Soon after the national income tax proposed by Representative Benton McMillin of Tennessee became law, the tax law was tested in court. In the spring of 1895, the United States Supreme Court declared the federal income tax invalid, explaining that it exceeded Congress’s powers to levy duties as defined in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution.
Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration
Pollock v. The Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1894, slip opinion, May 20, 1895
The Sixteenth Amendment: Income Tax
In 1872 Congress repealed a national income tax that helped finance the Civil War, but the question of whether to tax income reemerged after an 1893 financial panic heightened the need for federal revenue. Representative Benton McMillin of Tennessee introduced an income-tax amendment to a tariff bill in 1894. It passed Congress, but the new income-tax law was short-lived. In 1895 the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. Congress finally secured its power to tax income in 1913 after it approved, and the states ratified the Sixteenth Amendment.
Is it not time that great estates which are protected by our Army, which are defended by our Navy, which are benefited by the various operations of Government, should contribute in some greater degree to carry on that Government?
Representative Benton McMillin of Tennessee, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives, January 29, 1894
Soon after the national income tax proposed by Representative Benton McMillin of Tennessee became law, the tax law was tested in court. In the spring of 1895, the United States Supreme Court declared the federal income tax invalid, explaining that it exceeded Congress’s powers to levy duties as defined in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution.
Records of the Supreme Court of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration
