Revenue Sources Quotes
In subsequent years military officers got around this restriction by privately expressing confidential opinions to members of Congress and the press. In the Iraq war for example most senior military officers felt that more troops were needed in Iraq. However, since the President decided on the final troop count only one official, the Army Chief of Staff, has publicly expressed the view that it was insufficient. He was retired early. The stricture still stands.
“Commercial imposts” are customs duties. These actually provided virtually all of the tax revenue for the early American nation. Hamilton, realized, and prepared those who would ratify the Constitution that there would have to be additional forms of revenue of the growing nation. Nonetheless, there are a few today who argue that the customs duties are the only legitimate form of Federal taxation as that was what was in existence in early America. This quotation shows that the founding fathers did not intend that the nation be bound to that single mode of taxation.
This Supreme Court opinion nullified the attempt to have a Federal Income Tax. The constitution allowed the Federal Government to collect import duties and that was essentially the only revenue source for the national government for over a century. If free trade were an objective, then customs duties would be lowered or eliminated and the Federal Govern lost the revenue. The only kind of direct tax that was allowed was a head tax in which every American paid the same tax. This was not a “flat tax” which means a tax where each person pays the same PERCENTAGE of income as tax. This meant that the richest person in the nation could only pay what the poorest could afford and therefore was impractical. It would take a constitutional amendment 18 years later—the 16th Amendment—to make the income tax legal. Many extremist anti-Federal government have refused to pay their income taxes and they argue that “The Supreme Court has declared the Income Tax illegal.” While that is so, after the 16th Amendment, the Court agreed that it was now constitutional. So the implication of unconstitutionality of the Federal Income Tax that the anti-tax forces have used was the law but has not been so since 1913. After that, it was and is perfectly legal and constitutional.
