On February 25, 1913, the Republican Secretary of State Philander Knox proclaimed that the amendment had been ratified by the necessary three-quarters of the states ensuring the constitutionality of unapportioned federal income taxes.
Note that 42 states ratified this ammendment. There were 48 states at that time.
Read the ammendment again.
It specifically says "without apportionment" in the ammendment.
It specifically says "incomes, from whatever source derived" in the ammendment.
Thanks for the advice I did re -read and did notice my errors.
Amendment XVI
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.
First, An amendment to the US Constitution requires 3/4ths ratification of states not 2/3rds as I had stated.
There were 48 states and Philander Knox did proclaim that the Amendment was "in effect" not ratified.
There is still debate about the legitimacy of the states ratifying the 16th Amendment because of differences in the versions of the actual document, which invalidates any proposed amendment. Many states changed the language of the text to the point of changing its actual meaning!!!
13 States at the time did not legitimately ratify the Amendment!
The states could just go back and vote again with proper documents but that has not happened as of yet!
The power of congress to apply direct taxes to wages of Americans has been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme court
Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 US 1 (1916)
from
The Law That Never Was
The Brushaber decision determined that since the provisions of Article I of the Constitution were not repealed, they are still in full force and effect. Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, and Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, BOTH specify that Direct taxes MUST BE APPORTIONED (to the state governments for collection). The Court ruled that:
"Income has been taken to mean the same thing as used in the Corporation Excise tax of 1909 (36 Stat. 112). The worker does not receive a profit or gain from his/her labors--merely an equal exchange of funds for services."
"the command of the amendment that all income taxes shall not be subject to the rule of apportionment by a consideration of the source from which the taxed income may be derived 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."
and:
Moreover, in addition, the conclusion reached in the Pollock case did not in any degree involve holding that income taxes generically and necessarily came within the class of direct taxes on property, but, on the contrary, recognized the fact that taxation on income was in its nature an excise entitled to be enforced as such unless and until it was concluded that to enforce it would amount to accomplishing the result which the requirement as to apportionment of direct taxation was adopted to prevent, in which case the duty would arise to disregard form and consider substance alone,..."
Since the income tax is "without apportionment" by virtue of the wording of the 16th Amendment, it cannot be a DIRECT TAX, because direct taxes MUST still be apportioned. So, the income tax is still an INDIRECT TAX.
According to the Supreme Court, the 16th Amendment does nothing except move the Income Tax out of the Indirect classification of duties (imposed on foreign imports), and into the Indirect classification of excises (imposed on privileges and commodities).
BUT IT IS STILL AN INDIRECT TAX, NOT A DIRECT TAX WITHOUT APPORTIONMENT, AS DECEPTIVELY CLAIMED BY THE I.R.S.
The Brushaber decision concludes by referring the reader, for the definition of excise taxes, to the Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. (1911) decision, handed down five years earlier. So, the Court knew what it was doing !
Here is some interesting information on the subject the constitutionality of the 16th Amendment.
USCONSTITUTION.NET
16th Amendment
In 1895, in the Supreme Court case of Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust (157 U.S. 429), the Court disallowed a federal tax on income from real property. The tax was designed to be an indirect tax, which would mean that states need not contribute portions of a whole relative to its census figures. The Court, however, ruled that the tax was a direct tax and subject to apportionment. This was the last in a series of conflicting court decisions dating back to the Civil War. Between 1895 and 1909, when the amendment was passed by Congress, the Court began to back down on its position, as it became clear not only to accountants but to everyone that the solvency of the nation was in jeopardy. I
n a series of cases, the definition of "direct tax" was modified, bent, twisted, and coaxed to allow more taxation efforts that approached an income tax.
Finally, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, any doubt was removed. The text of the Amendment makes it clear that though the categories of direct and indirect taxation still exist, any determination that income tax is a direct tax will be irrelevant,
because taxes on incomes, from salary or from real estate, are explicitly to be treated as indirect. The Congress passed the Amendment on July 12, 1909, and it was ratified on February 3, 1913 (1,302 days).
from
gpoaccess.gov
Two years later the Court decided Eisner v. Macomber,\18\ and
the controversy which that decision precipitated still endures.
Departing from the interpretation placed upon the Sixteenth Amendment in
the earlier cases, i.e., that the purpose of the Amendment was to
correct the ``error'' committed in the Pollock case and to restore
income taxation to ``the category of indirect taxation to which it
inherently belonged,'' Justice Pitney, who delivered the opinion in the
Eisner case, indicated that
the sole purpose of the Sixteenth Amendment
was merely to ``remove the necessity which otherwise might exist for an
apportionment among the States of taxes laid on income"
from
The Law That Never Was
Defects in Ratification of the 16th Amendment-
The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was never ratified by a majority of the sovereign States.
This is the Amendment that allegedly entitled the Federal Agent (government) in the federal territory of Washington, D.C. and their private collection company, the IRS, to collect "income tax" as falsely declared to be ratified in February 1913.
After an exhaustive year long search of legislative records in 48 sovereign states (Alaska & Hawaii were not admitted into the Union until after 1913). The only record of the 16th Amendment having been confirmed was a proclamation made by the Secretary of State Philander Knox on February 25, 1913, wherein he simply declared it to be "ineffect", but never stating it was lawfully ratified.
Even if the 16th Amendment were properly ratified, according to Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, it has always been unconstitutional for the U.S. Federal Government to directly tax We the People in their property, wages, salaries, or earnings. The judges of the U.S. Supreme Court rejected any claims that the 16th Amendment changed the constitutional limits on direct taxes in Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1, when they ruled that it "created no new power of taxation" and that it "did not change the constitutional limitations which forbid any direct taxation of individuals".
Alleged defects in the ratification of the Income Tax Amendment
After investigating the history of the 16th Amendment, the following defects were found in the ratification of the Income Tax Amendment by the 48 states then existing, three-fourths or 36 of which were needed to ratify it:
01 - Not ratified by state legislature, and so reported
02 - Not ratified by state legislature, but reported as ratified
03 - Missing or incomplete evidence of ratification, but reported as ratified
04 - Failure of Governor or other official to sign, although required by State Constitution
05 - Other violation of State Constitution in ratification process
06 - Other procedural irregularity making ratification doubtful
07 - Approval, but with change in wording, accepted as ratification of original version
08 - Approval, but with change in spelling, accepted as ratification of original version
09 - Approval, but with change in capitalization, accepted as ratification of original version
10 - Approval, but with change in punctuation, accepted as ratification of original version
So, ultimately when you pay your federal taxes you do so as a volunteer!
In fact they make it easy for you because most people volunteer to have taxes automatically with held from their paycheck(W-2)