. 9 of the U.S. Constitution.
Not exactly. In a broad sense, every provision of the U.S. Constitution should be construed in the context of every other provision. The tendency to interpret particular passages outside the context in which those passages are found is actually a bad habit found with many tax protester-tax denier folks.
More to the point: To the extent, if any, that the Sixteenth Amendment were to be construed to contradict anything in Article I, the Sixteenth Amendment would probably be held to trump the Article I provision. Unfortunately for the tax protesters, Article I and the Amendment do not contradict each other at all.
To digress: The Sixteenth Amendment created no NEW power of taxation. Unfortunately, that statement does not mean what the tax protesters would like to believe it means. Article I of the Constitution already gives the Congress the power to impose an income tax. Congress had that power even before 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified.
The Sixteenth Amendment does
authorize the imposition of the income tax. Confusing? Yes.
There is a difference between saying that the Amendment "created" the power to tax incomes (it did not do that) and saying that the Amendment
authorizes the power to tax incomes (which it does do).
The Law: For federal income tax purposes, "gross income" means all income from whatever source derived and includes compensation for services. I.R.C. § 61. Any income, from whatever source, is presumed to be income under section 61, unless the taxpayer can establish that it is specifically exempted or excluded. In Reese v. United States, 24 F.3d 228, 231 (Fed. Cir. 1994), the court stated, "an abiding principle of federal tax law is that, absent an enumerated exception, gross income means all income from whatever source derived."
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Bus ... ion-IIThis is the text of the Amendment:
'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.'
It is clear on the face of this text that it does not purport to confer power to levy income taxes in a generic sense,-an authority already possessed and never questioned, [240 U.S. 1, 18] -or to limit and distinguish between one kind of income taxes and another, but that the whole purpose of the Amendment was to relieve all income taxes when imposed from apportionment from a consideration of the source whence the income was derived. Indeed, in the light of the history which we have given and of the decision in the Pollock Case, and the ground upon which the ruling in that case was based, there is no escape from the conclusion that the Amendment was drawn for the purpose of doing away for the future with the principle upon which the Pollock Case was decided; that is, of determining whether a tax on income was direct not by a consideration of the burden placed on the taxed income upon which it directly operated, but by taking into view the burden which resulted on the property from which the income was derived, since in express terms the Amendment provides that income taxes, from whatever source the income may be derived, shall not be subject to the regulation of apportionment. From this in substance it indisputably arises, first, that all the contentions which we have previously noticed concerning the assumed limitations to be implied from the language of the Amendment as to the nature and character of the income taxes which it authorizes find no support in the text and are in irreconcilable conflict with the very purpose which the Amendment was adopted to accomplish. Second, that the contention that the Amendment treats a tax on income as a direct tax although it is relieved from apportionment and is necessarily therefore not subject to the rule of uniformity as such rule only applies to taxes which are not direct, thus destroying the two great classifications which have been recognized and enforced from the beginning, is also wholly without foundation since the command of the Amendment that all income taxes shall not be subject to apportionment by a consideration of the sources from which the taxed income may be derived [240 U.S. 1, 19] 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. This must be unless it can be said that although the Constitution, as a result of the Amendment, in express terms excludes the criterion of source of income, that criterion yet remains for the purpose of destroying the classifications of the Constitution by taking an excise out of the class to which it belongs and transferring it to a class in which it cannot be placed consistently with the requirements of the Constitution. Indeed, from another point of view, the Amendment demonstrates that no such purpose was intended, and on the contrary shows that it was drawn with the object of maintaining the limitations of the Constitution and harmonizing their operation. We say this because it is to be observed that although from the date of the Hylton Case, because of statements made in the opinions in that case, it had come to be accepted that direct taxes in the constitutional sense were confined to taxes levied directly on real estate because of its ownership, the Amendment contains nothing repudiation or challenging the ruling in the Pollock Case that the word 'direct' had a broader significance, since it embraced also taxes levied directly on personal property because of its ownership, and therefore the Amendment at least impliedly makes such wider significance a part of the Constitution,-a condition which clearly demonstrates that the purpose was not to change the existing interpretation except to the extent necessary to accomplish the result intended; that is, the prevention of the resort to the sources from which a taxed income was derived in order to cause a direct tax on the income to be a direct tax on the source itself, and thereby to take an income tax out of the class of excises, duties, and imposts, and place it in the class of direct taxes. [240 U.S. 1, 20] We come, then, to ascertain the merits of the many contentions made in the light of the Constitution as it now stands; that is to say, including within its terms the provisions of the 16th Amendment as correctly interpreted. We first dispose of two propositions assailing the validity of the statute on the one hand because of its repugnancy to the Constitution in other respects, and especially because its enactment was not authorized by the 16th Amendment.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/g ... 40&invol=1
