I already did: Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.

Quick, fancy! Hit the thread with a post full of irrelevant links!

and if what I am reading is right, the tax on the PPACA is an indirect tax.
ROFLMAO!!!  Who can the individual compelled to pay the penaltax pass the tax onto?

If it's a direct tax, it's limited by the apportionment proviso.  Defenders of the penaltax argue that it's not a direct tax, it's an income tax.  Please recall that you've been insisting that an income tax is a direct tax.  Now you're saying that by your reading a particular income tax isn't a direct tax.

That much is accurate.  Taxes on some kinds of income are direct taxes, and taxes on other kinds of income aren't.  Taxes on wages/salaries aren't direct taxes.  They are excise taxes.  As an employee you've sold your labour to your employer, and the government taxing that sale.  Income generated from property (to include investments) were held by SCOTUS to be direct taxes, OTOH, which is why the Sixteenth Amendment was enacted.  It wasn't so the Feds could tax our wages: they were already able to do that.  It was so they could tax investment income.

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. - Federalist 51
Edited 1 time by bacchys 08/11/14 11:21.