(Thanks, j. :)

(There are those who say the core difficulty involves the meaning of "federal income" and the presumed status of the one filing the return.)

Reader j. offers:

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I agree with Benson that the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified, but even if it had been properly ratified, the problem today is not the income tax per se but rather that the government has re-defined the term “income” from the legally correct definition “profit” to the colloquial definition “everything that comes in.”

The difficulty with this “bait and switch” tactic is that if your money makes a profit for you (interest, dividends) it’s income, but if you receive money from your own labor, the physical dollar bills you receive are legally classified as personal property, not income. The rub is that by re-labeling your personal property as income the government claims that they can tax it.

However, a tax on your personal property is a direct tax, and the prohibition on the government collecting a direct tax on your personal property is the only provision in the Constitution stated twice—Article 1, section 2 clause 3 and Article 1, section 9, clause 4.

Therefore, it is the government’s collection of a direct tax on your personal property that the government labels income, not the income tax itself, that is unconstitutional.

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